In such inversion of Platonism, invoked and guided by the will to
overcome
nihilism, the conviction shared with Platonism and held to be evident is that truth, i.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
What is it here that satisfies the essence of truth; in what is that essence itself determined?
The true is true being, what is in truth actual.
What does "in truth" mean here?
Answer: what is in truth known.
For our knowing is what can be true or false right from the start.
Truth is truth· of knowledge.
Knowledge is so intrinsically the residence of truth that a knowing which is untrue cannot be considered knowledge.
But knowl- edge is a way of access to beings; the true is what is truly known, the actual.
The true is established as something true in, by, and for knowl- edge alone.
Truth is proper to the realm of knowledge.
Here decisions
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are made about the true and the untrue. And depending on the way the essence of knowledge is demarcated, the essential concept of truth is defined.
Our knowing as such is always an approximation to what is to be known, a measuring of itself upon something. As a consequence of the character of measurement, knowing implies a relation to some sort of standard. The standard, and our relation to it, can be interpreted in various ways. In order to clarify the interpretive possibilities with re- gard to the essence of knowing, we will describe the principal trait of two basically different types. By way of exception, and for the sake of brevity, we will take up two terms which are not to suggest any more than what we will make of them here: the conceptions of knowledge in "Platonism" and "Positivism. "
20. Truth in Platonism and Positivism. Nietzsche's Attempt to Overturn Platonism on the Basis of the Fundamental Experience of Nihilism
We say "Platonism," and not Plato, because here we are dealing with the conception of knowledge that corresponds to that term, not by way of an original and detailed examination of Plato's works, but only by setting in rough relief one particular aspect of his work. Knowing is approximation to what is to be known. What is to be known? The being itself. Of what does it consist? Where is its Being determined? On the basis of the Ideas and as the ideai. They "are" what is apprehended when we look at things to see how they look, to see what they give themselves out to be, to see their what-being (to ti estin). What makes a table a table, table-being, can be seen; to be sure, not with the sensory eye of the body, but with the eye of the soul. Such sight is apprehension of what a matter is, its Idea. What is so seen is something nonsensuous. But because it is that in the light of which we first come to know what is sensuous-that thing there, as a table-the nonsensuous at the same time stands above the sensuous. It is the supersensuous and the proper what-being and Being of the being. Therefore, knowledge must mea- sure itself against the supersensuous, the Idea; it must somehow bring forward what is not sensuously visible for a face-to-face encounter: it must put forward or present. * Knowledge is presentative measurement
*"To put forward or present" is an attempt to translate the hyphenated word voT- stellen, which without the hyphen is usually translated as "to represent. "
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of self upon the supersensuous. Pure nonsensuous presentation, which unfolds in a mediating relation that derives from what is represented, is called theoria. Knowledge is in essence theoretical.
The conception of knowledge as "theoretical" is undergirded by a particular interpretation of Being; such a conception has meaning and is correct only on the basis of metaphysics. To preach the "eternally immutable essence of science" is therefore either to employ an empty turn of phrase that does not take seriously what it says, or to mistake the basic facts concerning the origin of the concept of Western science. The "theoretical" is not merely something distinguished and differenti- ated from the "practical," but is itself grounded in a particular basic experience of Being. The same is true also of the "practical," which for its part is juxtaposed to the "theoretical. " Both of these, and the difference between them, are to be grasped solely from the essence of Being which is relevant in each case, which is to say, they are to be grasped metaphysically. Neither does the practical change on the basis of the theoretical, nor does the theoretical change on the basis of the practical: both change always simultaneously on the basis of their fundamental metaphysical position.
The interpretation of knowledge in positivism differs from that in Platonism. To be sure, knowing here too is a measuring. But the standard which representation must respect, right from the start and constantly, differs: it is what lies before us from the outset, what is constantly placed before us, the positum. The latter is what is given in sensation, the sensuous. Here too measurement is an immediate presenting or putting forward ("sensing"), which is defined by a me- diating interrelation of what is given by way of sensation, a judging. The essence of judgment in turn can itself be interpreted in various ways-a matter we will not pursue any further here.
Without deciding prematurely that Nietzsche's conception of knowledge takes one of these two basic directions-Platonism or posi- tivism-or is a hybrid of both, we can say that the word "truth" for him means as much as the true, and the true what is known in truth. Knowing is a theoretical-scientific grasp of the actual in the broadest sense.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 153
That suggests in a general way that Nietzsche's conception of the essence of truth keeps to the realm of the long tradition of Western thought, no matter how much Nietzsche's particular interpretations of that conception deviate from earlier ones. But also in relation to our particular question concerning the relation of art and truth, we have just now taken a decisive step. According to our clarification of the guiding conception of truth, what are here brought into relation are, putting it more strictly, on the one hand, art, and on the other, theoreti- cal-scientific knowledge. Art, grasped in Nietzsche's sense in terms of the artist, is creation; creation is related to beauty. Correspondingly, truth is the object related to knowledge. Thus the relation of art and truth that is here in question, the one which arouses dread, must be conceived as the relation of art and scientific knowledge, and correla- tively the relation of beauty and truth.
But to what extent is the relation for Nietzsche a discordance? To what extent do art and knowledge, beauty and truth at all enter into noteworthy relation? Surely not on the basis of the wholly extrinsic grounds, definitive for the usual philosophies and sciences of culture, that art exists and that science is right there beside it; the fact that both belong to a culture; and the fact that if one wants to erect a system of culture, one must also provide information about the interrelations of these cultural phenomena. Were Nietzsche's point of inquiry merely that of the philosophy of culture, intending to erect a tidy system of cultural phenomena and cultural values, then the relation of art and truth could surely never become for it a discordance, much less one that arouses dread.
In order to see how for Nietzsche art and truth can and must in some way come into noteworthy relation, let us proceed with a renewed clarification of his concept of truth, since we have already treated sufficiently the other member of the relation, art. In order to character-· ize more precisely Nietzsche's concept of truth, we must ask in what way he conceives of knowledge and what standard he applies to it. How does Nietzsche's conception of knowledge stand in relation to the two basic tendencies of epistemological interpretation described above, Platonism and positivism? Nietzsche once says, in a brief observation
154 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
found among the early sketches (1870-71) for his first treatise, "My philosophy an inverted Platonism: the farther removed from true be- ing, the purer, the finer, the better it is. Living in semblance as goal" (IX, 190). That is an astonishing preview in the thinker of his entire later philosophical position. For during the last years of his creative life he labors at nothing else than the overturning of Platonism. Of course, we may not overlook the fact that the "inverted Platonism" of his early period is enormously different from the position finally attained in Twilight of the Idols. Nevertheless, on the basis of Nietzsche's own words we can now define with greater trenchancy his conception of truth, which is to say, his conception of the true.
For Platonism, the Idea, the supersensuous, is the true, true being. In contrast, the sensuous is meon. The latter suggests, not nonbeing pure and simple, ouk on, but me-what may not be addressed as being even though it is not simply nothing. Insofar as, and to the extent that, it may be called being, the sensuous must be measured upon the supersensuous; nonbeing possesses the shadow and the residues of Being which fall from true being.
To overturn Platonism thus means to reverse the standard relation: what languishes below in Platonism, as it were, and would be measured against the supersensuous, must now be put on top; by way of reversal, the supersensuous must now be placed in its service. When the inver- sion is fully executed, the sensuous becomes being proper, i. e. , the true, i. e. , truth. The true is the sensuous. That is what "positivism" teaches. Nevertheless, it would be premature to interpret Nietzsche's concep- tion of knowledge and of the kind of truth pertaining to it as "positivis- tic," although that is what usually happens. It is indisputable that prior to the time of his work on the planned magnum opus, The Will to Power, Nietzsche went through a period of extreme positivism; these were the years 1879-81, the years of his decisive development toward maturity. Such positivism, though of course transformed, became a part of his later fundamental position also. But what matters is precisely the transformation, especially in relation to the overturning of Plato- nism as a whole. In that inversion Nietzsche's philosophical thought proper comes to completion. For Nietzsche the compelling task from
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 155
early on was to think through the philosophy of Plato, indeed from two different sides. His original profession as a classical philologist brought him to Plato, partly through his teaching duties, but above all through a philosophical inclination to Plato. During the Basel years he held lectures on Plato several times: "Introduction to the Study of the Platonic Dialogues" in 1871-72 and 1873-74, and "Plato's Life and Teachings" in 1876 (see XIX, 235 ff. ).
But here again one discerns clearly the philosophical influence of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer himself grounds his entire philosophy, indeed consciously and expressly, on Plato and Kant. Thus in the Preface to his major work, The World as Will and Representation (1818), he writes:
Hence Kant's is the sole philosophy a basic familiarity with which is all but presupposed by what will be presented here. -If, however, the reader has in addition lingered awhile in the school of the divine Plato, he will be all the more receptive and all the better prepared to hear me.
