Ralkowski - Heideggers Platonism

Heideggers Platonism

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the field of philosophical research.

Adornos Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan

Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller

Being and Number in Heideggers Thought, Michael Roubach

The Crisis in Continental Philosophy, Robert Piercey

Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan

Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes

Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon OSullivan and Stephen Zepke

Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham

Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston

The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri

Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison Weiner

Foucaults Heidegger, Timothy Rayner

Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter Lammi

Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy

Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler

Heidegger and Happiness, Matthew King

Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard

Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis

Heidegger on Language and Death, Joachim L. Oberst

Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin

Heidegger, Work, and Being, Todd S. Mei

Heideggers Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell

Heideggers Early Philosophy, James Luchte

Heideggers Platonism, Mark A. Ralkowski

The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas

Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer

Nietzsches Ethical Theory, Craig Dove

Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte

The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Dttmann

Whos Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert

iek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman

Mark A. Ralkowski

Continuum International Publishing Group

www.continuumbooks.com

Mark A. Ralkowski 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-0064-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ralkowski, Mark.
Heideggers platonism / Mark A. Ralkowski.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Plato. 2. Platonists. 3. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. I. Title.

B395.R325 2009
193dc22

2009008247

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group

For Ratna and Iris

The beginning of Western philosophy was without a system, but yet, or rather especially for that reason, this philosophizing was thoroughly systematic, that is, directed and supported by a quite definite inner jointure and order of questioning... Thus whoever speaks of Platos system... is falsifying history and blocking the way to the inner movement of this philosophizing and the understanding of its claim to truth.

Heidegger, Schellings Treatise

Calling Heidegger a Platonist is a bit like calling Plato an empiricist. Its the sort of claim that earns you a failing grade in an introduction to philosophy course. If you know anything about Heideggers philosophy, then, you might be wondering, Whats the deal with the title of this book? Good question. The argument in the following eight chapters is my full answer, but let me say a few things straight away to clear up any immediate confusion.

First, the meaning of Platonism is not as obvious as many of us suspect. We tend to define Platonism in terms of the theory of Forms and the immortality of the soul. Many of us take it for granted that Plato was committed to these and other doctrines, at least for a good part of his life and career, and that these doctrines constitute his philosophyto know them is to possess Platonic philosophical knowledge. However, as I show in the first four chapters of this book, it is time to reconsider the nature of Platos philosophy. If we reconstruct the meaning of Platonism, using Heidegger as our unlikely guide, the apparent oxymoron in Heideggers Platonism disappears. In fact, I make the case that Heideggers interpretation of Plato in his lecture course The Essence of Truth is both an interesting solution to the problem of interpreting Platos philosophy, and, for Heidegger, the discovery of important concepts in his own later thought. Not only should we refuse to take Heidegger at his word when he vilifies Plato in his account of the history of Western thought, therefore; we also need to look again at the unparalleled influence that Plato exerted on Heideggers thinking during this critical time in his life.

Second, if we set aside the differences between Platos metaphysics, traditionally understood, and Heideggers post-metaphysical philosophy of Being, there is actually a sense in which it is not uncommon to call Heidegger a Platonist. Some scholars have looked at Heideggers political aspirations in 1933 and suggested that he was working and writing under the influence of the political utopianism he discovered in Platos Republic. One cannot legislate authenticity, and one cannot command Being to send us a new epoch; Heidegger, therefore, must have been motivated by something foreign, something contrary to his most basic philosophical commitments, something utopian and forgetful of mans finitudesomething like Platos political ideology in the Republic. This is a common line of reasoning in the literature on Heideggers politics, but I argue that it is fundamentally mistaken, because it makes unwarranted assumptions about Platos politics. Plato was a dark and cynical political pessimist, who thought it challenging enough to lead a single person out of the cave, not a utopian social engineer like Heidegger, who tried to lead a collective breakout of the cave by means of nationwide, nihilism-ending educational reform.

In other words, this book is an attempt to reverse several well-entrenched assumptions. Most people familiar with the Heidegger-Plato relationship would say that Heideggers politics, but not his philosophy of Being, was Platonic. My argument is that just the opposite is true.

Like many people in Academia, I was brought into my field, and then into my profession, by a person who turned my life upside-down. Bill Prior introduced me to Plato and effectively converted me to philosophy when I was a first-year undergraduate. After reading about the sea of beauty in the Symposium, and then hiking the trails of Yosemite and the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa, I was hooked. I had fallen in love with the vision of life that Plato describes in his dialogues. I would like to thank Bill Prior for helping me develop a sense of Platos philosophy, for showing me the significance of the relationship between Plato and Alcibiades, and for being an important mentor and friend while I lived abroad in Africa and developed my research in graduate school. If it werent for him, I would have produced very different work; sometimes I think I might have