Research in Phenomenology

Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 95111

www.brill.nl/rp

Thinking in the Between with Heidegger and Plato1

Sean D. Kirkland
DePaul University

Abstract In this essay, I attempt first to clarify what non-metaphysical thinking as a thinking in the Between might mean for Heidegger, as presented in his Beitrge zur Philosophie. After determining this as the proper response to the self-concealment Heidegger sees as grounding the appearing of beings, I then attempt to show that the elenctic method of Socrates in Platos early dialogues exhibits something like the same dynamic. That is, Socrates attempts to situate himself and his interlocutors in a space defined both by the always prior appearance of what virtue is to human beings and by the inevitable obscurity or withdrawal in that very appearing. In so doing, I hope to indicate that something as simple and familiar as Socratic elenctic conversation, although a relic of our tradition, might if properly understood provide us today with one model for how thinking could proceed after Heideggers critique of metaphysics. Keywords Heidegger, Plato, Socrates, phenomenology, aporia Youve got to accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative, And latch on to the affirmative, Dont mess with Mister In-Between Johnny Mercer, Accentuate the Positive The In-Between has all the power always . . . Aeschylus, Eumenides

Introduction For the later Heidegger, it is Platos theory of Ideas that marks the definitive and fateful onset of metaphysical thinking. As Heidegger writes in a late
This paper was first presented in July of 2004 at the Heidegger Aussprache, Bergische Universitt Wuppertal, Germany, organized and hosted by Peter Trawny and Eric Sean Nelson.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156916407X169834
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essay, metaphysics is Platonism,2 which, on the one hand, entails that the understanding of the meaning of Being throughout the entire history of Western thought has been implicitly directed by Platos definition of what is as or . On the other hand, the statement seems to say that the works of Plato already exhibit metaphysical thinking. That is, Plato is a metaphysician. It is this last claim that I would like to dispute, at least in part, in the following paper. Surely, I would not be alone if I were to set myself the task of criticizing Heideggers interpretation of Plato, for there have been many scholars who have undertaken such a project. Paul Friedlnder questions the etymology and transformation of or truth as presented in Heideggers reading of the cave allegory.3 Gerhard Krger4 and Hans-Georg Gadamer,5 both students of Heidegger, contradict various aspects of Heideggers reading of the dialogues in their own interpretations of Plato. Stanley Rosen criticizes Heideggers claim to have uncovered a -based ontology in the turn to the Ideas.6 And both Robert Dostal7 and Adriaan Peperzak8 speak against Heideggers understanding of the Idea of the Good, specifically his approach to its status as , or beyond being. And this is to name just a few of the critics of Heideggers Plato. I have not chosen, however, to proceed in this essay by contesting the fine points of Heideggers interpretation of Plato as a metaphysical thinker. Rather, in the first part of the paper, I lay out as clearly and as briefly as possible Heideggers basic conception of non-metaphysical, or perhaps extrametaphysical, thinking, as it is presented most fully in his Beitrge zur

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M. Heidegger, Das End der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens, in Zur Sache des Denkens (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag,1969), 6180. 3) P. Friedlnder, Plato I (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1954), chap. 11. 4) G. Krger, Martin Heidegger und der Humanismus, Studia Philosophica 9 (1949): 93129. 5) See H.-G. Gadamer, Die Idee des Guten zwischen Plato und Aristoteles (Heidelberg: Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978), and Platos dialektische Ethik (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1983). 6) S. Rosen, Heideggers Interpretation of Plato, in Essays in Metaphysics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970), 5178, and The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). 7) R.J. Dostal, Beyond Being: Heideggers Plato, in Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments (London: Routledge, 1992), 6189. 8) A. Peperzak, Heidegger and Platos Idea of the Good, in Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, ed. J. Sallis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 25885.