As a third inspiration Schopenhauer then names the Indian Vedas. We know how much Schopenhauer misinterprets and vulgarizes the Kan- tian philosophy. The same happens with regard to Plato's philosophy. In the face of Schopenhauer's coarsening of the Platonic philosophy, Nietzsche, as a classical philologist and a considerable expert in that area, is not so defenseless as he is with respect to Schopenhauer's Kant-interpretation. Even in his early years (through the Basel lectures)
Nietzsche achieves a remarkable autonomy and thereby a higher truth in his Plato interpretation than Schopenhauer does in his. Above all he rejects Schopenhauer's interpretation of the apprehension of the Ideas as simple "intuition. " He emphasizes that apprehension of the Ideas is "dialectical. " Schopenhauer's opinion concerning such apprehen- sion, that it is intuition, stems from a misunderstanding of Schelling's teaching concerning "intellectual intuition" as the basic act of meta- physical knowledge.
However, the interpretation of Plato and of Platonism which tends to follow the direction of philology and the history of philosophy, although it is an aid, is not the decisive path for Nietzsche's philosoph-
156 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
ical advance toward the Platonic doctrine and confrontation with it. It is not the decisive path of his experiencing an insight into the necessity of overturning Platonism. Nietzsche's fundamental experience is his growing insight into the basic development of our history. In his view it is nihilism. Nietzsche expresses incessantly and passionately the fun- damental experience of his existence as a thinker. To the blind, to those who cannot see and above all do not want to see, his words easily sound overwrought, as though he were raving. And yet when we plumb the depths of his insight and consider how very closely the basic historical development of nihilism crowds and oppresses him, then we may be inclined to call his manner of speech almost placid. One of the essential formulations that designate the event of nihilism says, "Cod is dead. " (Cf. now Holzwege, 1950, pp. 193-247. )* The phrase "Cod is dead" is not an atheistic proclamation: it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an event in Occidental history.
Only in the light of that basic experience does Nietzsche's utterance, "My philosophy is inverted Platonism," receive its proper range and intensity. In the same broad scope of significance, therefore, Nietz- sche's interpretation and conception of the essence of truth must be conceived. For that reason we ought to remember what Nietzsche understands by nihilism and in what sense alone that word may be used as a term for the history of philosophy.
By nihilism Nietzsche means the historical development, i. e. , event, that the uppermost values devalue themselves, that all goals are an-
*See the English translation, "The Word of Nietzsche: 'Cod is Dead,'" in Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Heidegger's reference, placed in parentheses, apparently was added in 1961. Note that the "event" of nihilism, cited four times in this and the following paragraphs, occasions one of the earliest "terminologi· cal" uses of the word Ereignis in Heidegger's published writings. (Cf. the use of the word Geschehnis in the Holzwege article, p. 195, and in Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, p. 4. ) The word's appearance in the context of Nietzsche's account of nihilism assumes even more importance when we recall a parenthetical remark in the "Protocol" to the Todt- nauberg Seminar on "Zeit und Sein" (Zur Sache des Denkens [Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1969], p. 46): "The relationships and contexts which constitute the essential structure of Ereignis were worked out between 1936 and 1938," which is to say, precisely at the time of the first two Nietzsche lecture courses.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 157 nihilated, and that all estimates of value collide against one another.
Such collision Nietzsche describes at one point in the following way:
. . . we call good someone who does his heart's bidding, but also the one who only tends to his duty;
we call good the meek and the reconciled, but also the courageous, un- bending, severe;
we call good somone who employs no force against himself, but also the heroes of self-overcoming;
we call good the utterly loyal friend of the true, but also the man of piety, one who transfigures things;
we call good those who are obedient to themselves, but also the pious;
we call good those who are noble and exalted, but also those who do not despise and condescend;
we call good those of joyful spirit, the peaceable, but also those desirous of battle and victory;
we call good those who always want to be first, but also those who do not want to take precedence over anyone in any respect.
(From unpublished material composed during the period of The Gay Science, 1881-82; see XII, 81. )
There is no longer any goal in and through which all the forces of the historical existence of peoples can cohere and in the direction of which they can develop; no goal of such a kind, which means at the same time and above all else no goal of such power that it can by virtue of its power conduct Dasein to its realm in a unified way and bring it to creative evolution. By establishment of the goal Nietzsche under- stands the metaphysical task of ordering beings as a whole, not merely the announcement of a provisional whither and wherefore. But a genu- ine establishment of the goal must at the same time ground its goal. Such grounding cannot be exhaustive if, in its "theoretical" exhibition of the reasons which justify the goal to be established, it asseverates that such a move is "logically" necessary. To ground the goal means to awaken and liberate those powers which lend the newly established goal its surpassing and pervasive energy to inspire commitment. Only in that way can historical Dasein take root and flourish in the realm opened and identified by the goal. Here, finally, and that means primor-
158 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
dially, belongs the growth of forces which sustain and propel prepara- tion of the new realm, the advance into it, and the cultivation of what unfolds within it, forces which induce it to undertake bold deeds.
Nietzsche has all this in view when he speaks of nihilism, goals, and establishment of goals. But he also sees the necessary range of such establishment, a range determined by the incipient dissolution of all kinds of order all over the earth. It cannot apply to individual groups, classes, and sects, nor even to individual states and nations. It must be European at least. That does not mean to say that it should be "interna- tional. " For implied in the essence of a creative establishment of goals and the preparation for such establishment is that it comes to exist and swings into action, as historical, only in the unity of the fully historical Dasein of men in the form of particular nations. That means neither isolation from other nations nor hegemony over them. Establishment of goals is in itself confrontation, the initiation of struggle. But the genuine struggle is the one in which those who struggle excel, first the one then the other, and in which the power for such excelling unfolds
within them.
Meditation of such kind on the historical event of nihilism and on the condition for overcoming it utterly-meditation on the basic meta- physical position needed to that end, thinking through the ways and means of awakening and outfitting such conditions-Nietzsche some- times calls "grand politics. "* That sounds like the "grand style. " If we think both as belonging originally together, we secure ourselves against misinterpretations of their essential sense. Neither does the "grand style" want an "aesthetic culture," nor does the "grand politics" want the exploitative power politics of imperialism. The grand style can be created only by means of the grand politics, and the latter has the most
*Nietzsche uses the phrase die grosse Politik during the period of the preparation of Beyond Good and Evil; cf. WM, 463 and 978, both notes from the year 1885. The source for Heidegger' s entire discussion of Zielsetzung seems to be section 208 of Beyond Good and Evil. Cf. also the entire eighth part of that work, "Nations and Fatherlands. " We should also note that die grosse Politik occupied the very center of interest in Nietzsche in Germany after World War 1: not only the Stefan George circle and Alfred Baeumler, but even Karl Jaspers (see his Nietzsche, Bk. II, chap. 4), emphasized it.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 159
intrinsic law of its will in the grand style. What does Nietzsche say of the grand style? "What makes the grand style: to become master of one's happiness, as of one's unhappiness:-" (from plans and ideas for an independent sequel to Zarathustra, during the year 1885; see XII, 415). To be master over one's happiness! That is the hardest thing. To be master over unhappiness: that can be done, if it has to be. But to be master of one's happiness. . . .
In the decade between 1880 and 1890 Nietzsche thinks and ques- tions by means of the standards of the "grand style" and in the field of vision of "grand politics. " We must keep these standards and the scope of the inquiry in view if we are to understand what is taken up into Book One and Book Two of The Will to Power, which present the insight that the basic force of Dasein, the self-assuredness and power of such force to establish a goal, is lacking. Why is the basic force that is needed in order to attain a creative stance in the midst of beings missing? Answer: because it has been in a state of advanced atrophy for a long time, and because it has been perverted into its opposite. The major debility of the basic force of Dasein consists in the calumniation and denegration of the fundamental orienting force of "life" itself. Such defamation of creative life, however, has its grounds in the fact that things are posited above life which make negation of it desirable. The desirable, the ideal, is the supersensuous, interpreted as genuine being. This interpretation of being is accomplished in the Platonic philosophy. The theory of Ideas founds the ideal, and that means the definitive preeminence of the supersensuous, in determining and domi- nating the sensuous.
Here a new interpretation of Platonism emerges. It flows from a fundamental experience of the development of nihilism. It sees in Platonism the primordial and determining grounds of the possibility of nihilism's upsurgence and of the rise of life-negation. Christianity is ih Nietzsche's eyes nothing other than "Platonism for the people. " As Platonism, however, it is nihilism. But with the reference to Nietzsche's opposition to the nihilistic tendency of Christianity, his position as a whole with respect to the historical phenomenon of Christianity is not delineated exhaustively. Nietzsche is far too perspicacious and too
160 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
sovereignly intelligent not to know and acknowledge that an essential presupposition for his own behavior, the probity and discipline of his inquiry, is a consequence of the Christian education that has prevailed for centuries. To present two pieces of evidence from among the many available:
Probity as a consequence of long moral training: the self-critique of morality is at the same time a mora/ phenomenon, an event of morality (XIII, I21).
We are no longer Christians: we have grown out of Christianity, not because we dwelled too far from it, but because we dwelled too near it, even more, because we have grown from i t - i t is our more rigorous and fastidious piety itself that forbids us today to be Christians (XIII, 318).
