1. En Panta: Einai?

The question that remains elusive in the history of Platonism is the question of the One/Many. The question, in its Socratic form, asks about the relation of virtue and the good; arete, in the sense of excellence and power, and the agathon, in the sense of the epekeina tes ousias, at the end of book six of the Republic. What is impenetrable is how this one good "relates" to excellence, just in what sense what is beyond Being can have anything to do with human excellence here below in the many and manifold beings.

We must believe that the perpetual riddle that the Republic places into view is intentionally so, for there is no indication that the dialogues are the least bit accidental in their formulation and their content, and so we must also believe that they are so written that some key will unlock that riddle.

Manifestly, inasmuch as the Republic treats of paideia, pedagogy is the key. But what "instruction" is it that unlocks the riddle of the arete "of" the One and Good and Beautiful? What is puzzling in the puzzle is in what sense the One has to do with Platonic virtue, i.e., in what sense knowledge of the One makes us virtuous, how, by knowing the One, there is virtue.

The mystery that remains throughout the history of Platonism is the mystery of the relation of the One and the Many, that, once it is known, makes arete understood, and so is productive of ethics. But what is the pedagogy at work here? ⁽¹⁾

Already from the face that the sun analogy ⁽²⁾presents us, the pedagogical relation we seek is bound up in the analogical relations of intelligible sun to truth and beauty and Being, to that of the physical sun to growth and warmth and light, as analogous to that paideia that turns the whole soul about to that excellence that is born of the agathon: Socratic knowledge. And what is puzzling is that Socratic knowledge claims that ethics, that is, the paideia of the soul in arete, is born of that knowledge of the One that turns the whole of body and soul towards the agathon in such a way that nothing less than truth, Being, and beauty are there, as it were, to be had, naturally born of the divine One. Ethics and "natural" theology! But who can fathom this abyss?

Our perplexity can only grow stronger if we seek refuge in the paradoxical formula that such knowledge knows that it does not know. On this account, the mysterious relation between ethics and natural theology in Socratic knowledge is made even more mysterious. How, by this insertion of the "not," indeed as "knowing" that one does "not know," is pedagogy to gain insight into the aporia of the One/Many? Knowing that one does not know is supposed to unlock the aporia. Socratic knowledge is: ignorance.⁽³⁾ How does Socratic ignorance give the highest knowledge, insight into the One/Many, and with it, entry into arete?

Here, as Heidegger would have it, and it is not without merit, the trick is to turn an "absence into presence," which is to say, to think the "not" of Socratic ignorance "positively." But what is tricky about it is that such has been rendered impossible by the Eleatic prohibition,⁽⁴⁾

which prohibition, in its most tangible form, would deny the very possibility of the generation of anything from nothing, and so of knowledge from ignorance. If something can't come from nothing, how then are we to find a "presence in an absence" so as to unlock the paradox of Socratic ignorance as knowledge?⁽⁵⁾

Here we can only follow Heidegger's lead. Heidegger founds, as it were, his thought on the abyss. ⁽⁶⁾ The abysmal may draw its true imaging power only in the German, where it bespeaks a fathoming of the abysmal, in the way that one, standing gazing into the chasm, sights the abyss itself in its very "abysmalness." Herein, in the disclosure of the abyss that is seen in abysmal sight, lies in clear view something like that presence of an absence that we seek in Socratic ignorance as knowledge.

Let us follow this clue to find a presence in an absence in Socratic ignorance. Then the correct emphasis is that self-knowledge knows itself when it knows that it does not know, which is to say, that knowledge is abysmal. The puzzle of Socratic ignorance unlocks itself when not-knowing is seen positively, when paideia turns the soul about so as to know the presence of an absence in knowing that it does not know.⁽⁷⁾ Seen positively, knowing that one does not know is the knowledge of "that which conditions and grants knowledge." It is the abysmal character of the very presence of an absence that determines the nature of the conditioning and granting of knowledge that those know, who know they don't know. The key is to take ignorance as knowledge of the "conditions of the granting" of knowledge. ⁽⁸⁾

We know that the correct paideia in the resolution of this aporia is no mean thing, as by it we are to discover in ignorance no less than truth, beauty and Being; happiness; the unity of the virtues, and more besides. ⁽⁹⁾ The usual antithesis of the paideia that knows it does not know expresses itself either as knowing that we are godlike or as knowing that we are mortals. Perhaps, instead of an antithesis, what if mortal knowledge and godlike knowledge belonged together in a synthetic origin? Then finitude itself and that which is like the divine would not be separated by a chasm as if they were two different things; rather, that which is mortal and that which is divine would be held together in their difference originatingly. Indeed, some such open middle wherein the One could grant mortal man his share in the divine excellence would have to prevail if there were to be the relation between ethics, as arete, and natural theology, as knowledge of the One, that we seek in the correct paideia.
 
 

2. Paideia and Knowledge of the Ereignis

Unless we are wholly wide of the mark, Heidegger calls this paideia "Ereignis." Like paideia, Ereignis is not a techne, and so cannot be taught. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Nonetheless there is still a lot that can be said about it. ⁽¹¹⁾

What is distinctive about Socratic virtue is that it is knowledge, albeit one that cannot be taught. Given that paideia is instruction in virtue as knowledge, and if we are right in seeing paideia as Ereignis, then Ereignis too would have to be a Wissen. Heidegger calls this Wissen "Das Denken im anderen Anfang." Its nature is quite peculiar, far from the usual ranges of concept formation.

What is peculiar about this Wissen is that it is Wesen. This Wissen as Wesen is "thinking in the other beginning." For such knowledge, there is in it no "production," i.e., no prior clear idea ("techne") that rules in the production of one thing out of another. Rather, as Wesen, it is the nature of thinking itself that it manifests itself abysmally, in a manner that Heidegger seems to describe with a detail which is without parallel in the tradition. In Platonic terms, if techne is a "demiurgic" production, beginning thinking,⁽¹²⁾ as essential knowledge, is "non-demiurgic generation."⁽¹³⁾

But who can fathom this abyss, beginning thinking as a generation that is not a production, non-demiurgic? How is the "non"⁽¹⁴⁾ of non-demiurgic to be conceived, if Eleatic logic would have it that such a thing could only be nothing at all?

Here we can only follow Heidegger's lead. In the section 5 entitled "Für die Wenigen -- Für die Seltenen," Heidegger tells us:

Das Denken im anderen Anfang ist in einer einzigen Weise ursprünglich geschichtlich: die sich fügende Verfügung über die Wesung des Seyns.

"Thinking in the other beginning is primordially historical thinking [,and this] in a unique way: the self-accommodating accommodation to the essence of Being."

"Die sich fügende Verfügung über die Wesung des Seyns" is beginning thinking, thought beginningly, as generation itself; non-demiurgic, in that there is only one thing here, not a production of one thing from another, but the generated and generating are at one in generation itself. It is rather more like nature, which gives itself from the inside of itself and takes what is given back into itself, the giving and taking-back in original unity constituting the generation of it which it itself "is."

That which unifies the formula "die sich fügende Verfügung über die Wesung des Seyn," and so first lets it be seen as "beginning thinking" in the manner of the other beginning, is that which Heidegger calls the Ereignis: the event.

