Francisco Gonzalez

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.”

Introduction: What is to be gained from a confrontation between Plato and Heidegger? -- Heidegger's critical reading of Plato in the 1920s -- Dialectic, ethics, and dialogue -- Heidegger's critique of dialectic in the 1920s --Ethics and ontology -- Ethics in Plato's sophist -- Heidegger and dialogue -- Logos and being -- The tensions in Heidegger's critique -- The guiding perspective of Plato as undermining the ontic/ontological distinction -- Heidegger on Plato's forms -- Conclusion: The relation between being and Heidegger on Plato's truth and untruth in the 1930s and 1940s -- 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 -- The courses on the essence of truth from WS 1931/32 and WS 1933/34 -- Plato's truth in the beitråge of 1936-38 -- Plato's doctrine of truth in 1940 -- The end of truth : the 1964 retraction -- Conclusion: The end of truth? -- The dialogue that could have been : Hidegger on the Theaetetus -- The Theaetetus interpretation in Die Grundbegriffe der antiken philosophie (SS 1926) -- The interpretation of the Theaetetus in the Vom Wesen der wahrheit course of 1931-32 and 1933-34 -- Conclusion: Heidegger's orthodoxy -- The 1942 interpretation of Plato in the myth of the (Republic book 10) -- The Roman versus the Greek conception of truth saying in the myth of ER -- Purging the myth of ER : the ontologizing of ethics and politics -- The Greek experience of the open : a saying that points and hints versus the "Leap" -- Conclusion: Leaping beyond Plato -- Opportunities for a dialogue with Plato in the late Heidegger -- Calculative thinking, meditative thinking, and the practice of dialogue -- Heidegger's critique of logos in the 1930s -- Dialogue as bringing to speech the unsaid -- Plato's dialectic or Hegel's? -- A saying beyond assertion -- Plato's dialogues and Heidegger's leap -- Heidegger and the dialogue form -- Redefining hermeneutics -- Back to the beginning with dialectic and dialogue -- Conclusion: Dialectic versus sophia again -- 7 dialectic and phenomenology in "Zeit und Sein" : a pivotal chapter in Heidegger's confrontation with Plato -- From dialectic and hermeneutics to phenomenology -- The Auseinandersetzung with Plato.

Aristotle notoriously begins his examination of being in the sense ofdunamisandenergeiainMetaphysicsTheta with what he describes as the sense that is ‘most dominant’ but not useful for his present aim. He proceeds to define the not-useful sense ofdunamisas “the principle of change in something else or in itself qua other”, along with other senses derived from this primary sense. But what then is the useful sense? All that Aristotle tells us at the outset is that it is a sense that extends “beyond things spoken of only in relation to motion” and nowhere in Book Theta does he explicitly identify the useful sense as such. This has allowed for very different interpretations of the useful sense in the literature, the primary ones being that it is (1) ‘possibility’, (2) the potential to receive a form, (3) being-potentially-x understood modally as encompassing all specific senses ofdunamis, and (4) capacity for substantial change. The present paper argues that there are significant problems with all of these suggestions and defends an identification of the useful sense ofdunamiswith the sense that Aristotle explicitly opposes to the not-useful sense at the start of Theta 8:phusis(‘nature’). This goes hand-in-hand with an identification of the useful sense ofenergeiawith ‘activity’ as distinguished from motion/change at the end of Theta 6. What makes these senses ofdunamisandenergeiathe useful ones for Aristotle’s present aim is that they are required to explain fully the priority ofenergeiatodunamisin substance defended in Theta 8, they support the identification in Theta 9 ofenergeiawith the good, and they explain the unity of the only substances that Aristotle recognizes as being genuinely substances: natural living substances.

In this international and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays, distinguished contributors examine a crucial premise of traditional readings of Plato's dialogues: that Plato's own doctrines and arguments can be read off the statements made in the dialogues by Socrates and other leading characters. The authors argue in general and with reference to specific dialogues, that no character should be taken to be Plato's mouthpiece. This is essential reading for students and scholars of Plato

El presente trabajo tiene como intención aproximarnos a la historia de la Venerable Orden Tercera Servita de Sevilla. Esta institución religiosa de laicos tuvo un especial protagonismo en la ciudad durante los siglos XVIII, XIX y primeros años del siglo XX. El artículo comienza con un breve recorrido por los aspectos más conocidos de la Familia de Siervos de María. A continuación, se exponen los orígenes de la misma centrados en la primitiva Hermandad de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de San Marcos. Posteriormente, y como núcleo central del estudio, desarrollamos unas notas sobre su evolución histórica como Orden tercera así como un análisis de su organización interna y funcionamiento.

In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heidegger's interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it.