Within the field of vision maintained by meditation on nihilism, "inversion" of Platonism takes on another meaning. It is not the sim- ple, almost mechanical exchange of one epistemological standpoint for another, that of positivism. Overturning Platonism means, first, shat- tering the preeminence of the supersensuous as the ideal. Beings, being what they are, may not be despised on the basis of what should and ought to be. But at the same time, in opposition to the philosophy of the ideal and to the installation of what ought to be and of the "should," the inversion sanctions the investigation and determination of that which is-it summons the question "What is being itself? " If the "should" is the supersensuous, then being itself, that which is, conceived as liberated from the "should," can only be the sensuous. But with that the essence of the sensuous is not given; its definition is given up. In contrast, the realm of true being, of the true, and thereby the essence of truth, is demarcated; as before, however, already in Platonism, the true is to be attained on the path of knowledge.
In such inversion of Platonism, invoked and guided by the will to overcome nihilism, the conviction shared with Platonism and held to be evident is that truth, i. e. , true being, must be secured on the path of knowledge. Since, according to the inversion, the sensuous is now the true, and since the sensuous, as being, is now to provide the basis for the new foundation of Dasein, the question concerning the sensu-
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 161
ous and with it the determination of the true and of truth receive enhanced significance.
The interpretation of truth or true being as the sensuous is of course, considered formally, an overturning of Platonism, inasmuch as Plato- nism asserts that genuine being is supersensuous. Yet such inversion, and along with it the interpretation of the true as what is given in the senses, must be understood in terms of the overcoming of nihilism. But the definitive interpretation of art, if it is posited as the countermove- ment to nihilism, operates within the same perspective.
Against Platonism, the question "What is true being? " must be posed, and the answer to it must be, "The true is the sensuous. " Against nihilism, the creative life, preeminently in art, must be set to work. But art creates out of the sensuous.
Now for the first time it becomes clear to what extent art and truth, whose relationship in Nietzsche's view is a discordance that arouses dread, can and must come into relation at all, a relation that is more than simply comparative, which is the kind of interpretation of both art and truth offered by philosophies of culture. Art and truth, creating and knowing, meet one another in the single guiding perspective of the rescue and configuration of the sensuous.
With a view to the conquest of nihilism, that is, to the foundation of the new valuation, art and truth, along with meditation on the essence of both, attain equal importance. According to their essence, intrinsically, art and truth come together in the realm of a new histori- cal existence.
What sort of relationship do they have?
21. The Scope and Context of Plato's Meditation on the Relationship of
Art and Truth
According to Nietzsche's teaching concerning the artist, and seen in terms of the one who creates, art has its actuality in the rapture of embodying life. Artistic configuration and portrayal are grounded essentially in the realm of the sensuous. Art is affirmation of the sensuous. According to the doctrine of Platonism, however, the super- sensuous is affirmed as genuine being. Platonism, and Plato, would therefore logically have to condemn art, the affirmation of the sensu- ous, as a form of nonbeing and as what ought not to be, as a form of meon. In Platonism, for which truth is supersensuous, the relationship to art apparently becomes one of exclusion, opposition, and antithesis; hence, one of discordance. If, however, Nietzsche's philosophy is rever- sal of Platonism, and if the true is thereby affirmation of the sensuous, then truth is the same as what art affirms, i. e. , the sensuous. For inverted Platonism, the relationship of truth and art can only be one of univocity and concord. If in any ca~e a discordance should exist in Plato (which is something we must still ask about, since not every distancing can be conceived as discordance), then it would have to disappear in the reversal of Platonism, which is to say, in the cancella- tion of such philosophy.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche says that the relationship is a discordance, indeed, one which arouses dread. He speaks of the discordance that arouses dread, not in the period prior to his own overturning of Plato- nism, but precisely during the period in which the inversion is decided
Plato's Meditation 163
for him. In 1888 Nietzsche writes in Twilight of the Idols, "On the contrary, the grounds upon which 'this' world [i. e. , the sensuous] was designated as the world of appearances ground the reality of this world -any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable" (VIII, 81). During the same period when Nietzsche says that the sole true reality, i. e. , the true, is the sensuous world, he writes concerning the relation- ship of art and truth,". . . and even now [i. e. , in the autumn of 1888] I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. "
Where is the path that will take us to the hidden, underlying sense of this remarkable phrase concerning the relationship of art and truth? W e have to get there. For only from that vantage point will we be able to see Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position in its own light. It would be a good idea to take as our point of departure that basic philosophical position in which a discordance between art and truth at least seems to be possible, i. e. , Platonism.
The question as to whether in Platonism a conflict between truth (or true being) and art (or what is portrayed in art) necessarily and there- fore actually exists can be decided only on the basis of Plato's work itself. If a conflict exists here, it must come to the fore in statements which, comparing art and truth, say the opposite of what Nietzsche decides in evaluating their relationship.
Nietzsche says that art is worth more than truth. It must be that Plato decides that art is worth less than truth, that is, less than knowl- edge of true being as philosophy. Hence, in the Platonic philosophy, which we like to display as the very blossom of Greek thought, the result must be a depreciation of art. This among the Greeks-of all people-who affirmed and founded art as no other Occidental nation did! That is a disturbing matter of fact; nevertheless, it is indisputable. Therefore we must show at the outset, even if quite briefly, how the depreciation of art in favor of truth appears in Plato, and see to what extent it proves to be necessary.
But the intention of the following digression is by no means merely one of informing ourselves about Plato's opinion concerning art in this respect. On the basis of our consideration of Plato, for whom a sunder- ing of art and truth comes to pass, we want to gain an indication of
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where and how we can find traces of discordance in Nietzsche's inver- sion of Platonism. At the same time, on our way we should provide a richer and better defined significance for the catchword "Platonism. "
We pose two questions. First, what is the scope of those determina- tions which in Plato's view apply to what we call "art"? Second, in what context is the question of the relationship of art and truth discussed?
Let us turn to the first question. W e customarily appeal to the word techne as the Creek designation of what we call "art. " What techne means we suggested earlier (cf. p. 80). But we must be clear about the fact that the Creeks have no word at all that corresponds to what we mean by the word "art" in the narrower sense. The word "art" has for us a multiplicity of meanings, and not by accident. As masters of thought and speech, the Creeks deposited such multiple meanings in the majority of their sundry univocal words. If by "art" we mean primarily an ability in the sense of being well versed in something, of a thoroughgoing and therefore masterful know-how, then this for the Creeks is techne. Included in such know-how, although never as the essential aspect of it, is knowledge of the rules and procedures for a course of action.
In contrast, if by "art" we mean an ability in the sense of an acquired capacity to carry something out which, as it were, has become second nature and basic to Dasein, ability as behavior that accomplishes some- thing, then the Creek says melete, epimeleia, carefulness of concern (see Plato's Republic, 374). *Such carefulness is more than practiced diligence; it is the mastery of a composed resolute openness to beings; it is "care. " W e must conceive of the innermost essence of techne too as such care, in order to preserve it from the sheer "technical"
*Cf. especially Republic 374e 2: the task of the guardians requires the greatest amount of technes te kai epimeleias. Socrates has been arguing that a man can perform only one techne well, be he shoemaker, weaver, or warrior. Here techne seems to mean "skill" or "professional task. " In contrast, meletaino means to "take thought or care for," "to attend to, study, or pursue," "to exercise and train. " He me/ete is "care," "sustained attention to action. " Epimeleia means "care bestowed upon a thing, attention paid to it. " Schleiermacher translates epimeleia as Sorgfalt, meticulousness or diligence. Such is perhaps what every techne presupposes. Epime/eia would be a welcome addition to the discussion of cura, Sorge, in Being and Time, section 42.
Plato's Meditation 165
interpretation of later times. The unity of melete and techne thus characterizes the basic posture of the forward-reaching disclosure of Dasein, which seeks to ground beings on their own terms.
Finally, if by "art" we mean what is brought forward in a process of bringing-forth, what is produced in production, and the producing itself, then the Greek speaks of poiein and poiesis. That the word poiesis in the emphatic sense comes to be reserved for designation of the production of something in words, that poiesis as "poesy" becomes the special name for the art of the word, poetic creation, testifies to the primacy of such art within Greek art as a whole. Therefore it is not accidental that when Plato brings to speech and to decision the relation- ship of art and truth he deals primarily and predominantly with poetic creation. and the poet.