For Heidegger, the knowledge of the Ereignis is made necessary because we do not know what bears our history, ⁽¹⁵⁾ just as for Plato Socratic ignorance is made necessary because we do not know ourselves. Heidegger tells us in the very next paragraph in the section we are quoting:

Ein Entwurf der Wesung des Seyns als das Ereignis muß gewagt werden, weil wir den Auftrag unserer Geschichte nicht kennen. Vermöchten wir die Wesung dieses Unbekannten in seinen Sichverbergen von Grund aus zu erfahren.

"A sketch of the essence of Being as Ereignis must be ventured,because we do not know what mandates our history. We would like to thoroughly experience the essence of this unknown in its self-concealing."
 
 

3. Arete and Verhaltenheit

Now if paideia in Socratic ignorance as knowledge leads to arete, and if the paideia in the Ereignis is nothing but the paideia in Wissen as Wesen, as "beginning thinking in the other beginning," we can expect that the paideia in the Ereignis too would unfold its own manner of human comportment. Heidegger calls it "Verhaltenheit" in the next paragraph in the section we are quoting:

Wollten wir doch dieses Wissen entfalten, daß uns das unbekannte Aufgegebene den Willen in der Einsamkeit läßt und so das Bestehen des Da-seins zur höchsten Verhaltenheit gegen das Sichverbergende zwingt.

"Should we want to develop this knowledge [Wissen as Wesen], that would require of us the unfamiliar task of letting the will into solitary aloneness so as to force being-there to stand in its highest [i.e., most noble] behavior [, i.e. the one that is born in man precisely] in the face-to-face encounter with the self-hiding."

Simply put, Heidegger preserves the "not" of not-knowing by figuring it positively: man relates to the "not" by letting the will into loneliness and so forcing being-there to stand in its highest holding-back (loneliness) against the self-hiding. ⁽¹⁶⁾ It is "positive," in that thereby alone can there be "event," non-demiurgic generation; Ereignis is not "produced," but is originating in a beginning manner.

The Ereignis unfolds in its knowing, i.e., beginning thinking in the other beginning happens (Wesen), when man is so "suspended" that on the one hand the will is released into solitary loneliness and its stillness, and on the other, so comes to stand in a way that it is held in itself against the self-hiding. Such Wissen knows the nearness of the divine as the originary silence, and so knows the Ereignis as it holds itself back against the origin and lets it originate in word and works, indeed in such a way that it is it itself that originates in this way (Wesen). In the next paragraph, Heidegger tells us:

Die Nähe zum letzten Gott ist die Verschweigung. Diese muß im Stil der Verhaltenheit ins Werk und Wort gesetzt werden.

"The nearness to the ultimate God is [had in] silence. This silence [though is "generative," ⁽¹⁷⁾ in the generation that] must be set into speech and works in the manner of holding-back."
 
 

4. Eudaimonia and Geschichte

But the goal of paideia in virtue is eudaimonia,⁽¹⁸⁾ and if we follow the connection between Ereignis and paideia, and Verhaltenheit and arete, insofar as the turning of the whole soul and body towards the One gives birth to arete in the same way that the Wissen of Wesen as Ereignis gives rise to the mood of Verhaltenheit, which sets the divine to word and work, then "happiness" would mean as much as having one's share of Being in essential rightness. And Heidegger tells us in the very next paragraphs of the section we are considering that what comes to pass for the man mooded in Verhaltenheit is none but Geschichte:

In der Nähe des letzten Gottes sein -- und sei diese Nähe die fernste Ferne der Unentscheidenheit über die Flucht oder die Ankunft der Götter --, das kann nicht auf ein "Glück" oder ein "Unglück" verrechnet werden. Das Beständnis des Seyns selbst trägt sein Maß in sich, wenn es überhaupt noch eines Maßes bedarf.

Aber wem unter uns Heutigen ist dies Beständnis beschieden? Kaum daß uns die Bereitschaft zu seiner Notwendigkeit glückt oder auch nur der Hinweis auf diese Bereitschaft als den Beginn einer anderen Bahn der Geschichte.

"To be in the nearness of the ultimate God -- and this nearness may be the most-distant distance for the undecidability of [the question about] the flight or arrival of the gods -- cannot be calculated by [the economics of] 'success' or 'failure'. The way Being itself comes-to-stand bears its measure in itself, if it [in its coming-to-stand] is in need of a[n external] measure at all.

But who among us today has taken the measure of this coming-to-stand? The fact is that it hardly ever happens for us [moderns] to be in readiness for the necessity of Being's coming-to-stand or even to take the reference to this readiness as [pointing to] the beginning⁽¹⁹⁾ of another way of [understanding] history."
 
 

5. The Daimonion and die Zukünftigen

Now if we have caught something of the correspondences that ought to prevail when thinking turns from the first to the other beginnings, deconstructing in the process the metaphysics of presence and its residue, the "rational animal" of modern subjectivity, and so have come to see Wissen as Wesen, Ereignis in Verhaltenheit and its Geschichte, which is to say, paideia in Socratic ignorance as arete and its happiness, we should also be in a position to see how it is that for the Platonic tradition, it is Socratic ignorance, as self-knowledge, that brings about the "life" of the daimon.⁽²⁰⁾ That is, what is "born" in ignorance is the life of that self that Plato called by the name of the "daimonion."⁽²¹⁾

What then is this that Plato tells us about, that it is that which is the intermediary between the gods and man, and "is" intermediary, in that it is that which mediates, "brings messages between," man and the divine (One).⁽²²⁾ Indeed, to this writer's knowledge, the nature of the intermediary position and the nature of the "bringing of messages" is not anywhere further specified by Plato as to what constitutes the intermediary position and as to how the messages are brought. If we are right, this is no accident, for this is precisely what would have constituted the pedagogy of the paideia that unlocks the aporia of Socratic ignorance that one knows oneself when one does not know.⁽²³⁾

Let us then try and follow Heidegger here. Heidegger tells us in the section 26, "Philosophy as Wissen," the following:

Wenn das Wissen als Verwahrung der Wahrheit des Wahren (des Wesens der Wahrheit im Da-sein) den künftigen Menschen auszeichnet (gegenüber dem bisherigen vernünftigen Tier) und ihn in die Wächterschaft für das Seyn erhebt, dann ist das höchste Wissen jenes, das stark genug wird, um der Ursprung eines Verzichtes zu sein.

"If knowledge as the preserving of the truth of the true ([i.e., of knowing] the essence of truth in there-being) is what distinguishes futural man (as opposed to the heretofore rational animal) and raises man to the power to watch for Being, than the highest knowledge is that knowledge that is strong enough to be the origin of something that is renounced."

Here we confront a not-knowing, a "renunciation" as highest knowledge, that becomes what it is about the origin of something that is renounced. The highest knowledge, that which preserves the essence of Being, is that knowledge which "situates" itself about the origin, "is" futurally there where truth comes to be true.

