THE PROCESS OF HISTORICAL BREAKDOWN

According to Heidegger, we must be very careful when we speak of Parmenides and Heraclitus as pre-Socratics. For example, to speak of Parmenides as a pre-Socratic or as pre-Platonic can be a value judgement as well as a chronological judgement. or we account Plato the greatest thinker in the West because his thinking has exercised the greatest influence upon western thought. However, to think of Parmenides as not having gone as far as Plato, and for this reason to be classed as pre-Socratic is about as absurd as saying that Kant is really pre-Hegelian because Hegel went beyond and further than Kant.

Heidegger does not think of Plato and Aristotle as the authentic fulfillment of pre-Socratic thinking. Though later and more influential, Plato and Aristotle represent rather a degeneration and falsification of a truer and more original and more authentic tradition. This falsification of the authentic tradition of being can be seen taking place in the thought of Plato and Aristotle in two ways, corresponding to the two aspects of being for the Greeks. The germ of this falsification, its possibility, was already contained in pre-Socratic thinking, as has been seen; and it is in this sense that Plato and Aristotle do indeed represent the completion and fulfillment of pre-Socratic thought. For the tragic ambiguity of the "presencing of the present," the "twofold" (Zwiefalt) was already present in the thinking of the pre-Socratics.

¶ 7:40 PM