Turning to the second question, we must now consider where and in what context Plato poses the question concerning the relationship of art and truth. For the way he poses and pursues that question determines the form of the interpretation for the whole of Plato's multifaceted meditation on art. Plato poses the question in the "dia- logue" which bears the title Politeia [Republic], his magnificent discus- sion on the "state" as the basic form of man's communal life. Consequently, it has been supposed that Plato asks about art in a "political" fashion, and that such a "political" formulation would have to be opposed to, or distinguished essentially from, the "aesthetic" and thereby in the broadest sense "theoretical" point of view. We can call Plato's inquiry into art political to the extent that it arises in connection with politeia; but we have to know, and then say, what "political" is supposed to mean. If we are to grasp Plato's teaching concerning art as "political," we should understand that word solely in accordance with the concept of the essence of the polis that emerges from ~he dialogue itself. That is all the more necessary as this tremendous dia- logue in its entire structure and movement aims to show that the sustaining ground and determining essense of all political Being con- sists in nothing less than the "theoretical," that is, in essential knowl- edge of dike and dikaiosyne. This Greek word is translated as "justice," but that misses the proper sense, inasmuch as justice is transposed
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straightaway into the moral or even the merely "legal" realm. But dike is a metaphysical concept, not originally one of morality. It names Being with reference to the essentially appropriate articulation of all beings. * To be sure, dike slips into the twilight zone of morality precisely on account of the Platonic philosophy. But that makes it all the more necessary to hold onto its metaphysical sense, because otherwise the Creek backgrounds of the dialogue on the state do not become visible. Knowledge of dike, of the articulating laws of the Being of beings, is philosophy. Therefore the decisive insight of the entire dialogue on the state says, dei taus philosophous basileuein (archein): it is essentially necessary that philosophers be the rulers (see Republic, Bk. V, 473). The statement does not mean that philosophy professors should conduct the affairs of state. It means that the basic modes of behavior that sustain and define the community must be grounded in essential knowledge, assuming of course that the community, as an order of being, grounds itself on its own basis, and that it does not wish
to adopt standards from any other order. The unconstrained self-grounding of historical Dasein places itself under the jurisdiction of knowledge, and not of faith, inasmuch as the latter is understood as the proclamation of truth sanctioned by divine revelation. All knowledge is at bottom commitment to beings that come to light under their own power. Being becomes visible, according to Plato, in the "Ideas. " They constitute the Being of beings, and therefore are themselves the true beings, the true.
Hence, if one still wants to say that Plato is here inquiring politically into art, it can only mean that he evaluates art, with reference to its position in the state, upon the essence and sustaining grounds of the state, upon knowledge of "truth. " Such inquiry into art is "theoretical" in the highest degree. The distinction between political and theoretical inquiry no longer makes any sense at all.
*Cf. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 134-35 and 139-40. (N. B. : in the Anchor Books edition, p. 139, line II, the words techne and dike are misplaced: dike is the overpowering order, techne the violence of knowledge). On dike, cf. also "The Anaximander Fragment" (1936) in Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Think- ing, pp. 41-47.
Plato's Meditation 167
That Plato's question concerning art marks the beginning of "aes- thetics" does not have its grounds in the fact that it is generally theoretical, which is to say, that it springs from an interpretation of Being; it results from the fact that the "theoretical," as a grasp of the Being of beings, is based on a particular interpretation of Being. The idea, the envisioned outward appearance, characterizes Being precisely for that kind of vision which recognizes in the visible as such pure presence. "Being" stands in essential relation to, and in a certain way means as much as, self-showing and appearing, the phainesthai of what is ekphanes. * One's grasp of the Ideas, with regard to the possible accomplishment of that grasp, though not to its established goal, is grounded upon eros, which in Nietzsche's aesthetics corresponds to rapture. What is most loved and longed for in eros, and therefore the Idea that is brought into fundamental relation, is what at the same time appears and radiates most brilliantly. The erasmiotaton, which at the same time is ekphanestaton, proves to be the idea tau kalou, the Idea of the beautiful, beauty.
Plato deals with the beautiful and with Eros primarily in the Sym- posium. The questions posed in the Republic and Symposium are conjoined and brought to an original and basic position with a view to the fundamental questions of philosophy in the dialogue Phaedrus. Here Plato offers his most profound and extensive inquiry into art and the beautiful in the most rigorous and circumscribed form. We refer to these other dialogues so that we do not forget, at this very early stage, that the discussions of art in the Republic-for the moment the sole important ones for us-do not constitute the whole of Plato's medita- tion in that regard.
But in the context of the dialogue's guiding question concerning the state, how does the question of art come up? Plato asks about the structure of communal life, what must guide it as a whole and In totality, and what component parts belong to it as what is to be guided. He does not describe the form of any state at hand, nor does he
*On the meaning of phainesthai see section 7A of Being and Time; in Basic Writings, pp. 74-79.
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elaborate a utopian model for some future state. Rather, the inner order of communal life is projected on the basis of Being and man's funda- mental relation to Being. The standards and principles of education for correct participation in communal life and for active existence are established. In the pursuit of such inquiry, the following question emerges, among others: does art too, especially the art of poetry, belong to communal life; and, if so, how? In Book Three (1-18)* that question becomes the object of the discussion. Here Plato shows in a preliminary way that what art conveys and provides is always a portrayal of beings; although it is not inactive, its producing and making, poiein, remain mimesis, imitation, copying and transforming, poetizing in the sense of inventing. Thus art in itself is exposed to the danger of continual deception and falsehood. In accord with the essence of its activity, art has no direct, definitive relation to the true and to true being. That fact suffices to produce one irremediable result: in and for the hierarchy of modes of behavior and forms of achievement within the community, art cannot assume the highest rank. If art is admitted into the community at all, then it is only with the proviso that its role be strictly demarcated and its activities subject to certain demands and directives that derive from the guiding laws of the Being of states.
At this point we can see that a decision may be reached concerning the essence of art and its necessarily limited role in the state only in terms of an original and proper relation to the beings that set the standard, only in terms of a relationship that appreciates dike, the matter of order and disorder with respect to Being. For that reason, after the preliminary conversations about art and other forms of achievement in the state, we arrive at the question concerning our basic relation to Being, advancing to the question concerning true comport- ment toward beings, and hence to the question of truth. On our way through these conversations, we encounter at the beginning of the seventh book the discussion of the essence of truth, based on the Allegory of the Cave. Only after traversing this long and broad path
*I. e. , topics 1-18 in Schleiermacher's arrangement; in the traditional Stephanus num- bering, 386a-412b.
Plato's Meditation 169
to the point where philosophy is defined as masterful knowledge of the Being of beings do we turn back, in order to ground those statements which were made earlier in a merely provisional manner, among them the statements concerning art. Such a return transpires in the tenth and final book.
Here Plato shows first of all what it means to say that art is mimesis, and then why, granting that characteristic, art can only occupy a subor- dinate position. Here a decision is made about the metaphysical relation of art and truth (but only in a certain respect). We shall now pursue briefly the chief matter of Book Ten, without going into particulars concerning the movement of the dialogue, and also without referring to the transformation and refinement of what is handled there in Plato's later dialogues.
One presupposition remains unchallenged: all art is mimesis. We translate that word as "imitation. " At the outset of Book Ten the question arises as to what mimesis is. Quite likely we are inclined to assume that here we are encountering a "primitivistic" notion of art, or a one-sided view of it, in the sense of a particular artistic style called "naturalism," which copies things that are at hand. We should resist both preconceptions from the start. But even more misleading is the opinion that when art is grasped as mimesis the result is an arbitrary presupposition. For the clarification of the essence of mimesis which is carried out in Book Ten not only defines the word more precisely but also traces the matter designated in the word back to its inner possibility and to the grounds that sustain such possibility. Those grounds are nothing other than basic representations the Greeks enter- tained concerning beings as such, their understanding of Being. Since the question of truth is sister to that of Being, the Greek concept of truth serves as the basis of the interpretation of art as mimesis. Only on that basis does mimesis possess sense and significance-but a·lso necessity. Such remarks are needed in order that we fix our eyes on the correct point of the horizon for the following discussion. What we will consider there, after two thousand years of tradition and habituation of thought and representation, consists almost entirely of common- places. But seen from the point of view of Plato's age, it is all first
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discovery and definitive utterance. In order to correspond to the mood of this dialogue, we would do well to put aside for the moment our seemingly greater sagacity and our superior air of "knowing all about it already. " Of course, here we have to forgo recapitulation of the entire sequence of individual steps in the dialogue.
22. Plato's Republic: The Distance of Art (Mimesis) from Truth (Idea)
Let us formulate our question once again. How does art relate to truth? Where does art stand in the relationship? Art is mimesis. Its relation to truth must be ascertainable in terms of the essence of mimesis. What is mimesis? Socrates says to Glaucon (at 595 c): Mimesin halos echois an moi eipein hoti pot' estin; oude gar toi autos pany ti synnoo ti bouletai einai. "Imitation, viewed as a whole: can you tell me at all what that is? For I myself as well am totally unable to discern what it may be. "
Thus the two of them begin their conversation, episkopountes, "keeping firmly in view the matter itself named in the word. " This they do ek tes eiothuias methodou, "in the manner to which they are accustomed to proceeding, being in pursuit of the matter," since that is what the Greek word "method" means. That customary way of proceeding is the kind of inquiry Plato practiced concerning beings as such. He expressed himself about it continually in his dialogues. Meth- od, the manner of inquiry, was never for him a fixed technique; rather, it developed in cadence with the advance toward Being. If therefore at our present position method is formulated in an essential statement, such a designation by Platonic thought concerning the Ideas corre~ sponds to that stage of the Platonic philosophy which is reached when Plato composes the dialogue on the state. But that stage is by no means the ultimate one. In the context of our present inquiry this account of method is of special significance.