Heidegger goes on tells us how the "not" in not-knowing as the highest Wissen, this "renunciation," is to be grasped:

Verzicht gilt uns freilich als Schwäche und Ausweichen, als Aushängen des Willens; so erfahren, ist Verzicht das Weg-geben und Sichlossagen. Aber es gibt einen Verzicht, der nicht nur festhält, sondern sogar erst erkämpft und er-leidet, jener Verzicht, der entspringt als die Bereitschaft für die Verweigerung, das Festhalten dieses Befremdlichen, das solchergestalt als das Seyn selbst west, jenes Inmitten zum Seienden und zur Götterung, das einräumt das offene Zwischen, in dessen Zeit-Spiel-Raum die Bergung der Wahrheit in das Seiende und die Flucht und Ankunft der Götter ineinander schlagen.

"We certainly evaluate resignation as weakness and evasion, as loss of will; thus experienced, resignation is giving-way and loss of self. But there is a resignation which not only stands fast but first struggles and suffers, that resignation which arises as the readiness for refusal. This resignation holds fast to the strangeness of refusal, knowing in it the form that Being manifests itself as. The knowledge of that which is resigned holds fast to the refusal of Being as that which, intermediary between the divine and beings, grants the openedness in between them. In its play of time and space, the flight and the arrival of the gods and the sheltering of the truth in beings fold one into the other."

When one knows one does not know, one knows something that is "renounced." This renunciation is not nothing, not a giving up, but the highest knowledge. Such knowledge knows the origin; in silence, it fathoms the abyss, insofar as it is ready for refusal. Then one knows oneself in that one knows the deepest strata to be found at the origin of the self. Then one is, as it were, at the abysmal font itself, drinking of its waters. It is these waters that are what knowledge of the abysmal opens out. In the flowing of these waters, in the very play of time and space, the divinity and the truth of beings unfold one to the other. When the will is let into loneliness such that there-being is renounced, Being is known as refused, and man, holding fast to the refusal in silence, is authentically held out to the open future, opened out between the holy and beings, not emptily, but in the very play of time and space that is experienced as the flight and arrival of the gods and the sheltering of the truth in beings.

Such a one, "intermediate" between the divine and man, Plato called the "daimonic" one, which title belonged to one who knew himself in knowing that he did not know. If Heidegger is right, the resigned knowledge of such a one that knows that Being is refused knows the abysmal origin in watching for the stillness of the divine and preserving the truth of Being in beings as Ereignis. Such ones are the "futural" ones, those who, having the highest knowledge, stand in the coming of the divine as Ereignis, whereby alone the God is sheltered in beings. The futural ones, open between the gods and beings, are then the daimonic ones.

But all of this is very far from the beaten paths of men, as Heidegger goes on to tell us in the same section 26.

Das Wissen von der Verweigerung (Da-sein als Verzicht) entfaltet sich als die lange Vorbereitung der Entscheidung über die Wahrheit, ob diese noch einmal des Wahren (d.h. des Richtigen) Herr werde oder selbst nur nach ihm und so nach dem, was unter ihr ist, gemessen werde, ob Wahrheit nicht nur das Ziel des technisch-praktischen Erkennens bleibe (ein "Wert" und eine "Idee"), sondern zur Gründung des Aufruhrs der Verweigerung werde.

"The knowledge of the refusal (there-being as renounced) unfolds itself as the long preparation of the decision about truth, whether this can once more master the true (i.e. the correct) or will itself be measured by what is lower than it, whether truth will not merely remain the object of technical-practical know-how (a 'value' and an 'idea') but rather will become the grounding of the upheaval of refusal."

The kind of knowledge of the resignation of there-being, if we correctly follow Heidegger, unlocks the pedagogical meaning of Socratic ignorance, that one knows oneself when one knows one does not know. It is the abysmal knowledge of the futural ones, who know the coming (Zukunft) of the holy (Being as refused). Such knowledge, which Heidegger calls beginning thinking in the other beginning, is not nothing, but the knowing that knows insofar as it fathoms the abyss of the refusal of Being as Ereignis.

It is a very strange and unique knowledge to be sure, but Heidegger tells us that is the sense of "knowing that one does not know" in the section 35, captioned "Das Ereignis":

Die Wegbesinnung:

1. Was anfangliches Denken ist.

2. Wie der andere Anfang als Erschweigung sich vollzieht.

"Reflection on the away:

1. What beginning thinking is.

2. How the other beginning brings itself to completion as silence."
 
 

6. The "Ascending and Descending ErwV" and die Erschweigung

If we are right so far, that paideia in arete that turns the whole soul towards the Good in such a way that the one so turned can act ethically is the paideia that knows itself when it knows it does not know. In such knowing, the knower, as daimonic man, is participating in the life of the daimonion, which, as we have seen, means to say die Zukünftigen, those who, knowing Being as refused, silently stand in the coming of the holy.

The daimonion, understood as the intermediary between the divine and man, "is" intermediary insofar as it "brings messages."

The nature of the message-bearing is wrapped up in an aporiathat has come under the name of the "ascending and descending eroV."

Of the daimones, Diotima tells Socrates in the Symposium:⁽²⁴⁾

"They are the envoys and interpreters that ply between heaven and earth, flying upward with our worship and our prayers, and descending with the heavenly answers and commandments, and since they are between the two estates they weld both sides together and merge them into one great whole. They form the medium of the prophetic arts, of the priestly rites of sacrifice, initiation, and incantation, of divination and of sorcery, for the divine will not mingle directly with the human, and it is only through the mediation of the spirit world that man can have any intercourse, whether sleeping or waking, with the gods. And the man who is versed in such matters is said to have spiritual powers, as opposed to the mechanical powers of the man who is expert in the more mundane arts."

What is perplexing is the manner of the message-bringing. If we are right in following Heidegger here, the resolution of this perplexity is again a pedagogical insight.

Heidegger tells us in section 37 entitled "Das Seyn und seine Erschweigung (die Sigetik)" the following:

Die Grundfrage: wie west das Seyn?

Die Erschweigung ist die besonnene Gesetzlichkeit des Erschweigens (sigan). Die Erschweigung ist die "Logik" der Philosophie, sofern diese aus dem anderen Anfang die Grundfrage fragt. Sie sucht die Wahrheit der Wesung des Seyns, und diese Wahrheit ist die winkend-anklingende Verborgenheit (das Geheimnis) des Ereignises (die zögernde Versagung).

"The basic question: how does Being manifest itself?

Coming to silence is the circumspect lawfulness of silence (to be still). Coming to silence is the 'logic' of philosophy, inasmuch as this asks the basic question out of the other beginning. It seeks the truth of the manifesting of Being, and this truth is the glancing-allusive concealment (the mystery) of the event (the hesitating denial)."

Here, everything is already turned about, the paideia is already effected, and we stand before the mystery, insofar as we come into the silence, and so come to know the ascending and descending eroV, the event of glancing-allusiveness, the logos itself, born of the stillness of the futural ones who silently stand in the coming of the holy. Such ones know the mystery of the One in its abysmality, the daimonic ones, bearing the message of the logos itself. ⁽²⁵⁾

Heidegger goes on to tell us:

Wir können das Seyn selbst, gerade wenn es im Sprung ersprungen wird, nie unmittelbar sagen. Denn jede Sage kommt aus dem Seyn her und spricht aus seiner Wahrheit. Alle Wort und somit alle Logik steht unter der macht des Seyns. Das Wesen der "Logik" (vgl. SS. 34) ist daher die Sigetik. In ihr erst wird auch das Wesen der Sprache begriffen.

