Heidegger interprets Plato’s notion of the Good “as the idea of ideas… what enables everything else”. This ‘enabling’ of things, if Heidegger’s view is accepted, is for Plato a divine function that grounds human reality. The key difference between both views resides in the fact that Plato’s philosophy was entirely metaphysical in the sense that it did not postulate the existence of exclusively other-worldly entities –Plato creates “a transcendence within… immanence”, Deleuze observes- whereas Heidegger’s distinction between fundamental ontology and reality becomes blurred in the phrase just quoted. Plato spoke of the Good as the “sovereign of the intelligible world and the parent of intelligence and truth”; it is the cardinal Form, but it is a Form nevertheless. On the other hand, a notion such as “the idea of ideas” seems to extrapolate Heidegger’s vision of the “Being of beings”.

¶ 9:12 PM