During the 1920s Heidegger gave no less than twelve seminars and lecture courses devoted either exclusively or in large part to the reading of Aristotle's texts. Seven of these, especially the smaller seminars for advanced students, have not been published and apparently will never be included in the Gesamtausgabe. My focus here is on the very first of these. Billed as a reading of Aristotle's De Anima, much of it was devoted to Aristotle's Metaphysics. This decision not to separate Aristotle's “psychology” from his “ontology” is a key move of the seminar that anticipates the project of Being and Time. This and many other ways in which Heidegger's early reading of De Anima anticipates the key moves of the later book constitute one of the reasons for its importance. Another is that the seminar allows us to see what gets suppressed in Heidegger's reading of Aristotle, most significantly, the phenomenon of life itself in favor of an eventual focus on the being of human life or Dasein. This early seminar thus enables us not only to better understand Heidegger's project, but also to raise some fundamental questions concerning it.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone; and: Oralità e scrittura in PlatoneFrancisco J. GonzalezFranco Trabattoni. Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone. Firenze: La Nouva Italia Editrice, 1994. Pp. 396. Paper, 24000 Lire.Franco Trabattoni. Oralità e scrittura in Platone. Milano: Università Degli Studi di Milano, 1999. Pp. 125. Paper, 16000 Lire.Trabattoni's masterful 1994 book, which the shorter 1999 book supplements in important ways, offers nothing less than a refreshingly new and provocative interpretation of Plato's philosophy as a whole that makes it neither "conclusive-dogmatic" nor "problematic-sceptical" (7, 41-47, 161, 361-3). For Plato, on Trabattoni's account, while objective truth exists, any logos is incapable of fully expressing it and therefore refutable (158). On the other hand, dialectic can arrive at a logos sufficient (hikanos) for persuading a particular interlocutor in the context of a particular discussion (119-120), and thus for ethical and political action (330). Truth is therefore to be found onlyin dialogue (75-6, 338): that is, only where one person persuades another (249, 252, 328-9; 1999, 75). Persuasion and homologia are thus a necessary, though not sufficient condition of truth: only when capable of responding repeatedly to a wide variety of questions and objections does a persuasion deserve to be called "true" (158-9, 252, 329). This view rejects both the sophistical identification of truth with persuasion as such and the dogmatic identification of truth with universal doctrines.Because persuasion and homologia are thus essential to it, philosophy cannot be an objective science but must always be at its core a form of rhetoric (239, and thus protreptic and ad hominem, 165-6, 355, 359), which is what Trabattoni takes the Phaedrus to show (48-99). In 1999 Trabattoni brilliantly demonstrated the unity of the Phaedrus by showing how both the discussion of eros and the critique of writing are closely linked to this conception of philosophy as rhetoric (54-93). Philosophy is not, however, the kind of rhetoric that, focused on words rather than truth, fails to persuade in a way that is stable and enduring (87; 1999, 75-6).In the course of defending his "dialectical-dialogical" interpretation, Trabattoni provides an extraordinarily thorough and insightful critique of another interpretation that claims to offer a new Plato and that has become very influential in Trabattoni's native Italy: the "esotericist" interpretation, according to which fundamental questions left open by the dialogues are answered by a doctrine of principles which Plato communicated only orally. Trabattoni's 1999 book provides a very helpful account of the history and motives of the debate surrounding Plato's unwritten teachings, with regard to both their content and their significance (1-42). I see the following points of Trabattoni's critique as seriously challenging and, if unanswered, even discrediting the esotericist position: [End Page 269]1) While the esotericists interpret the critique of writing in the Phaedrus as arguing for the superiority of oral discourse as such, Trabattoni interprets it as arguing instead for the superiority of the dialogical situation in which interlocutors can be chosen and their questions and objections addressed (19-26; 1999, 83). Fixed oral doctrines would be no more dialogical than written doctrines and thus no more capable of engendering knowledge "in the soul" (63), much less of constituting this knowledge (25). What would be superior to Plato's writings, according to the Phaedrus, is a dialogue with Plato, not what Plato said orally, lifted out of its dialogical context and reported in writing by Aristotle (115; 1999, 84-5, 124). Trabattoni interprets the Seventh Letter, in his complementary accounts of 1994 and 1999, as similarly contradicting, rather than confirming, the esotericist interpretation (210-11; 1999, 116-9).2) Thomas Szlezàk has interpreted those passages where the main interlocutor deliberately leaves something out of the discussion ("Aussparungstellen") as referring to unwritten doctrines. Trabattoni argues that they are instead meant to indicate to the unknown reader, whose possible objections and questions cannot be anticipated, the possibility of proceeding further in the discussion (112-3, 182; 1999, 124). "[W]hen the dialogues are silent, they are silent always where there no...