Aber "Sigetik" ist nur ein Titel für jene, die noch in "Fächern" denken und ein Wissens nur dann zu haben glauben, wenn das Gesagte eingeordnet ist.

"We can never directly say Being itself, precisely if it springs forth in a spring. Because every saying comes out of Being and speaks out of its truth. Every word and with it all logic stands under the power of Being. The essence of 'logic' (cf. SS. 34, note omitted) is therefore 'sigetic.'⁽²⁶⁾ It is in it that the essence of language is first grasped.

But 'sigetik' is only a title for those who still think in 'subjects' and only believe they have knowledge when what is said is classified."

That is to say, when the soul is turned about, the perplexity of the "message-bearing" is resolved in coming to know how the messages are brought, which is to say, to recognize precisely in stillness the sighting-sounding mystery of the Ereignis. That the logos thus comes out of the silence, then, says no other than that the "divine will not mingle directly with the human." But as now turned about, this means that the word "is" the truth of Being itself, that arises as the beginning thinking⁽²⁷⁾ of the futural ones, the ones who, in silence, hold fast to the refusal of Being.
 
 

7. GenesiV and Entscheidung

Now if we have caught something of the correspondences as Heidegger would have it, then we are in position to breathe life and meaning into what Plato calls jilomaQia, "instruction in desire (of knowledge)," of the Republic:⁽²⁸⁾

"Will it not be a fair plea in his defense to say that it was the nature of the real lover of knowledge to strive emulously for true Being and that he would not linger over the many particulars that are opined to be real, but would hold on his way, and the edge of his passion would not be blunted nor would his desire fail till he came into touch with the nature of each thing in itself by that part of his soul to which it belongs to lay hold on that kind of reality -- the part akin to it, namely -- and through that approaching it, and consorting with reality really, he would beget intelligence and truth, attain to knowledge, and truly live and grow, and so find surcease from his travail of soul, but not before?"

Here we are told in no uncertain terms that the course of the pedagogy in Socratic ignorance culminates in "living and growing truly," being incorporate, as it were, in truth and Being. The completion of the course of the paideia in arete then lies in a genesiV, insofar as it is there that one first begins to live and grow truly. But then that means that it is from genesiV, from ontological movement, ⁽²⁹⁾ that we can expect the resolution of the aporia of Socratic ignorance. The one so instructed is the one whom Plato calls jilomaQhV.

But nowhere to this writer's knowledge does Plato tell us explicitly about what we thus seek.⁽³⁰⁾

The possibility of ontological movement is wrapped in a possibility of non-Eleatic logic. As the Eleatics would have it, since only Being is, what is not Being -- and this would include becoming -- is nothing at all. On this showing, the perplexity of Eleatic logic is, then, that movement is ontologically impossible.

Again the way out of our perplexity involves the seeing of some absence in a presence if becoming is to be possible at all. But everywhere Plato treats of the Being of becoming, he breaks off at the crucial moment, his "wings" failing him, as we saw above, and he seemingly leads those who seek concrete guidance for the question of becoming into perplexity.

Let us again try to follow Heidegger here.

Heidegger in section 38, entitled "Die Erschweigung," tells us, in an eristic discussion of the aporia of finding the nature of logic in silence:

Die Grunderfahrung ist nicht die Aussage, der Satz, und demzufolge der Grundsatz, sei es "mathematisch" oder "dialektisch," sondern das Ansichhalten der Verhaltenheit gegen das zögernde Sichversagen in der Wahrheit (Lichtung der Verbergung) der Not, der die Notwendigkeit der Entscheidungentspringt (vgl. Vorblick, 46. Die Entscheidung).

"The foundational experience is not the expression, and consequently [not] the principle, whether it [be conceived] 'mathematically[-statically]' or 'dialectically[-dynamically,]' but rather behavior's holding itself against the hesitating self-denial in the truth (clearing of self-hiding) of the need, by which the necessity of decision arises." ⁽³¹⁾

As Plato would have it, the pedagogy in desire (jilomaQeia) comes to its culmination when the subject of the pedagogy begins to live and grow truly. As Heidegger, when the necessity of decision is seen to be born of truth as the need of the lighting of obscurity; which is to say, when man knows himself when he holds himself against the hesitating denial.

Everything now is turned about, and thereby the paideia is fulfilled. Decision is necessary because Being denies itself in need. Decision corresponds to the denial, joins it in truth, and so lets Being be.⁽³²⁾ But this is the genesiV that we seek. Knowing decision then is always already a knowledgeof the need of Being's denial, thus the very presence of that absence we seek in Socratic ignorance.

Let us try to follow Heidegger farther and look more deeply into the essence of decision. Heidegger tells us of its most lofty form in the section 43 entitled "Das Seyn und die Entscheidung," that it is to be conceived as a "beginning," indeed the one that first separates and appropriates man and God, and so is as the beginning for mortals.

Von den Göttern gebraucht, durch diese Erhöhung zerschmettert werden, in der Richtung dieses Verborgenen müssen wir das Wesen des Seyns als solchen erfragen. Wir können aber dann das Seyn nicht als das scheinbar Nächtragliche erklären, sondern müssen es als den Ursprung begriffen, der erst Götter und Menschen ent-scheidet und er-eignet.

"Used by the gods, through this elevation becoming shattered, we must question the essence of Being as such in the realm of this mystery. [From such a vantage,] we can not then explain Being as apparently supplemental, but rather must grasp it as origin, which [as originary] first appropriates-to and separates-apart man and gods."

Heidegger goes on to tell us at the fifth paragraph down in the same section that man with decision thereby knows both himself as the "Da-gründer" and knows the Being of becoming in its divine temporalization. We will present the quotation, then seek further to clarify the aspect of the Da-gründung, which is where we believe the paideia that resolves the question of the Being of becoming, of "ontological motion," lies. The passage:

Dann rückt das, was hier Ent-scheidung genannt ist, in die innerste Wesensmitte des Seyns selbst und hat dann nichts mit dem gemein, was wir das Treffen einer Wahl und dergleichen heißen, sondern sagt: Das Auseinandertreten selbst, was scheidet und im Scheiden erst in das Spiel kommen läßt die Er-eignung eben dieses im Auseinander Offenen als der Lichtung für das Sichverbergende und noch Un-entschiedene, die Zugehörigkeit des Menschen zum Seyns als des Gründers seiner Wahrheit und die Zugewiesenheit des Seyns in die Zeit des letzten Gottes.

"What is here called de-cision then [as appropriating-to and separating-apart] moves into the most-inward center of the essence of Being itself and has nothing at all to do with what we call running up against choices and the like. Rather, it says: stepping-out-of-one-another itself, that which divides, and [it is] in the divide, [wherein is] first let into play [what is] ones own[:] precisely this[ appropriating-to and separating-apart] opened into one another [, i.e.,] as the clearing for the self-hiding and still un-decidable, [herein, wherein] man belongs to Being as the grounder of the truth of Being and Being is referred to the temporality of the ultimate God."

The open "moves" men and gods towards and away from each other, and is decision, insofar as man knows himself as the Da-gründer, and insofar as Being is referred to the temporality of the ultimate God. But this decision is none other than the becoming we seek in "living and growing truly"; what Heidegger calls decision, is the paideia in genesiV that is called jilomaQia by Plato.

