On the way to Sophia: Heidegger on plato's dialectic, ethics, and Sophist

Research in Phenomenology

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 16-60

  Gonzalez, Francisco J ^a  

^a SKIDMORE COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949923964     PISSN: 00855553     EISSN: 15691640     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156916497X00020     Document Type: Article

References (9)

1. Platon: Sophistes, vol. 19 of Gesamtausgabe, ed. Ingeborg Schüßler (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992); hereafter GA 19
2. See also GA 19: 191 and Die Grundbegriffe der Antiken Philosophie, vol. 22 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1993), 207; hereafter GA 22
3. "[D]ie ιcombining comma aboveδέα αcombining comma aboveγαθουcombining inverted breve nichts anderes ist als der δημιου ργὸς, der Hersteller schlechthin" (Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, vol. 24 of Gesamtausgabe [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989], 405)
4. The good described by the Sun Analogy as causing knowledge and Being is thus nothing but the "idea of what is best" existing in the minds of the rulers (67). Yet this is clearly a trivialization of the analogy and receives no support from the text. A more recent attempt to identify the form of the good with happiness can be found in Peter Stemmer, Platons Dialektik: Die Früheren und Mittleren Dialoge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992); see especially 158-67, 183-84
5. Heidegger's interpretation of the Cave Analogy has been criticized for ignoring its ethical and political dimensions: see William A. Galston, "Heidegger's Plato: A Critique of Plato's Doctrine of Truth," The Philosophical Forum 13, no. 4 (summer 1982): 371-84, and Peperzak, 258-85. Both criticize Heidegger for interpreting the philosopher's descent back into the cave, and the danger he encounters there, as representing simply the everyday power of concealment (Galston, 375-76; Peperzak, 270)
6. "Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation)," in Dilthey-Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften 6 (1989): 235-74
7. See already in GA 34: 83 Heidegger's emphatic denial that philosophy is a Wissenschaft. Only a few years earlier in the Grundbegriffe course he was arguing that philosophy is a Wissenschaft, though a critical, radical Wissenschaft (see GA 22: 1-11)
8. Drew A. Hyland, on the other hand, criticizes this view throughout his book, Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues (Albany: State University of New York Press', 1995)
9. While in general the word εcombining comma abovéρι ς need not refer specifically to "eristic," Plato does use it in this way, thus opposing it to genuine dialectic: (Republic V 454a8). Thus there is justification for Jacob Klein's claim that "Theodorus does not see the difference between a disputatious man, who disputes for the sake of disputing, and a man who cross-examines in order to refute what is untrue" (Plato's Trilogy: "Theaetetus," the "Sophist" and the "Statesman" [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977], 7). Heidegger's interpretation of the phrase θcombining comma aboveεός τις εcombining comma aboveλεγκτίκος as an allusion to "die Streitsüchtigkeit des Schüler des Parmenides" (GA 19: 241) shows that he too makes no distinction between elenchos and eristic