Socrates (i. e. , Plato) says in that regard (at 596 a): eidos gar pou ti
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hen hekaston eiothamen tithesthai peri hekasta ta polla, hois tauton onoma epipheromen. "We are accustomed to posing to ourselves (let- ting lie before us) one eidos, only one of such kind for each case, in relation to the cluster (peri) of those many things to which we ascribe the same name. " Here eidos does not mean "concept" but the outward appearance of something. In its outward appearance this or that thing does not become present, come into presence, in its particularity; it becomes present as that which it is. To come into presence means Being; Being is therefore apprehended in discernment of the outward appearance. How does that proceed? In each case one outward appear- ance is posed.
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are made about the true and the untrue. And depending on the way the essence of knowledge is demarcated, the essential concept of truth is defined.
Our knowing as such is always an approximation to what is to be known, a measuring of itself upon something. As a consequence of the character of measurement, knowing implies a relation to some sort of standard. The standard, and our relation to it, can be interpreted in various ways. In order to clarify the interpretive possibilities with re- gard to the essence of knowing, we will describe the principal trait of two basically different types. By way of exception, and for the sake of brevity, we will take up two terms which are not to suggest any more than what we will make of them here: the conceptions of knowledge in "Platonism" and "Positivism. "
20. Truth in Platonism and Positivism. Nietzsche's Attempt to Overturn Platonism on the Basis of the Fundamental Experience of Nihilism
We say "Platonism," and not Plato, because here we are dealing with the conception of knowledge that corresponds to that term, not by way of an original and detailed examination of Plato's works, but only by setting in rough relief one particular aspect of his work. Knowing is approximation to what is to be known. What is to be known? The being itself. Of what does it consist? Where is its Being determined? On the basis of the Ideas and as the ideai. They "are" what is apprehended when we look at things to see how they look, to see what they give themselves out to be, to see their what-being (to ti estin). What makes a table a table, table-being, can be seen; to be sure, not with the sensory eye of the body, but with the eye of the soul. Such sight is apprehension of what a matter is, its Idea. What is so seen is something nonsensuous. But because it is that in the light of which we first come to know what is sensuous-that thing there, as a table-the nonsensuous at the same time stands above the sensuous. It is the supersensuous and the proper what-being and Being of the being. Therefore, knowledge must mea- sure itself against the supersensuous, the Idea; it must somehow bring forward what is not sensuously visible for a face-to-face encounter: it must put forward or present. * Knowledge is presentative measurement
*"To put forward or present" is an attempt to translate the hyphenated word voT- stellen, which without the hyphen is usually translated as "to represent. "
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of self upon the supersensuous. Pure nonsensuous presentation, which unfolds in a mediating relation that derives from what is represented, is called theoria. Knowledge is in essence theoretical.
The conception of knowledge as "theoretical" is undergirded by a particular interpretation of Being; such a conception has meaning and is correct only on the basis of metaphysics. To preach the "eternally immutable essence of science" is therefore either to employ an empty turn of phrase that does not take seriously what it says, or to mistake the basic facts concerning the origin of the concept of Western science. The "theoretical" is not merely something distinguished and differenti- ated from the "practical," but is itself grounded in a particular basic experience of Being. The same is true also of the "practical," which for its part is juxtaposed to the "theoretical. " Both of these, and the difference between them, are to be grasped solely from the essence of Being which is relevant in each case, which is to say, they are to be grasped metaphysically. Neither does the practical change on the basis of the theoretical, nor does the theoretical change on the basis of the practical: both change always simultaneously on the basis of their fundamental metaphysical position.
The interpretation of knowledge in positivism differs from that in Platonism. To be sure, knowing here too is a measuring. But the standard which representation must respect, right from the start and constantly, differs: it is what lies before us from the outset, what is constantly placed before us, the positum. The latter is what is given in sensation, the sensuous. Here too measurement is an immediate presenting or putting forward ("sensing"), which is defined by a me- diating interrelation of what is given by way of sensation, a judging. The essence of judgment in turn can itself be interpreted in various ways-a matter we will not pursue any further here.
Without deciding prematurely that Nietzsche's conception of knowledge takes one of these two basic directions-Platonism or posi- tivism-or is a hybrid of both, we can say that the word "truth" for him means as much as the true, and the true what is known in truth. Knowing is a theoretical-scientific grasp of the actual in the broadest sense.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 153
That suggests in a general way that Nietzsche's conception of the essence of truth keeps to the realm of the long tradition of Western thought, no matter how much Nietzsche's particular interpretations of that conception deviate from earlier ones. But also in relation to our particular question concerning the relation of art and truth, we have just now taken a decisive step. According to our clarification of the guiding conception of truth, what are here brought into relation are, putting it more strictly, on the one hand, art, and on the other, theoreti- cal-scientific knowledge. Art, grasped in Nietzsche's sense in terms of the artist, is creation; creation is related to beauty. Correspondingly, truth is the object related to knowledge. Thus the relation of art and truth that is here in question, the one which arouses dread, must be conceived as the relation of art and scientific knowledge, and correla- tively the relation of beauty and truth.
But to what extent is the relation for Nietzsche a discordance? To what extent do art and knowledge, beauty and truth at all enter into noteworthy relation? Surely not on the basis of the wholly extrinsic grounds, definitive for the usual philosophies and sciences of culture, that art exists and that science is right there beside it; the fact that both belong to a culture; and the fact that if one wants to erect a system of culture, one must also provide information about the interrelations of these cultural phenomena. Were Nietzsche's point of inquiry merely that of the philosophy of culture, intending to erect a tidy system of cultural phenomena and cultural values, then the relation of art and truth could surely never become for it a discordance, much less one that arouses dread.
In order to see how for Nietzsche art and truth can and must in some way come into noteworthy relation, let us proceed with a renewed clarification of his concept of truth, since we have already treated sufficiently the other member of the relation, art. In order to character-· ize more precisely Nietzsche's concept of truth, we must ask in what way he conceives of knowledge and what standard he applies to it. How does Nietzsche's conception of knowledge stand in relation to the two basic tendencies of epistemological interpretation described above, Platonism and positivism? Nietzsche once says, in a brief observation
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found among the early sketches (1870-71) for his first treatise, "My philosophy an inverted Platonism: the farther removed from true be- ing, the purer, the finer, the better it is. Living in semblance as goal" (IX, 190). That is an astonishing preview in the thinker of his entire later philosophical position. For during the last years of his creative life he labors at nothing else than the overturning of Platonism. Of course, we may not overlook the fact that the "inverted Platonism" of his early period is enormously different from the position finally attained in Twilight of the Idols. Nevertheless, on the basis of Nietzsche's own words we can now define with greater trenchancy his conception of truth, which is to say, his conception of the true.
For Platonism, the Idea, the supersensuous, is the true, true being. In contrast, the sensuous is meon. The latter suggests, not nonbeing pure and simple, ouk on, but me-what may not be addressed as being even though it is not simply nothing. Insofar as, and to the extent that, it may be called being, the sensuous must be measured upon the supersensuous; nonbeing possesses the shadow and the residues of Being which fall from true being.
To overturn Platonism thus means to reverse the standard relation: what languishes below in Platonism, as it were, and would be measured against the supersensuous, must now be put on top; by way of reversal, the supersensuous must now be placed in its service. When the inver- sion is fully executed, the sensuous becomes being proper, i. e. , the true, i. e. , truth. The true is the sensuous. That is what "positivism" teaches. Nevertheless, it would be premature to interpret Nietzsche's concep- tion of knowledge and of the kind of truth pertaining to it as "positivis- tic," although that is what usually happens. It is indisputable that prior to the time of his work on the planned magnum opus, The Will to Power, Nietzsche went through a period of extreme positivism; these were the years 1879-81, the years of his decisive development toward maturity. Such positivism, though of course transformed, became a part of his later fundamental position also. But what matters is precisely the transformation, especially in relation to the overturning of Plato- nism as a whole. In that inversion Nietzsche's philosophical thought proper comes to completion. For Nietzsche the compelling task from
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 155
early on was to think through the philosophy of Plato, indeed from two different sides. His original profession as a classical philologist brought him to Plato, partly through his teaching duties, but above all through a philosophical inclination to Plato. During the Basel years he held lectures on Plato several times: "Introduction to the Study of the Platonic Dialogues" in 1871-72 and 1873-74, and "Plato's Life and Teachings" in 1876 (see XIX, 235 ff. ).
But here again one discerns clearly the philosophical influence of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer himself grounds his entire philosophy, indeed consciously and expressly, on Plato and Kant. Thus in the Preface to his major work, The World as Will and Representation (1818), he writes:
Hence Kant's is the sole philosophy a basic familiarity with which is all but presupposed by what will be presented here. -If, however, the reader has in addition lingered awhile in the school of the divine Plato, he will be all the more receptive and all the better prepared to hear me.
As a third inspiration Schopenhauer then names the Indian Vedas. We know how much Schopenhauer misinterprets and vulgarizes the Kan- tian philosophy. The same happens with regard to Plato's philosophy. In the face of Schopenhauer's coarsening of the Platonic philosophy, Nietzsche, as a classical philologist and a considerable expert in that area, is not so defenseless as he is with respect to Schopenhauer's Kant-interpretation. Even in his early years (through the Basel lectures)
Nietzsche achieves a remarkable autonomy and thereby a higher truth in his Plato interpretation than Schopenhauer does in his. Above all he rejects Schopenhauer's interpretation of the apprehension of the Ideas as simple "intuition. " He emphasizes that apprehension of the Ideas is "dialectical. " Schopenhauer's opinion concerning such apprehen- sion, that it is intuition, stems from a misunderstanding of Schelling's teaching concerning "intellectual intuition" as the basic act of meta- physical knowledge.