Just as for Platonic paideia in its diverse aporiai, so for the Heideggerian Entscheidung, a turn about is required. The turn is central. For Plato, it is wrapped in the glorious, if still ambiguous, "turn of the eye of the soul towards the Good"; for Heidegger, in the celebrated, if controversial, "Kehre im Ereignis," the turn of the truth of Being into the Being of truth.

We thus turn to a passage that promises to shed some light on this turn itself. In the last two paragraphs of the section 44 entitled "Die 'Entscheidungen'," we read:

Das Wissen von der stetigen Bedachtsamkeit des Seltenen gehört zur Wächterschaft für das Seyn, dessen Wesen als die Wahrheit selbst im Dunkel ihrer eigenen Glut erstrahlt.

Die Wahrheit des Seyns ist das Seyn der Wahrheit -- so gesagt klingt es wie eine gekünstelte und eine Verleitung zu einem dialektischen Spiel. Während doch diese Umkehrung nur ein flüchtig-äußeres Zeichen ist der Kehre, die im Seyn selbst west und ein Licht wirft auf das, was hier mit Entscheidung genannt sein möchte.

"The knowledge of the continual thoughtfulness of those rarified ones [who let themselves into loneliness in order to say and to think the truth of Being] belongs to the power to watch for Being, whose essence radiates in the dark as the truth itself by its own brightness.

The truth of Being is the Being of truth -- said in such a way it sounds like an artifice and like an invitation to a dialectical play. Whereas in fact this turn around is only an external and at that unstable pointer to the turn, which manifests itself in Being itself and which casts a light on what we would like here to name decision."

That is to say, man is implicated in Being as "decision" whenever the truth of Being is once grasped as the Being of truth, which is to have sighted time as the very coming-to-stand of Being itself. Such is the "turn in the event," insofar as by that "turn" man "turns into," leaps back into Being. But such turning-into by leaping-back is not the discovery of some "eternal realm" separate from becoming but rather the coming-to-be that is the way that Being itself becomes what it is in truth. This becoming-being is not a flux, but rather the "decision" that holds man in while separating him from beings and the divine. And man comes to himself in such a turn about as the one who thinks out of the origin, as the one who has abysmal knowledge in joining the need of Being's denial in the necessity of decision, which is to say, as the one who, knowing that he does not know, lives and grows truly.

What seems clear so far is that Socratic ignorance as abysmal knowledge enables as Entscheidung and thereby brings to fulfillment beginning thinking in the manner of the other beginning.

Heidegger tells us of the nature of the bringing to fulfillment of beginning thinking in section 22 entitled "Das anfängliche Denken." If we are right, what he tells us is the pedagogy that resolves the aporia of ontological motion, such that becoming may "be," if thinking rests in the origin. The section in question:

Das änfangliche Denken ist das Er-denken der Wahrheit des Seyns und so die Ergründung des Grunds. Im aufruhen auf dem Grunde offenbart es erst und allein seine gründende, sammelnde und einbehaltende Kraft.

Wie aber ist das Er-denken des Seyns ein Aufruhen? Indem es das Frag-würdigste eröffnet, vollzieht es die Würdigung und damit höchste Verklärung von jenem, worin das Fragen aufruht, d. h. nicht aufhört. Denn sonst könnte es, das Fragen, als eröffnendes nicht aufruhen.

Aufruhen heißt, daß das Fragen hinfindet in den äussersten Schwingungsbereich, in die Zugehörigkeit zum äußersten Geschehen, das ist die Kehre im Ereignis (vgl. Der letzte Gott, 255. Die Kehre im Ereignis). Das Hinfinden geschieht im Sprung, der sich entfaltet als Gründung des Da-seins.

"Beginning thinking is thinking out of the truth of Being and is thus the setting-up of the ground. Its [beginning thinking's] grounding, gathering and containing power first and only reveals itself in resting upon the ground.

But how is it the thinking of Being is a resting?  Inasmuch as it opens-up what is most question-worthy, it fulfills worthiness and with that, the highest clarity of that in which questioning rests, which is to say, does not leave off. Because it, questioning, as opening [up in question] otherwise could not [come to] rest [since it would only then question ad infinitum].

Resting calls forth and names the way questioning finds its way to the ultimate realm of power, the belonging to the final happening which is the turn in the Ereignis. [Cf omitted] The way to it comes about in the spring, which itself unfolds as the grounding of there-being."

The "resting" of "beginning thinking," if Heidegger is to be believed, is the coming to rest in the open in such a way that there-being thinks out of the truth of Being itself. Resting in such openness, there-being opens to the power that gathers and holds. Resting in the power that gathers and holds, there-being rests in the origin. Such original resting in power and hold is the self, but not a static, substantial self as in the modern thought of the I, not a Wissen of essences, but rather as Wesen, originating in the power that gathers and holds wherein it first wins it itself.

In the immediately prior section 21 entitled "Das änfangliche Denken (Entwurf)," Heidegger tells us:

Das Erdenken der Wahrheit des Seyns ist wesentlich Ent-wurf. Zum Wesen eines solchen Entwurfs gehört es, daß er im Vollzug und in der Entfaltung sich selbst in das durch ihn Eröffnete zurückstellen muß.

"The thinking out of the truth of Being is essentially released in a throw. ⁽³³⁾ It belongs to the essence of that which is released in a throw that in its completion and unfolding it must place itself back in that which is opened in the throw."

Here we are confronted by a saying that thinks itself from out of an unfolding, insofar as it is it itself that unfolds in the unfolding. If we dare the direct comparison, the "opening out" ("Entwurf") in the unfolding, the "placing itself back in" ("zurückstellen") the unfolding, and the "remaining" as the unity of the two ("Vollzug"), the "originating thinking out of the truth of Being," is none but the genesiV we seek, as becoming a self, living and growing truly.

Indeed, as we should expect from Socratic ignorance as self-knowledge, Heidegger tells us in the same section that it is indeed the self itself that is born in "beginning thinking":

Der Entwurf entfaltet den entwerfer und fängt ihn zugleich ein in das durch ihn Eröffnete. Dieser zum wesentlichen Entwurf gehörige Einfang ist der Anfang der Gründung der im Entwurf errungenen Wahrheit.

"The essential release in the throw unfolds the thrower and instantaneously catches the thrower in that which is opened through the throw. This being-caught, that belongs to the essential release in the throw, is the starting point and provenance [the resting in the beginning originatively,] of the grounding of the truth that is wrested therein."

The "dynamics" of Entscheidungas beginning thinking, if we may call genesiV that, is bound up in the mood-structure of Da-sein. It is thus as it should be if we are to find in arete, surely a term that relates directly to man, that which, effected somehow by turning the eye of the soul towards the Good, enables man to live and grow truly. Heidegger in the section 5 entitled "Für die Wenigen -- Für die Seltenen" calls this mood-structure the basic-mood of thinking in the other beginning. He sets its structure forth as follows.

Die Grundstimmung des Denkens im anderen Anfang schwingt in den Stimmungen, die entfernt nur sich nennen lassen als

das Erschrecken

die Verhaltenheit

die Scheu.

"The basic-mood of thought in the other beginning moves about in the moods which only from afar let themselves be named as

fright

holding-back

awe before the holy."

