Plato and Heidegger

A Question of Dialogue

Francisco J. Gonzalez

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780271050294
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

In a critique of Heidegger that respects his path of thinking, Francisco Gonzalez looks at the ways in which Heidegger engaged with Plato's thought over the course of his career and concludes that, owing to intrinsic requirements of Heidegger's own philosophy, he missed an opportunity to conduct a real dialogue with Plato that would have been philosophically fruitful for us all.

Examining in detail early texts of Heidegger's reading of Plato that have only recently come to light, Gonzalez, in parts 1 and 2, shows there to be certain affinities between Heidegger's and Plato's thought that were obscured in his 1942 essay "Plato's Doctrine of Truth, " on which scholars have exclusively relied in interpreting what Heidegger had to say about Plato. This more nuanced reading, in turn, helps Gonzalez provide in part 3 an account of Heidegger's later writings that highlights the ways in which Heidegger, in repudiating the kind of metaphysics he associated with Plato, took a direction away from dialectic and dialogue that left him unable to pursue those affinities that could have enriched Heidegger's own philosophy as well as Plato's. "A genuine dialogue with Plato, " Gonzalez argues, "would have forced [Heidegger] to go in certain directions where he did not want to go and could not go without his own thinking undergoing a radical transformation."

Table of contents

• COVER front
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: What is to be gained from a confrontation between Plato and Heidegger?
• Part 1
• Chapter 1: Dialectic, ethics, and dialogue
• Chapter 2: Logos and being
• Part 2
• Chapter 3: From the 1931– 32 and 1933 – 34 courses on the essence of truth to “plato’s doctrine of truth”: heidegger’s transformation of plato into platonism through the interpretation of the sun and cave analogies of the republic
• Chapter 4: The dialogue that could have been: heidegger on the theaetetus
• Chapter 5: The 1942 interpretation of ´ho¯ h in the myth of er (republic book 10)
• Part 3
• Chapter 6: Calculative thinking, meditative thinking,and the practice of dialogue
• Chapter 7: Dialectic and phenomenology in “zeit und sein”: a pivotal chapter in heidegger’s confrontation with plato
• Works Cited
• Index