However, the interpretation of Plato and of Platonism which tends to follow the direction of philology and the history of philosophy, although it is an aid, is not the decisive path for Nietzsche's philosoph-
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ical advance toward the Platonic doctrine and confrontation with it. It is not the decisive path of his experiencing an insight into the necessity of overturning Platonism. Nietzsche's fundamental experience is his growing insight into the basic development of our history. In his view it is nihilism. Nietzsche expresses incessantly and passionately the fun- damental experience of his existence as a thinker. To the blind, to those who cannot see and above all do not want to see, his words easily sound overwrought, as though he were raving. And yet when we plumb the depths of his insight and consider how very closely the basic historical development of nihilism crowds and oppresses him, then we may be inclined to call his manner of speech almost placid. One of the essential formulations that designate the event of nihilism says, "Cod is dead. " (Cf. now Holzwege, 1950, pp. 193-247. )* The phrase "Cod is dead" is not an atheistic proclamation: it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an event in Occidental history.
Only in the light of that basic experience does Nietzsche's utterance, "My philosophy is inverted Platonism," receive its proper range and intensity. In the same broad scope of significance, therefore, Nietz- sche's interpretation and conception of the essence of truth must be conceived. For that reason we ought to remember what Nietzsche understands by nihilism and in what sense alone that word may be used as a term for the history of philosophy.
By nihilism Nietzsche means the historical development, i. e. , event, that the uppermost values devalue themselves, that all goals are an-
*See the English translation, "The Word of Nietzsche: 'Cod is Dead,'" in Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Heidegger's reference, placed in parentheses, apparently was added in 1961. Note that the "event" of nihilism, cited four times in this and the following paragraphs, occasions one of the earliest "terminologi· cal" uses of the word Ereignis in Heidegger's published writings. (Cf. the use of the word Geschehnis in the Holzwege article, p. 195, and in Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, p. 4. ) The word's appearance in the context of Nietzsche's account of nihilism assumes even more importance when we recall a parenthetical remark in the "Protocol" to the Todt- nauberg Seminar on "Zeit und Sein" (Zur Sache des Denkens [Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1969], p. 46): "The relationships and contexts which constitute the essential structure of Ereignis were worked out between 1936 and 1938," which is to say, precisely at the time of the first two Nietzsche lecture courses.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 157 nihilated, and that all estimates of value collide against one another.
Such collision Nietzsche describes at one point in the following way:
. . . we call good someone who does his heart's bidding, but also the one who only tends to his duty;
we call good the meek and the reconciled, but also the courageous, un- bending, severe;
we call good somone who employs no force against himself, but also the heroes of self-overcoming;
we call good the utterly loyal friend of the true, but also the man of piety, one who transfigures things;
we call good those who are obedient to themselves, but also the pious;
we call good those who are noble and exalted, but also those who do not despise and condescend;
we call good those of joyful spirit, the peaceable, but also those desirous of battle and victory;
we call good those who always want to be first, but also those who do not want to take precedence over anyone in any respect.
(From unpublished material composed during the period of The Gay Science, 1881-82; see XII, 81. )
There is no longer any goal in and through which all the forces of the historical existence of peoples can cohere and in the direction of which they can develop; no goal of such a kind, which means at the same time and above all else no goal of such power that it can by virtue of its power conduct Dasein to its realm in a unified way and bring it to creative evolution. By establishment of the goal Nietzsche under- stands the metaphysical task of ordering beings as a whole, not merely the announcement of a provisional whither and wherefore. But a genu- ine establishment of the goal must at the same time ground its goal. Such grounding cannot be exhaustive if, in its "theoretical" exhibition of the reasons which justify the goal to be established, it asseverates that such a move is "logically" necessary. To ground the goal means to awaken and liberate those powers which lend the newly established goal its surpassing and pervasive energy to inspire commitment. Only in that way can historical Dasein take root and flourish in the realm opened and identified by the goal. Here, finally, and that means primor-
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dially, belongs the growth of forces which sustain and propel prepara- tion of the new realm, the advance into it, and the cultivation of what unfolds within it, forces which induce it to undertake bold deeds.
Nietzsche has all this in view when he speaks of nihilism, goals, and establishment of goals. But he also sees the necessary range of such establishment, a range determined by the incipient dissolution of all kinds of order all over the earth. It cannot apply to individual groups, classes, and sects, nor even to individual states and nations. It must be European at least. That does not mean to say that it should be "interna- tional. " For implied in the essence of a creative establishment of goals and the preparation for such establishment is that it comes to exist and swings into action, as historical, only in the unity of the fully historical Dasein of men in the form of particular nations. That means neither isolation from other nations nor hegemony over them. Establishment of goals is in itself confrontation, the initiation of struggle. But the genuine struggle is the one in which those who struggle excel, first the one then the other, and in which the power for such excelling unfolds
within them.
Meditation of such kind on the historical event of nihilism and on the condition for overcoming it utterly-meditation on the basic meta- physical position needed to that end, thinking through the ways and means of awakening and outfitting such conditions-Nietzsche some- times calls "grand politics. "* That sounds like the "grand style. " If we think both as belonging originally together, we secure ourselves against misinterpretations of their essential sense. Neither does the "grand style" want an "aesthetic culture," nor does the "grand politics" want the exploitative power politics of imperialism. The grand style can be created only by means of the grand politics, and the latter has the most
*Nietzsche uses the phrase die grosse Politik during the period of the preparation of Beyond Good and Evil; cf. WM, 463 and 978, both notes from the year 1885. The source for Heidegger' s entire discussion of Zielsetzung seems to be section 208 of Beyond Good and Evil. Cf. also the entire eighth part of that work, "Nations and Fatherlands. " We should also note that die grosse Politik occupied the very center of interest in Nietzsche in Germany after World War 1: not only the Stefan George circle and Alfred Baeumler, but even Karl Jaspers (see his Nietzsche, Bk. II, chap. 4), emphasized it.
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intrinsic law of its will in the grand style. What does Nietzsche say of the grand style? "What makes the grand style: to become master of one's happiness, as of one's unhappiness:-" (from plans and ideas for an independent sequel to Zarathustra, during the year 1885; see XII, 415). To be master over one's happiness! That is the hardest thing. To be master over unhappiness: that can be done, if it has to be. But to be master of one's happiness. . . .
In the decade between 1880 and 1890 Nietzsche thinks and ques- tions by means of the standards of the "grand style" and in the field of vision of "grand politics. " We must keep these standards and the scope of the inquiry in view if we are to understand what is taken up into Book One and Book Two of The Will to Power, which present the insight that the basic force of Dasein, the self-assuredness and power of such force to establish a goal, is lacking. Why is the basic force that is needed in order to attain a creative stance in the midst of beings missing? Answer: because it has been in a state of advanced atrophy for a long time, and because it has been perverted into its opposite. The major debility of the basic force of Dasein consists in the calumniation and denegration of the fundamental orienting force of "life" itself. Such defamation of creative life, however, has its grounds in the fact that things are posited above life which make negation of it desirable. The desirable, the ideal, is the supersensuous, interpreted as genuine being. This interpretation of being is accomplished in the Platonic philosophy. The theory of Ideas founds the ideal, and that means the definitive preeminence of the supersensuous, in determining and domi- nating the sensuous.
Here a new interpretation of Platonism emerges. It flows from a fundamental experience of the development of nihilism. It sees in Platonism the primordial and determining grounds of the possibility of nihilism's upsurgence and of the rise of life-negation. Christianity is ih Nietzsche's eyes nothing other than "Platonism for the people. " As Platonism, however, it is nihilism. But with the reference to Nietzsche's opposition to the nihilistic tendency of Christianity, his position as a whole with respect to the historical phenomenon of Christianity is not delineated exhaustively. Nietzsche is far too perspicacious and too
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sovereignly intelligent not to know and acknowledge that an essential presupposition for his own behavior, the probity and discipline of his inquiry, is a consequence of the Christian education that has prevailed for centuries. To present two pieces of evidence from among the many available:
Probity as a consequence of long moral training: the self-critique of morality is at the same time a mora/ phenomenon, an event of morality (XIII, I21).
We are no longer Christians: we have grown out of Christianity, not because we dwelled too far from it, but because we dwelled too near it, even more, because we have grown from i t - i t is our more rigorous and fastidious piety itself that forbids us today to be Christians (XIII, 318).
Within the field of vision maintained by meditation on nihilism, "inversion" of Platonism takes on another meaning. It is not the sim- ple, almost mechanical exchange of one epistemological standpoint for another, that of positivism. Overturning Platonism means, first, shat- tering the preeminence of the supersensuous as the ideal. Beings, being what they are, may not be despised on the basis of what should and ought to be. But at the same time, in opposition to the philosophy of the ideal and to the installation of what ought to be and of the "should," the inversion sanctions the investigation and determination of that which is-it summons the question "What is being itself? " If the "should" is the supersensuous, then being itself, that which is, conceived as liberated from the "should," can only be the sensuous. But with that the essence of the sensuous is not given; its definition is given up. In contrast, the realm of true being, of the true, and thereby the essence of truth, is demarcated; as before, however, already in Platonism, the true is to be attained on the path of knowledge.