What is central is the inner movement among these three moods. The inner movement Heidegger brings out in the description of the three moods. As we shall see in what follows, the movement is the movement of the "place" in being, the Da-sein, wherein Being is born, "truthed" as it were, out of the holy itself. Heidegger tells us of the mood "fright" the following:

Das Erschrecken ist das Zurückfahren aus der Geläufigkeit des Verhaltens im Vertrauten, zurück in die Offenheit des Andrangs des Sichverbergenden, in welcher Offenheit das bislang Geläufige als das Befremdliche und die Fesselung zugleich sich erweist.

"Fright is the return from the facility of dealings with the familiar back into the open of the impulse of the self-hiding, in which openness the hitherto familiarity proves itself as what is both strange and enslavement at once."⁽³⁴⁾

"Fright" thus names having caught sight of the abysmal workings of the holy as the impulse of the self-hiding behind the common experience of the blind trust of the everyday commerce with beings. In such fright, as mood, a will develops of itself to lay hold of the abyss and so draw near to the holy. This will is called Verhaltenheit. Heidegger tells us:

Doch dieses Erschrecken ist kein bloßes Zurückweichen und nicht das ratlose Aufgeben des "Willens," sondern, weil in ihm gerade das Sichverbergen des Seyns sich auftut und das Seiende selbst und der Bezug zu ihm bewahrt sein will, gesellt sich zu diesem Erschrecken aus ihm selbst sein ihm eigenster "Wille," und das ist jenes, was hier die Verhaltenheit genannt wird.

"This fright is no mere evasion and not the helpless surrender of 'will' but rather, because directly in it the self-hiding of Being opens itself and [in it] beings themselves and the relations to beings want to be preserved, there belongs to this fright itself its own most proper 'will,' and that is what is here called Verhaltenheit."

Of this Verhaltenheit, Heidegger tells us in the same section:

Die Verhaltenheit, die Vor-Stimmung der Bereitschaft für die Verweigerung als Schenkung. In der Verhaltenheit waltet, ohne jenes Zurückfahren zu beseitigen, die Zukehr zum zögernden Sichversagen als der Wesung des Seyns. Die Verhaltenheit ist die Mitte für das Erschrecken und die Scheu. Diese kennzeichnen nur ausdrücklicher, was ursprünglich zu ihr gehört. Sie bestimmt den Stil des anfänglichen Denkens im anderen Anfang.

"Holding-back, the preliminary mood of the readiness to understand refusal as gift. ⁽³⁵⁾ In holding-back holds sway, without setting aside that return [from the familiar back into the open of the self-hiding], the turn towards the hesitating self-denial as the essence of Being. Holding-back is the mean for fright and holy awe. Calling it a mean only expresses what belongs to holding-back originally. It determines the very style of beginning thinking in the other beginning."

As a mean, it moves between fright and holy awe, "moods"⁽³⁶⁾ man in such a way that the open of the holy is taken over by the will that holds itself back before the gaping open so as to let Being manifest out of the origin in the experience and mood of holy awe. This primarily happens for man in that mood, where silence prevails before the majesty of the divine origin.

About Scheu Heidegger tells us this in the section we are considering:

Die Scheu aber wird nach dem Gesagten nicht mit der Schüchternheit verwechselt oder auch nur in der Richtung dieser verstanden werden. Dies ist so wenig erlaubt, daß die hier gemeinte Scheu sogar noch den "Willen" der Verhaltenheit überwächst, und dies aus der Tiefe des Grundes der einheitlichen Grundstimmung. Ihr, der Scheu im besonderen, entspringt die Notwendigkeit der Verschweigung, und sie ist das alle Haltung inmitten des Seienden und Verhaltung zum Seienden durchstimmende Wesenlassen des Seyns als Ereignis.

"But holy awe is not to be confused with and even not to be understood in the direction of timidity [before the holy]. So little is that to be permitted that the here intended holy awe [is itself 'strong enough'] to grow over the [so-called] 'will,' and this [precisely] out of the depths of the ground of the unitary basic-mood. In it, that is holy awe, the necessity of still silence arises, and it is the letting-be of Being as Ereignis that runs throughout all that takes hold in the midst of beings and all relations towards beings.

By it, that is to say holy awe, there is released the necessity of silence. Silence means here: the silence that holds man in the whole of beings and the letting of man's commerce with beings manifest out of the silence of the origin, as Ereignis.

That is to say, in holy awe is named the drawing close to the holy that overpowers the will and lets man into the silence embracing all and preserves the silence's silent originating as such in all of man's dealing with beings. This holy awe knows the divine as Being's gathering power in and through silence. Heidegger tells us:

Die Scheu ist die Weise des Sichnahens und Nahebleibens dem Fernsten als solchem (vgl. Der Letzte Gott), das in seinem Winken dennoch -- wenn in der Scheu gehalten -- zum Nächsten wird und alle Bezüge des Seyns in sich sammelt.

"Holy awe is the way of the drawing close of nearness and the remaining near of the most-distant as such (cf. the Ultimate God), which nonetheless -- if beheld in holy awe -- becomes the closest of all in its beckoning and gathers in itself all relations of Being [the "world"]."

We now have gathered in outline the full structure of the "basic mood" that would correspond to arete in Socratic ignorance, if indeed they are to function to the same ends, i.e., to show how it is possible for Socratic ignorance to be divine knowledge. But if this is so, then it becomes possible to ask why it is that the class of citizens to which the philosopher-kings belonged was called the class of the "Guardians," but not by another name.

Heidegger tells us, again in the same section we are considering:

Die Verhaltenheit, die stimmende Mitte des Erschreckens und der Scheu, der Grundzug der Grundstimmung, in ihr stimmt sich das Da-sein auf die Stille des Vorbeigangs des letzten Gottes. Schaffend in dieser Grundstimmung des Da-seins wird der Mensch zum Wächter für diese Stille.

"Holding-back, the mooding mean of fright and holy awe, the ground-movement of the basic mood, in it [, the ground "moves" such that] there-being moods itself upon the stillness of the passing by of the ultimate God. Man, creating in this basic-mood of there-being, becomes the Guardian for this stillness."⁽³⁷⁾
 
 

8. EroV and das Unseiende

Now if the foregoing is strange and unique in the ways that the "not" is preserved in the sense of beginning thinking as abysmal knowledge, we should already have accustomed ourselves to the unfamiliar twists of reasoning and so not be too surprised to again find that we are confronted with an aporia involving a "negation," this time the aporia that arises when one asks what kind of "not" it is that those who don't know they don't know possess, if it is patently absurd that the negation of a negation here could not then be something positive, which is what Eleatic logic would require of it.⁽³⁸⁾ That is, if once genesis is seen in Socratic ignorance, it is genesis that, in a reflection from it, first lights up the meaning of eros. Erosis what genesis is not, or to say the same, eros is not yet genesis, for striving itself (eros), when seen from the perspective of the negation of Socratic ignorance as what it is not, is surely not "knowledge."

