The Reliability of Heidegger’s Reading of Plato’s Gigantomachia :: Philosophy Philosophical Papers

The Reliability of Heideggers Reading of Platos GigantomachiaABSTRACT At issue is the reliability of Heideggers contention that Grecian thinking, especially Platos, was constricted by an unthought pre-ontology. The center of being purportedly guiding and controlling Greek ontology is being = presence. This made the question of the meaning of ousia itself inaccessible to the Greeks. Heideggers Platos Sophist is his most extensive intervention of a single dialogue. To test his own reliability, he proposes to demonstrate, by the success of an actual interpretation of the Gigantomachia, that this sense of Being as presence in fact control Platos ontological questioning . . .. I will show Heideggers dodging in connecting what he takes to be Platos naive pre-ontology Being = movement to the ontology of the Gigantomachia Being = Power. I will show that Heidegger blatantly misreads the textbook to stigma the connection he completely misses the distinction between bodies and bodi less things. The text makes sense, I will show, if and only if its expressed ontology Being = Power is its silent pre-ontology. Plato wrote his text not to discuss, but to exemplify, Heideggers ontology-preontology distinction. He wrote the Gigantomachia for Heidegger, but Heidegger lose it.Heidegger proposed to demonstrate, by the success of an actual interpretation of Platos gigantomachia that this sense of Being as presence in fact guided the ontological questioning of the Greeks.... I will show Heidegger failed this self-imposed test. Then with Heideggers interpretation as a starting point, I will show the basic structure of the text. The organizers of this group discussion have arbitrarily established a fifteen minute want border artificially confining my thought Anything that cannot be thought at bottom that marge cannot be thought or said at this conference. In Platos gigantomachia peri tes ousias (Soph. 246-48), the Stranger establishes a border that constricts, not thought, but beings inwardly a sharply defined boundary For I am establishing that on that point is a border that throttle the beings in such a elbow room that they are nothing else but power (247de). (My translation). Heidegger, however, claims Platos Stranger establishes this boundary confining beings because a conceptual boundary, analogous to the fifteen minute long boundary established for this conference, constricts Platos own thinking Plato cannot think distant the boundary, the unthought implicit pre-ontology, that controlled all Greek thought Platos gigantomachia peri tes ousias, his ontology, his explicit theoretical inquiry explicitly devoted to the meaning of entities, occurs within the confines of this constricting pre-ontology.