In such inversion of Platonism, invoked and guided by the will to overcome nihilism, the conviction shared with Platonism and held to be evident is that truth, i. e. , true being, must be secured on the path of knowledge. Since, according to the inversion, the sensuous is now the true, and since the sensuous, as being, is now to provide the basis for the new foundation of Dasein, the question concerning the sensu-
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 161
ous and with it the determination of the true and of truth receive enhanced significance.
The interpretation of truth or true being as the sensuous is of course, considered formally, an overturning of Platonism, inasmuch as Plato- nism asserts that genuine being is supersensuous. Yet such inversion, and along with it the interpretation of the true as what is given in the senses, must be understood in terms of the overcoming of nihilism. But the definitive interpretation of art, if it is posited as the countermove- ment to nihilism, operates within the same perspective.
Against Platonism, the question "What is true being? " must be posed, and the answer to it must be, "The true is the sensuous. " Against nihilism, the creative life, preeminently in art, must be set to work. But art creates out of the sensuous.
Now for the first time it becomes clear to what extent art and truth, whose relationship in Nietzsche's view is a discordance that arouses dread, can and must come into relation at all, a relation that is more than simply comparative, which is the kind of interpretation of both art and truth offered by philosophies of culture. Art and truth, creating and knowing, meet one another in the single guiding perspective of the rescue and configuration of the sensuous.
With a view to the conquest of nihilism, that is, to the foundation of the new valuation, art and truth, along with meditation on the essence of both, attain equal importance. According to their essence, intrinsically, art and truth come together in the realm of a new histori- cal existence.
What sort of relationship do they have?
21. The Scope and Context of Plato's Meditation on the Relationship of
Art and Truth
According to Nietzsche's teaching concerning the artist, and seen in terms of the one who creates, art has its actuality in the rapture of embodying life. Artistic configuration and portrayal are grounded essentially in the realm of the sensuous. Art is affirmation of the sensuous. According to the doctrine of Platonism, however, the super- sensuous is affirmed as genuine being. Platonism, and Plato, would therefore logically have to condemn art, the affirmation of the sensu- ous, as a form of nonbeing and as what ought not to be, as a form of meon. In Platonism, for which truth is supersensuous, the relationship to art apparently becomes one of exclusion, opposition, and antithesis; hence, one of discordance. If, however, Nietzsche's philosophy is rever- sal of Platonism, and if the true is thereby affirmation of the sensuous, then truth is the same as what art affirms, i. e. , the sensuous. For inverted Platonism, the relationship of truth and art can only be one of univocity and concord. If in any ca~e a discordance should exist in Plato (which is something we must still ask about, since not every distancing can be conceived as discordance), then it would have to disappear in the reversal of Platonism, which is to say, in the cancella- tion of such philosophy.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche says that the relationship is a discordance, indeed, one which arouses dread. He speaks of the discordance that arouses dread, not in the period prior to his own overturning of Plato- nism, but precisely during the period in which the inversion is decided
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for him. In 1888 Nietzsche writes in Twilight of the Idols, "On the contrary, the grounds upon which 'this' world [i. e. , the sensuous] was designated as the world of appearances ground the reality of this world -any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable" (VIII, 81). During the same period when Nietzsche says that the sole true reality, i. e. , the true, is the sensuous world, he writes concerning the relation- ship of art and truth,". . . and even now [i. e. , in the autumn of 1888] I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. "
Where is the path that will take us to the hidden, underlying sense of this remarkable phrase concerning the relationship of art and truth? W e have to get there. For only from that vantage point will we be able to see Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position in its own light. It would be a good idea to take as our point of departure that basic philosophical position in which a discordance between art and truth at least seems to be possible, i. e. , Platonism.
The question as to whether in Platonism a conflict between truth (or true being) and art (or what is portrayed in art) necessarily and there- fore actually exists can be decided only on the basis of Plato's work itself. If a conflict exists here, it must come to the fore in statements which, comparing art and truth, say the opposite of what Nietzsche decides in evaluating their relationship.
Nietzsche says that art is worth more than truth. It must be that Plato decides that art is worth less than truth, that is, less than knowl- edge of true being as philosophy. Hence, in the Platonic philosophy, which we like to display as the very blossom of Greek thought, the result must be a depreciation of art. This among the Greeks-of all people-who affirmed and founded art as no other Occidental nation did! That is a disturbing matter of fact; nevertheless, it is indisputable. Therefore we must show at the outset, even if quite briefly, how the depreciation of art in favor of truth appears in Plato, and see to what extent it proves to be necessary.
But the intention of the following digression is by no means merely one of informing ourselves about Plato's opinion concerning art in this respect. On the basis of our consideration of Plato, for whom a sunder- ing of art and truth comes to pass, we want to gain an indication of
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where and how we can find traces of discordance in Nietzsche's inver- sion of Platonism. At the same time, on our way we should provide a richer and better defined significance for the catchword "Platonism. "
We pose two questions. First, what is the scope of those determina- tions which in Plato's view apply to what we call "art"? Second, in what context is the question of the relationship of art and truth discussed?
Let us turn to the first question. W e customarily appeal to the word techne as the Creek designation of what we call "art. " What techne means we suggested earlier (cf. p. 80). But we must be clear about the fact that the Creeks have no word at all that corresponds to what we mean by the word "art" in the narrower sense. The word "art" has for us a multiplicity of meanings, and not by accident. As masters of thought and speech, the Creeks deposited such multiple meanings in the majority of their sundry univocal words. If by "art" we mean primarily an ability in the sense of being well versed in something, of a thoroughgoing and therefore masterful know-how, then this for the Creeks is techne. Included in such know-how, although never as the essential aspect of it, is knowledge of the rules and procedures for a course of action.
In contrast, if by "art" we mean an ability in the sense of an acquired capacity to carry something out which, as it were, has become second nature and basic to Dasein, ability as behavior that accomplishes some- thing, then the Creek says melete, epimeleia, carefulness of concern (see Plato's Republic, 374). *Such carefulness is more than practiced diligence; it is the mastery of a composed resolute openness to beings; it is "care. " W e must conceive of the innermost essence of techne too as such care, in order to preserve it from the sheer "technical"
*Cf. especially Republic 374e 2: the task of the guardians requires the greatest amount of technes te kai epimeleias. Socrates has been arguing that a man can perform only one techne well, be he shoemaker, weaver, or warrior. Here techne seems to mean "skill" or "professional task. " In contrast, meletaino means to "take thought or care for," "to attend to, study, or pursue," "to exercise and train. " He me/ete is "care," "sustained attention to action. " Epimeleia means "care bestowed upon a thing, attention paid to it. " Schleiermacher translates epimeleia as Sorgfalt, meticulousness or diligence. Such is perhaps what every techne presupposes. Epime/eia would be a welcome addition to the discussion of cura, Sorge, in Being and Time, section 42.
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interpretation of later times. The unity of melete and techne thus characterizes the basic posture of the forward-reaching disclosure of Dasein, which seeks to ground beings on their own terms.
Finally, if by "art" we mean what is brought forward in a process of bringing-forth, what is produced in production, and the producing itself, then the Greek speaks of poiein and poiesis. That the word poiesis in the emphatic sense comes to be reserved for designation of the production of something in words, that poiesis as "poesy" becomes the special name for the art of the word, poetic creation, testifies to the primacy of such art within Greek art as a whole. Therefore it is not accidental that when Plato brings to speech and to decision the relation- ship of art and truth he deals primarily and predominantly with poetic creation. and the poet.
Turning to the second question, we must now consider where and in what context Plato poses the question concerning the relationship of art and truth. For the way he poses and pursues that question determines the form of the interpretation for the whole of Plato's multifaceted meditation on art. Plato poses the question in the "dia- logue" which bears the title Politeia [Republic], his magnificent discus- sion on the "state" as the basic form of man's communal life. Consequently, it has been supposed that Plato asks about art in a "political" fashion, and that such a "political" formulation would have to be opposed to, or distinguished essentially from, the "aesthetic" and thereby in the broadest sense "theoretical" point of view. We can call Plato's inquiry into art political to the extent that it arises in connection with politeia; but we have to know, and then say, what "political" is supposed to mean. If we are to grasp Plato's teaching concerning art as "political," we should understand that word solely in accordance with the concept of the essence of the polis that emerges from ~he dialogue itself. That is all the more necessary as this tremendous dia- logue in its entire structure and movement aims to show that the sustaining ground and determining essense of all political Being con- sists in nothing less than the "theoretical," that is, in essential knowl- edge of dike and dikaiosyne. This Greek word is translated as "justice," but that misses the proper sense, inasmuch as justice is transposed
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straightaway into the moral or even the merely "legal" realm. But dike is a metaphysical concept, not originally one of morality. It names Being with reference to the essentially appropriate articulation of all beings. * To be sure, dike slips into the twilight zone of morality precisely on account of the Platonic philosophy. But that makes it all the more necessary to hold onto its metaphysical sense, because otherwise the Creek backgrounds of the dialogue on the state do not become visible. Knowledge of dike, of the articulating laws of the Being of beings, is philosophy. Therefore the decisive insight of the entire dialogue on the state says, dei taus philosophous basileuein (archein): it is essentially necessary that philosophers be the rulers (see Republic, Bk. V, 473). The statement does not mean that philosophy professors should conduct the affairs of state. It means that the basic modes of behavior that sustain and define the community must be grounded in essential knowledge, assuming of course that the community, as an order of being, grounds itself on its own basis, and that it does not wish
to adopt standards from any other order. The unconstrained self-grounding of historical Dasein places itself under the jurisdiction of knowledge, and not of faith, inasmuch as the latter is understood as the proclamation of truth sanctioned by divine revelation. All knowledge is at bottom commitment to beings that come to light under their own power. Being becomes visible, according to Plato, in the "Ideas. " They constitute the Being of beings, and therefore are themselves the true beings, the true.