How then to resolve this aporia that two negatives do not make a positive, what is the form of the negation of negation, of double negation, that lets eros be seen in return from Socratic ignorance without it thereby being knowledge? To this writer's knowledge, Plato tells us most explicitly about what we seek in the Symposium at 202a, where he tells us how it is that those who, seen from the perspective of Socratic knowledge, are those who, on the way to Socratic knowledge, are called by no other name than "lovers." "Love," he tells us there, is "intermediate" between beauty and ugliness just as one who does not know, but seeks, is intermediate between knowledge and ignorance, occupying a middle position whose place is not filled by a mere privation. But so far as this writer knows, just how this middle, apparently excluded by Eleatic logic, is to be thought is nowhere further explained in conceptual terms than to say at 206 e4-5 that this "intermediate" love is a "longing not for the beautiful itself, but for the conception and generation that the beautiful effects."

With the section we are about to cite, we move into the very center of the obscurity of the thinking of the nothing itself that is to provide the pedagogy that resolves this and the foregoing aporiai.⁽³⁹⁾

We offer here a translation of the polemical section 47 entitled "Das Wesen der Entscheidung: Sein oder Nichtsein," which sheds light on the inner nature of the double negation in relation to Socratic ignorance and on the negation in Socratic ignorance itself, insofar as its negativity is not nothing at all. The section is polemical, in that the "Vorblick" sets into the form of the questionable precisely what, when seen as not in question, grants the starting points that, as such, are not in question. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

Das Wesen der Entscheidung: Sein oder Nichtsein kann nur aus ihrer wesentlichen Wesung her bestimmt werden. Entscheidung ist Entscheidung zwischen Entweder -- Oder. Aber damit wird ja schon das Entscheidungshafte vorweggenommen. Woher das Entweder -- Oder? Woher dieses: nur dieses oder nur dieses? Woher die Unumgänglichkeit des so oder so? Bleibt nicht das dritte, Die Gleichgültigkeit? Aber hier im Äußersten nicht möglich.

Was ist hier das Äusserste: Sein oder Nichtsein und zwar nicht das Sein von irgend einem Seienden, etwa des Menschen, sondern Wesung des Seins oder?

Warum kommt es hier zum Entweder -- Oder?

Die Gleichgültigkeit wäre nur das Sein des Unseienden, nur das höhere Nichts.

Denn "Sein" meint hier nicht an sich Vorhandensein, und Nichtsein meint hier nicht: völliges Verschwinden, sondern Nichtsein als eine Art des Seins: Seiend und doch nicht; und ebenso Sein: nichthaft und doch gerade Seiend.

Dieses in die Wesung des Seins zurückgenommen, verlangt die Einsicht in die Zugehörigkeit des Nichts zum Sein, und erst so bekommt das Entweder -- oder seine Schärfe und seinen Ursprung.

Weil das Seyn nichthaft, braucht es zum Beständnis seiner Wahrheit das Bestehen des Nicht und damit zugleich das Gegenalles Nichtige, das Unseiende.

Aus der wesenhaften Nichtigkeit des Seins (Kehre) ergibt sich, daß es jenes verlangt und braucht, was vom Da-sein her als Entweder -- Oder sich zeigt, das Eine oder das Andere, und nur sie.

Die wesentliche Wesung der Entscheidung ist Zusprung zur Entscheidung oder die Gleichgultigkeit; also nicht der Entzug und nicht die Zerstörung.

Die Gleichgültigkeit als das Nichtentscheiden.

Die Entscheidung geht ursprünglich darüber, ob Entscheidung oder Nichtentscheidung.

Entscheidung aber ist, sich vor das Entweder -- Oder Bringen, und damit ist schon Entschiedenheit, weil hier schon zugehörigkeit zum Ereignis.

Die Entscheidung über die Entscheidung (Kehre). Keine Reflexion, sondern das Gegenteil davon: über die Entscheidung, d.h. schon wissen das Ereignis.

Entscheidung und Frage; Frage als ursprünglicher: das Wesen der Wahrheit zur Entscheidung stellen. Wahrheit selbst aber schon dasZuentscheidende schlechthin.

"The essence of decision: to be or not to be -- can only be determined from out of its essence. Decision is decision between either -- or. But thereby indeed the nature of the decisive is already taken in advance. What grounds are there for the either -- or? What grounds for: only this or only this? Whence the indispensability of the in one way or another? Isn't there a third, indifference? But here in most extreme reflection this is not 'a possible option.'

What is here the most extreme: to be or not to be. Indeed, we are not concerned here about the Being of any single being, even man, but rather [the most extreme:] the essence of Being --or?

Why does it come down here to the either -- or?

Indifference could only be the higher nothing, only the Being of non-being.

Then 'Being' does not here mean the present at hand and non-being does not mean: complete disappearance, rather, non-being is a way of Being: it is something yet at the same time not; and likewise for Being: nihilating and yet immediately something that is.

Taking this back to the essence of Being demands an insight into the belonging of the nihilating to Being and from this insight the either -- or receives both its sharpness as well as its origin.

Because Being has the character of the "no," it needs the subsistence of the 'no' for it to subsist in its truth. Therewith, the 'no' shows itself simultaneously as the opposite to all that nihilates, non-being.

Out of the essential nihilating of Being (the turn) there arises of itself that there is both the demand for servitude as well as the taking into service of what shows itself in there-being as the either -- or, the one or the other, and only it

The way that decision essentially manifests itself is to spring forth into decision or indifference; thus [non-being is] not withdrawaland not destruction.

In-difference as not-deciding.

Decision spans originally the poles of to decide or not to decide.

But decision is already decidedness in bringing itself before the either -- or, because here already the belonging to the Ereignis.

The decision about decision (the turn). It is not a reflection, rather the opposite of it: about the decision, i.e., already knowing the Ereignis.

Decision and questioning; questioning is more original: to put to decision the essence of truth. Truth itself then however is that which is to be decided purely and simply."

We give a partial outline here of the non-Eleatic logic of the nothing that is at work here at the center of Heidegger's thought. There are two "kinds" of nothing that belong together as complements. The "nihilating" and its complement, what nihilating is not. The former, however, is the nihilating of Being, glimpsed in the turn in the Ereignis. The latter its negation. If what is glimpsed in the former is called Entscheidung, as the open middle wherein the gods and man play out of the open in that they are there first given to each other and held apart, then its complement is properly to be called in-difference. The latter, as in-difference, however, can only be seen from the former. If Socratic ignorance as genesis is "decision," and double ignorance is "not-deciding," the not of this "not-deciding," in-difference, tells us what the nature of what is neither single nor double ignorance is like seen from the perspective of Socratic knowledge. The lovers then would be those who were no longer in double ignorance, but knew they did not know, but did not know what they did not know. They would then be between in-difference and decision, longing, as it were, to find decision, to conceive in the beautiful.

1. Aristotle too knew of the difficulty of this very puzzle in the way that he, in the face of the question of the relation of the good to virtue, apparently discounted the question in "universal" terms in favor of an analysis in terms of the practical good for man in the Nicomachean Ethics, 1096 b32-35.

2. The "sun analogy" is found, of course, at the end of book 6 of the Republic, 506 d7ff.

3. The similarity (one can only wonder if it is accidental) to a Zen koan (e.g., "the sound of one hand clapping") is unmistakable in the paradox of Socratic knowledge.

4. The Eleatics would have it that Being alone "is" and that therefore not Being simply is nothing at all. See Kirk, Raven and Schofield, "Parmenides of Elea," and particularly the "Didactic Poem," in The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 239-263. Also compare the Sophist, "But my young friend, when we were your age the great Parmenides from beginning to end testified against this, telling us what he also said in his poem, 'never shall this be proved -- that things that are not are, but do thou, in thy inquiry, hold back thy thought from this way'" (237a).

