So, we are going through some preliminary remarks based on Heidegger’s 1926 lecture course on ancient philosophy to prepare for looking at Hölderlin’s interpretation of ancient thought. Last time I looked at Heraclitus and Parmenides, and today I’ll look at Plato and the “as” structure, something “as” something else: e.g., The table appearing “as” badly positioned in the middle of the gym during the basketball game.

We spoke last time about taking “something as something” with the Greeks.  And so, for instance, if we consider “take as” being the same as “take to be,” Being refers to a simple presence – as Parmenides noted.  We can see this by comparing the following sentences:

Sentence 1: He thought dinner to be delicious yesterday. 

Sentence 2:   He thinks dinner to be delicious today. 

Sentence 3: He will think dinner to be delicious tomorrow.

When this breaks down, it becomes a little clearer.  If it is in dispute whether the past dinner was enjoyed, we make it present/relive it to ourselves to see if we liked it.  If it is in dispute whether a meal is currently enjoyable, we resolve the dispute by appealing to it right now.  We take a bite.  Similarly, if we doubt we will enjoy the meal tomorrow, we wait until tomorrow becomes the present and we take a bite.  In this regard we never leave the present.  Infinitives (e.g., to be) themselves do not possess traditional tense/time that other verbs convey; they are timeless in form.   Every past is a past present and every future a future present, just as it is present right now, and so as Husserl also notes we never leave the present.

In the 1926 lecture course on ancient philosophy Heidegger notes Socrates is asking for the essence, concept. τί ἐστιν; This or that being, “What is it?” Plato by contrast asks what is a being at all?  Asking for the essence of beings as beings, asking for Being.  We ask after the εἶδος, “outward look,” what something in itself shows itself “as.”

Everywhere (81) expressed by beings are “Ideas”; i.e., insofar as we experience beings as beings at all, and are not blindly delivered over to them, there is already an understanding of Being.  For example, in the Gorgias it is said with the beautiful thing beauty is present: πολλὰ καλά [“many beautiful things”], πολλὰ ἕκαστα [“many individuals”]. αὐτὸ καλόν, “the beautiful itself as such”; κατ᾿ ἰδέαν μίαν [“according to one Idea”]; ὃ ἔστιν—“what it is.” ἕκαστον—“the present individual,” the This. The house offers the look of houseness, but only an incomplete, limited aspect.

Like the prisoner in Plato’s cave we start in a position of error mistaking shadows for beings, and so the boy cannot “see” he is in a toxic relationship because he is too close to it, just like the person who can’t see the violence being done to LGBTQ+ rights by the traditional definition of marriage.  That is to say (85), in order to survey and understand all beings and their respective ways to be, what is required is the highest understanding of Being, the knowledge of what Being properly means. At issue is not a mere influx of new cognitions, but an overturning of the entire current basic position of existence itself with respect to what it takes at any level as a genuine being.  “Every human soul has, by nature, already seen beings (Phaedrus 249 E4f).” Human awareness is already, in advance, such that it understands Being. Platonically: the most proper being is revealed to it: the ἀγαθόν, the idea of the good.

With the ideas Plato is reimagining and rethinking Parmenides.  Ideas: the One, the constant, versus the many and the changeable (88). But now there are many Ideas. τί—ἕκαστον [“this one—each”]. With Parmenides Being is opposed to difference, otherness, change, reversal, motion. Unity itself is something other than multiplicity; unity is other than otherness. For Plato there is unity and connection of the Ideas themselves, συμπλοκὴ τῶν εἰδῶν.  The Idea of the good is that on the basis of which anything becomes understandable, that toward which the various comportments are striving.  The [eventual] detachment of the problem of Being from the Idea of the good is a fact. Yet in regard to it there remains a double problem: 1. Why in general was it possible to understand Being in terms of the ἀγαθόν, and 2. Why, even later, in Aristotle and beyond, is the ἀγαθόν understood as a basic determination of Being, omne ens est bonum [“every being is good”].