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone; and: Oralità e scrittura in PlatoneFrancisco J. GonzalezFranco Trabattoni. Scrivere nell'anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone. Firenze: La Nouva Italia Editrice, 1994. Pp. 396. Paper, 24000 Lire.Franco Trabattoni. Oralità e scrittura in Platone. Milano: Università Degli Studi di Milano, 1999. Pp. 125. Paper, 16000 Lire.Trabattoni's masterful 1994 book, which the shorter 1999 book supplements in important ways, offers nothing less than a refreshingly new and provocative interpretation of Plato's philosophy as a whole that makes it neither "conclusive-dogmatic" nor "problematic-sceptical" (7, 41-47, 161, 361-3). For Plato, on Trabattoni's account, while objective truth exists, any logos is incapable of fully expressing it and therefore refutable (158). On the other hand, dialectic can arrive at a logos sufficient (hikanos) for persuading a particular interlocutor in the context of a particular discussion (119-120), and thus for ethical and political action (330). Truth is therefore to be found onlyin dialogue (75-6, 338): that is, only where one person persuades another (249, 252, 328-9; 1999, 75). Persuasion and homologia are thus a necessary, though not sufficient condition of truth: only when capable of responding repeatedly to a wide variety of questions and objections does a persuasion deserve to be called "true" (158-9, 252, 329). This view rejects both the sophistical identification of truth with persuasion as such and the dogmatic identification of truth with universal doctrines.Because persuasion and homologia are thus essential to it, philosophy cannot be an objective science but must always be at its core a form of rhetoric (239, and thus protreptic and ad hominem, 165-6, 355, 359), which is what Trabattoni takes the Phaedrus to show (48-99). In 1999 Trabattoni brilliantly demonstrated the unity of the Phaedrus by showing how both the discussion of eros and the critique of writing are closely linked to this conception of philosophy as rhetoric (54-93). Philosophy is not, however, the kind of rhetoric that, focused on words rather than truth, fails to persuade in a way that is stable and enduring (87; 1999, 75-6).In the course of defending his "dialectical-dialogical" interpretation, Trabattoni provides an extraordinarily thorough and insightful critique of another interpretation that claims to offer a new Plato and that has become very influential in Trabattoni's native Italy: the "esotericist" interpretation, according to which fundamental questions left open by the dialogues are answered by a doctrine of principles which Plato communicated only orally. Trabattoni's 1999 book provides a very helpful account of the history and motives of the debate surrounding Plato's unwritten teachings, with regard to both their content and their significance (1-42). I see the following points of Trabattoni's critique as seriously challenging and, if unanswered, even discrediting the esotericist position: [End Page 269]1) While the esotericists interpret the critique of writing in the Phaedrus as arguing for the superiority of oral discourse as such, Trabattoni interprets it as arguing instead for the superiority of the dialogical situation in which interlocutors can be chosen and their questions and objections addressed (19-26; 1999, 83). Fixed oral doctrines would be no more dialogical than written doctrines and thus no more capable of engendering knowledge "in the soul" (63), much less of constituting this knowledge (25). What would be superior to Plato's writings, according to the Phaedrus, is a dialogue with Plato, not what Plato said orally, lifted out of its dialogical context and reported in writing by Aristotle (115; 1999, 84-5, 124). Trabattoni interprets the Seventh Letter, in his complementary accounts of 1994 and 1999, as similarly contradicting, rather than confirming, the esotericist interpretation (210-11; 1999, 116-9).2) Thomas Szlezàk has interpreted those passages where the main interlocutor deliberately leaves something out of the discussion ("Aussparungstellen") as referring to unwritten doctrines. Trabattoni argues that they are instead meant to indicate to the unknown reader, whose possible objections and questions cannot be anticipated, the possibility of proceeding further in the discussion (112-3, 182; 1999, 124). "[W]hen the dialogues are silent, they are silent always where there no...

45~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 text" , and an element of "oralism" remains in all of Plato's written works. Nonetheless, Robb's "speculations" on the Platonic dialogues are certainly worth reading. Robb is quite aware that his book stirs up controversial issues, and some of these are briefly stated and discussed in his concluding chapter, "Homer, the Alphabet, and the Progress of Greek Literacy and Paideia." And yet in the very notions of "literacy" and "progress," some weaknesses in Robb's work can be found. For example, as W. V. Harris observed in his Ancient Literacy , 3ft., there is no single definition of literacy or orality, and although Robb cites Harris's book , he takes no special account of it in attempting to define or characterize what he means by "orality" and "literacy." And in his zeal to provide a survey of the influence of alphabetic literacy on Plato, Robb perhaps oversimplifies the tension that existed between the spoken and written work in the ancient world. Much of Greek "literature" remains the product of literate, slave- owning, and well-educated authors, written for their peers. Robb suggests as much in his discussion of mousild and sunousia , and one might desire a "sociology" of ancient Athens, for example, in which economic status and..