5. If one can somehow do so, wouldn't one then by one means or another have to refute Zeno's paradoxes, by showing that his refutations depend on the finding of a presence of an absence for their validity, and indeed permissibly so?

6. Die Fragenden haben alle Neugier abgelegt; ihr Suchen liebt den Abgrund, in dem sie den ältesten Grund wissen. "Those who question have abandoned everything new; they lovingly seek the abyss, in which they recognize the oldest ground." Beiträge, in section 5 entitled "Für die Wenigen -- Für die Seltenen."

7. In metaphysics, this knowing that it does not know could implicate a "higher" self that knows, hypostatized as itself a being.

8. Ignorance in this sense corresponds to knowledge of the finitude of knowledge. Its "condition of possibility," but not, as we shall see, in Kant's manner.

9. Indeed, as book 10 of the Republic hints (621b1), the very "salvation" of the soul somehow lies wrapped in the arete that corresponds to Socratic ignorance.

10. Rather, the celebrated "Sprung" is required, which cannot be calculated or described in advance but which rather first opens up in stepping into it.

11. Band 65 of the Gesamtausgabe is subtitled "Vom Ereignis."

12. In the other beginning, the truth of Being (Wesen), conceived as the clearing for the self-hiding, is understood as an origin or beginning, in the sense of a fountain or headwater. To think (Wissen) that beginning is "beginning thinking," Wissen as Wesen.

13. Unfortunately, at every point at which Plato is about to tell us about the nature of what we call non-demiurgic generation the dialogues fall into silence and one falls with them into perplexity. The Timaeus gives the much celebrated "probabilistic" account of the demiurgic production of the universe only after Timaeus tells Socrates that the account of a non-demiurgic generation is "past finding out" and even if ...[it] were found out to tell of ...[it] to all would be impossible" at 28 c3-5. And in the Critias, the dialogue itself abruptly ends at 121c just when Zeus, the God of gods whose eye alone sees how the noble ones have strayed from the true paideia, convokes the gods in his "most honorable residence at the world's center and overlooks all that has part in becoming, and when he had gathered them there, he said .... "

14. Once more, the correct resolution of the aporia of non-demiurgic generation turns about a "negation."

15. "History" as Geschichte has the sense of "sending" or "dispensation." Insofar as no man knows the future and what it may bring, we do not know what bears, carries-out our "history."

16. The radicality of Heidegger's "beginning thinking" must not be underestimated. In the extreme, one could even say here that there is "loneliness" because the One withdraws, but not as two separate things, rather: the loneliness is the withdrawal. In this "is" is the interface between man and the divine as a synthetic origin.

17. Cf. section seven below.

18. Euthydemus 279c-280a, 282a, 282e, 292e, 293a; Gorgias 472c6-d1; Meno 88c.

19. So different is this "happening" from all our usual knowledge, that leaves everything unchanged once it is gained, that we moderns find it difficult to appreciate that even readiness for it already involves the beginning of that "happening" itself.

20. Alcibiades I, 133c-d, 134d-e, 135 d; Meno 99b-100c1; Phaedo 99c2; Phaedrus 242c6; Theages, 129e-131a; Theaetetus 150e-151d.

21. The celebrated daimon of Socrates, too, partakes of the nature of the daimonion. Its uniqueness (Republic 496c3-5) does not lie in its character as daimonion, but in that it always only says "no." Cf. Proclus, who gives as the reason for this peculiarity that: "Socrates possessed this quality of liberality as regards good services to those who approached him..., he naturally required one [daimon] who would deter rather than impel him." Proclus, Alcibiades I, A Translation and Commentary, tr. by William O'Neill, (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965) 82.

22. Cf. the Symposium, 203a et seq. and section six below.

23. That is to say, as a daimonic man, Socrates knew he did not know. Such ignorance, as the starting point (beginning) of knowledge, is eu-daimon, in the sense of being full of the daimon. Compare Dillon, "It is noteworthy that Xenocrates makes a point of declaring a man's soul to be his daemon (Fr. 81), etymologizing eudaimon, "happy', as 'with one's daemon in a good state.' Plato does, at Tim. 90A, describe as 'a daemon given by God to each man the highest part of the soul, that is, the rational soul..." Dillon, in The Middle Platonists, 30.

24. Symposium, 203a et seq., translation by Michael Joyce.

25. If Gadamer is correct in Truth and Method, his "universal hermeneutics," and presumably that of Heidegger as well, is nothing but the attempt to breathe new life and meaning into the same question that motivates the inquiry into the verbum dei.

26. "Sigetic" is a word play on "Logik"-- sigê (silence) being the opposite of logos.

27. Compare the section 23 entitled "Das anfängliche Denken. Warum das Denken aus dem Anfang?": Was ist also der Anfang, daß er das Höchste alles Seienden werden kann? Er ist die Wesung des Seins selbst. ... Der Anfang--anfänglich begriffen--ist das Seyn selbst. ... Das anfängliche Denken ist: 1. Das Seyn aus dem erschweigenden Sagen des begriffenden Wortes in das Seiende ragen lassen. ... 4. in sich sigetisch, in der ausdrücklichsten Besinnung gerade erschweigend. "What is it about the beginning, that it can be the highest of all that is? It is the manifesting of Being itself. ... The beginning -- grasped beginningly -- is Being itself. ... Beginning thinking is 1. letting Being loom out of the saying out of silence of the defining word in beings. ... 4. in itself silence, coming-to-silence in most acute reflection."

28. at 490 b ff., Shorey's translation.

29. Strictly impossible, by the Eleatic prohibition.

30. Indeed it would seem that he tells us the very opposite, insofar as it is everywhere the case that the dialogues distinguish the desirability of Being over becoming.

31. To us mortals, Being does not show itself all at once, but rather parcels itself out over the course of life. Behavior's holding itself against such "hesitant self-denial" in the truth of this need, gives that necessity by which "decision" arises, in the sense of "generation."

32. As Ereignis.

33. Of course, "Entwurf" literally means "sketch" or "rough draft," but "released in a throw" better catches Heidegger's meaning, as the next sentence shows.

34. The reference to those bound in chains in the Cave (Republic, 514) is patent.

35. Here explicitly the presence of an absence is preserved as such.

36. As a "verb."

37. That is to say, the "Guardians" are not so much guardians of the state (as they are on the surface), but guardians of the truth.

38. Which is what the negation of a negation in Eleatic logic would give, in that what is not ignorance must be knowledge, insofar as two negatives make a positive. But that is absurd in this context.

39. That the pedagogy of the nothing is something esoteric is demonstrated by the dialogues themselves, which, although they do leave clues by which they may be resolved, everywhere break off in perplexity just at the crucial moments, and by the tradition as a whole, insofar as it may be seen, as Plato saw it, as doing violence to Parmenides, which means overturning Eleatic logic, and with it, the prohibition against the Being of not Being.

40. For Plato, these are the aporiai themselves, which must therefore be seen in the right way, i.e., the aporiai must be turned about. If we are right, that is the paideia preserved in and as the aporiai.