Hence, if one still wants to say that Plato is here inquiring politically into art, it can only mean that he evaluates art, with reference to its position in the state, upon the essence and sustaining grounds of the state, upon knowledge of "truth. " Such inquiry into art is "theoretical" in the highest degree. The distinction between political and theoretical inquiry no longer makes any sense at all.
*Cf. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 134-35 and 139-40. (N. B. : in the Anchor Books edition, p. 139, line II, the words techne and dike are misplaced: dike is the overpowering order, techne the violence of knowledge). On dike, cf. also "The Anaximander Fragment" (1936) in Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Think- ing, pp. 41-47.
Plato's Meditation 167
That Plato's question concerning art marks the beginning of "aes- thetics" does not have its grounds in the fact that it is generally theoretical, which is to say, that it springs from an interpretation of Being; it results from the fact that the "theoretical," as a grasp of the Being of beings, is based on a particular interpretation of Being. The idea, the envisioned outward appearance, characterizes Being precisely for that kind of vision which recognizes in the visible as such pure presence. "Being" stands in essential relation to, and in a certain way means as much as, self-showing and appearing, the phainesthai of what is ekphanes. * One's grasp of the Ideas, with regard to the possible accomplishment of that grasp, though not to its established goal, is grounded upon eros, which in Nietzsche's aesthetics corresponds to rapture. What is most loved and longed for in eros, and therefore the Idea that is brought into fundamental relation, is what at the same time appears and radiates most brilliantly. The erasmiotaton, which at the same time is ekphanestaton, proves to be the idea tau kalou, the Idea of the beautiful, beauty.
Plato deals with the beautiful and with Eros primarily in the Sym- posium. The questions posed in the Republic and Symposium are conjoined and brought to an original and basic position with a view to the fundamental questions of philosophy in the dialogue Phaedrus. Here Plato offers his most profound and extensive inquiry into art and the beautiful in the most rigorous and circumscribed form. We refer to these other dialogues so that we do not forget, at this very early stage, that the discussions of art in the Republic-for the moment the sole important ones for us-do not constitute the whole of Plato's medita- tion in that regard.
But in the context of the dialogue's guiding question concerning the state, how does the question of art come up? Plato asks about the structure of communal life, what must guide it as a whole and In totality, and what component parts belong to it as what is to be guided. He does not describe the form of any state at hand, nor does he
*On the meaning of phainesthai see section 7A of Being and Time; in Basic Writings, pp. 74-79.
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THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
elaborate a utopian model for some future state. Rather, the inner order of communal life is projected on the basis of Being and man's funda- mental relation to Being. The standards and principles of education for correct participation in communal life and for active existence are established. In the pursuit of such inquiry, the following question emerges, among others: does art too, especially the art of poetry, belong to communal life; and, if so, how? In Book Three (1-18)* that question becomes the object of the discussion. Here Plato shows in a preliminary way that what art conveys and provides is always a portrayal of beings; although it is not inactive, its producing and making, poiein, remain mimesis, imitation, copying and transforming, poetizing in the sense of inventing. Thus art in itself is exposed to the danger of continual deception and falsehood. In accord with the essence of its activity, art has no direct, definitive relation to the true and to true being. That fact suffices to produce one irremediable result: in and for the hierarchy of modes of behavior and forms of achievement within the community, art cannot assume the highest rank. If art is admitted into the community at all, then it is only with the proviso that its role be strictly demarcated and its activities subject to certain demands and directives that derive from the guiding laws of the Being of states.
At this point we can see that a decision may be reached concerning the essence of art and its necessarily limited role in the state only in terms of an original and proper relation to the beings that set the standard, only in terms of a relationship that appreciates dike, the matter of order and disorder with respect to Being. For that reason, after the preliminary conversations about art and other forms of achievement in the state, we arrive at the question concerning our basic relation to Being, advancing to the question concerning true comport- ment toward beings, and hence to the question of truth. On our way through these conversations, we encounter at the beginning of the seventh book the discussion of the essence of truth, based on the Allegory of the Cave. Only after traversing this long and broad path
*I. e. , topics 1-18 in Schleiermacher's arrangement; in the traditional Stephanus num- bering, 386a-412b.
Plato's Meditation 169
to the point where philosophy is defined as masterful knowledge of the Being of beings do we turn back, in order to ground those statements which were made earlier in a merely provisional manner, among them the statements concerning art. Such a return transpires in the tenth and final book.
Here Plato shows first of all what it means to say that art is mimesis, and then why, granting that characteristic, art can only occupy a subor- dinate position. Here a decision is made about the metaphysical relation of art and truth (but only in a certain respect). We shall now pursue briefly the chief matter of Book Ten, without going into particulars concerning the movement of the dialogue, and also without referring to the transformation and refinement of what is handled there in Plato's later dialogues.
One presupposition remains unchallenged: all art is mimesis. We translate that word as "imitation. " At the outset of Book Ten the question arises as to what mimesis is. Quite likely we are inclined to assume that here we are encountering a "primitivistic" notion of art, or a one-sided view of it, in the sense of a particular artistic style called "naturalism," which copies things that are at hand. We should resist both preconceptions from the start. But even more misleading is the opinion that when art is grasped as mimesis the result is an arbitrary presupposition. For the clarification of the essence of mimesis which is carried out in Book Ten not only defines the word more precisely but also traces the matter designated in the word back to its inner possibility and to the grounds that sustain such possibility. Those grounds are nothing other than basic representations the Greeks enter- tained concerning beings as such, their understanding of Being. Since the question of truth is sister to that of Being, the Greek concept of truth serves as the basis of the interpretation of art as mimesis. Only on that basis does mimesis possess sense and significance-but a·lso necessity. Such remarks are needed in order that we fix our eyes on the correct point of the horizon for the following discussion. What we will consider there, after two thousand years of tradition and habituation of thought and representation, consists almost entirely of common- places. But seen from the point of view of Plato's age, it is all first
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discovery and definitive utterance. In order to correspond to the mood of this dialogue, we would do well to put aside for the moment our seemingly greater sagacity and our superior air of "knowing all about it already. " Of course, here we have to forgo recapitulation of the entire sequence of individual steps in the dialogue.
22. Plato's Republic: The Distance of Art (Mimesis) from Truth (Idea)
Let us formulate our question once again. How does art relate to truth? Where does art stand in the relationship? Art is mimesis. Its relation to truth must be ascertainable in terms of the essence of mimesis. What is mimesis? Socrates says to Glaucon (at 595 c): Mimesin halos echois an moi eipein hoti pot' estin; oude gar toi autos pany ti synnoo ti bouletai einai. "Imitation, viewed as a whole: can you tell me at all what that is? For I myself as well am totally unable to discern what it may be. "
Thus the two of them begin their conversation, episkopountes, "keeping firmly in view the matter itself named in the word. " This they do ek tes eiothuias methodou, "in the manner to which they are accustomed to proceeding, being in pursuit of the matter," since that is what the Greek word "method" means. That customary way of proceeding is the kind of inquiry Plato practiced concerning beings as such. He expressed himself about it continually in his dialogues. Meth- od, the manner of inquiry, was never for him a fixed technique; rather, it developed in cadence with the advance toward Being. If therefore at our present position method is formulated in an essential statement, such a designation by Platonic thought concerning the Ideas corre~ sponds to that stage of the Platonic philosophy which is reached when Plato composes the dialogue on the state. But that stage is by no means the ultimate one. In the context of our present inquiry this account of method is of special significance.
Socrates (i. e. , Plato) says in that regard (at 596 a): eidos gar pou ti
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hen hekaston eiothamen tithesthai peri hekasta ta polla, hois tauton onoma epipheromen. "We are accustomed to posing to ourselves (let- ting lie before us) one eidos, only one of such kind for each case, in relation to the cluster (peri) of those many things to which we ascribe the same name. " Here eidos does not mean "concept" but the outward appearance of something. In its outward appearance this or that thing does not become present, come into presence, in its particularity; it becomes present as that which it is. To come into presence means Being; Being is therefore apprehended in discernment of the outward appearance. How does that proceed? In each case one outward appear- ance is posed.
