Plato

John Cappucci

pp. 301-308

in: William Richardson, Heidegger, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1963

Abstract

For Heidegger, the de-volution of Western thought began with Plato, for it was with him that υοείυ ceased to have the sense of containing the advance of over-powering φύσις and began to assume the special relation to ίδέα, which evolved into what the tradition would call "reason" (Vernunft). We discern the transition best, however, by examining not Plato's use of υοείυ but rather the implications of ίδέα, for it was thus that he understood the Being which his predecessors had understood as φύσις. It was Plato's conception of Being rather than of thought which was decisive in the birth of metaphysics. If we recall that φύσις (emergent-abiding-Power) was for the pre-Socratics the process of truth, then the transformation of φύσις into ίδέα may be discerned by examining what Plato understood by truth. This the author disengages by an essay upon the famous metaphor of the cave (Politeia VII, 514 a, 2 to 517 a, 7).