Knowledge comports itself to beings in the mode of perception (95). φαίνεται (151E2), “something shows itself”; what shows itself is a being. Apprehension of a being: to let it show itself in the mode of perception.  E.g., houseness appears incarnate in the mansion.  But the same thing shows itself differently to different individuals. Niagara Falls may appear “as” noise pollution to the local resident.  Contra Parmenides, the principle still remains nothing can in itself be one. κίνησις has the priority; τὸ μὲν εἴναι δοκοῦν {…} κίνησις παρέχει (153A6f.), “motion presents the very look of the Being of beings:” the “appearing” of houseness incarnate in the mansion.  In the first place, before all else, I understand beings already “as” beings (cf. 185C5): each being is, in relation to each, “other”; on the other hand, each is “self-same.” Other and Self-Same belong to the ontological character of any being as a being.

Logos means to interpret something by showing it “as” something (105). To draw out of beings something pre-given as such and such, as that which I determine it to be, but also to apprehend it on the basis of what is known and familiar.  On the other hand, Antisthenes wrongly thought there is only the ἕν, only sameness and constancy. λόγος, λέγειν ταὐτόν [“to say the same”], A is A, A is in no way B. This is wrong.  There is the pre-given, the encountered, as something, the determinant: different origin, the as-structure itself.  Everything ὂν διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τῆς ἰδέας τῆς θατέρου [“participates in the Idea of the other”] (255E5f.). ἕτερον [“other”] is not ἐναντίον [“opposite”], but being-other (258B2f.), and is so on the basis of the κοινωνία [“commonality”] (cf. 256B).  Then what does Being mean? Possible togetherness: togetherness—co-presencing. The origin of this “co-”? Because “one thing” can be articulated only in something of a different kind, but, at the same time, only as access. In this something of a different kind, the other is precisely there as “co-.”  For example, with the piece of chalk materiality is always co-present. Heraclitus thus noted that there is a relational rule belonging to beings.

But what about distorted perception (107)? It may happen that I know Socrates and yet at times take someone (who is not Socrates) approaching me out of the distance for Socrates: ᾠήθην εἶναι Σωκράτη ὃν οἶδα [“suppose to be Socrates, whom I know”] (191B4f.). Here the phenomenon is explicitly described, the phenomenon of mis-seeing. This mis-seeing where the process breaks down shows the normal stance of humans toward the world is “seeing or taking as.” I falsely take someone for [as] another. At issue is basically the interpretation of this phenomenon. It is not simply identification, but something as something; not something unknown as known, but the perceived “as” presumed to be such and such.  In this way, the basic disposition of the person toward the world is “taking-as/for.”  I know something perceived, I know something represented, knowing in λόγος. Knowledge is not at all univocal; a being and its Being are different. To attribute, to the given, something that is not given (perceived) but is, as such, known: a stranger as Socrates. Or, to take someone (Socrates) whom I do not know as such, but perceive as approaching me, for Theodorus. The soul itself makes manifest beings in their disclosedness, thus beings as actually being, as being such and such, beings “as.”

We can now understand the idea of the good in Plato (116). Being, i.e., the Being of beings [das Seiende-Sein], is that which is understood purely and simply for the sake of itself and is the only thing that can be understood in such a way . For the sake of itself: the end of all understanding. If I say “for the sake of itself,” that is still an assertion about it: end, πέρας, ἀγαθόν (good).  Being through the ἰδέα, “something seen”; Being through the ἀγαθόν, the “for the sake of which,” the “end.” The Idea of the good is Being in the proper sense and is a being in the proper sense.  For example, (i) Justice is seen incarnate (now that is Justice personified/embodied!) in realizing our error and revising the traditional definition of marriage because it was causing violence to LGBTQ+ rights, (ii) in that our relationship to ideas such as justice is to always strive to more fully uncover (a-letheia) what Justice is and always was. We have as a guiding idea the traditional definition of marriage when all of the sudden LGBTQ+ rights is encountered and we are frozen in place (aporia) at which we experience wonder (thaumazein) at this anomaly our guiding perspective can’t assimilate (idea of the good, beyond being epeikene tes ousias), and so we engage in genuine philosophy deconstructing and reconstructing our understanding of marriage in a more inclusive way,

Being here (118) means togetherness, co-presence, one–other, unity–otherness–multiplicity–sameness. Being and relation (Heraclitus).  Parmenides identified Being, but all beings are, so to speak, denied. Plato looked at the Being of beings, λόγος, δύναμις κοινωνίας, co-presence. Being is not something simple as Parmenides thought, but rather becomes accessible primarily in logos: “Something as something else.”

Next time I will look at Aristotle. After that I’ll move on to Hölderlin.