Heidegger on Plato's Cave Alethology

Abstract

<p>In Plato's Doctrine of the Truth (PLW), Martin Heidegger argues that Plato, in the Republic, yokes truth to a preconceived notion of logical and moral rightness. This yoke is a result, Heidegger argues, of Plato's basic orientation towards beings. For Plato the essential characteristic of beings, so runs the argument in PLW, lies in the [symbol removed], a being's whatness, its essential nature. Heidegger maintains that Plato is wrong in so characterizing beings, since unhiddeness [symbol removed] and not whatness is the primordial characteristic (Grundzug) of beings. Heidegger further argues that Plato holds a Correspondence Theory of Truth, that for Plato [symbol removed] is really [symbol removed] (rightness), and that [symbol removed] is the correspondence [symbol removed] of the correct [symbol removed] to the right [symbol removed].</p> <p>In PLW we find Heidegger in the midst of a contemporary philosophical debate, more or less on the side of those who expound, in multifarious ways, the existentialist's l'existence précède l'essence, while opposing the so-called Platonic-Scholastic Essentia antecedit Existentiam. My purpose in this thesis is twofold: first I show how Heidegger's thesis in PLW is based on his alethology in Being and Time (SZ), and secondly I show how Heidegger, by neglecting the role that to agathon plays as the originating locus [symbol removed] of aletheia, misconstrues the notion of truth put forth in the Republic.</p>