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Philosophie. In so doing, I concentrate on the importance of Heideggers discussion of das Zwischen or the Between that both binds together and distances Beyng and Dasein, the two poles in the movement that Heidegger calls Ereignis. In the papers second part, I turn to Plato, hoping to show the fundamental way in which Plato not only experiences something like the Between, thus conceived, but thinks it in his presentation of Socratic philosophical method in the early dialogues. That is, I argue that at least the early Plato is a non-metaphysical or non-Platonic thinker in precisely Heideggers sense. I. Heidegger and the Between According to the later Heidegger, from Plato on philosophy has been characterized by two fundamental, mutually implicating positions. First, the whole of what human beings experience and what calls forth human thought, Being, has been understood exclusively in terms of the presence and availability of present objects to be perceived, thought, or manipulated. Second, this tradition has understood truth in an essentially propositional sense, that is, as the correspondence or adequation of representations, judgments, or propositions to a reality constituted by these present entities. These are the cornerstones of metaphysical thinking for Heidegger. And he hopes to think in a manner not limited to metaphysics, in part by questioning the ground upon which these traditional, metaphysical positions implicitly rest. That is, questioning a ground unthought and utterly forgotten throughout the entire history of Western philosophy, which nonetheless determines the course of that very history. To this end, Heidegger poses die Frage nach der Wahrheit des Seyns. The simple genitive here can already be heard to announce a radical transformation of the metaphysical notions of both truth and Being. For truth is no longer a relation extrinsic to Being, connecting independently existing present entities with corresponding propositions or judgments; and Beyng, now written with an upsilon, belongs to the movement of truth itself. Heidegger argues for this partly by identifying a possibility condition for the metaphysical notion of truth: any correspondence, or for that matter, any lack thereof, between thought and beings necessarily presupposes that beings come to appearance for thought in the first place. That is, it assumes a region of unconcealment, or a kind of clearing in which we find ourselves always already related to beings when we make a judgment or state a proposition

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about them. This Heidegger calls die Offenheit des Inmitten des Seienden,9 and with this phrase he emphasizes that we find ourselves open to and in the midst of the whole of what is, within which beings arise into appearance before us. Only given such an original openness could truth as correspondence between judgment and beings occur. For the current project, it is important to note that, thus far, Heidegger has not contradicted the basic insight of phenomenology, for this too asserts some such openness. Although for Husserl the objects of consciousness remain explicitly immanent, thus enforcing the transcendence or exteriority of what is, nonetheless with its foundational notion of intentionality, phenomenology at its very essence asserts that every act of consciousness has its subject matter as its intentional object. Here, in this relation, we see something of the kind of openness that the later Heidegger proposes, and thus, even here in the Beitrge, he can still be seen to share something fundamental with his own earlier, explicitly phenomenological approach. That is, the world appears to us to be thought not as an object to a subject, between which there exists by definition the possibility of a radical gap or separation. Rather, what presents itself to us appears in such a way that we are always already open to it, we always already have access to beings. However, the openness of this emergence or arising into appearance is only, so to speak, the positive moment in die Wahrheit des Seyns, according to the later Heidegger. In the Beitrge, Heidegger calls this positive moment the Begegnung,10 in the sense that Beyng and human beings meet or come together with the arising into appearance of beings. Heidegger then radicalizes this phenomenological or hermeneutic openness, by insisting on what he calls an Ent-gegnung, hyphenated to emphasize the ent- as a movement away from or out of. Indeed, Heidegger presents this Ent-gegnung as der Grund der Begegnung.11 That is, there is a necessary self-concealment or withdrawal that grounds or makes possible the appearance of beings to us. And for Heidegger, the entire history of metaphysics attests to this selfconcealment by its forgetting of the question of Beyng. The original emergence into openness of entities necessarily conceals itself or withdraws behind what emerges, whereby it is consequently forgotten in attending to the present entities to which metaphysically true judgments correspond. According
9) M. Heidegger, Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), vol. 65 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), 204. 10) Beitrge, 263. 11) Ibid.

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to Heidegger, any thought directed today at present entities in their presence fails to acknowledge that beings are what they are thanks only to a groundless and inscrutable movement out of non-being, which establishes a darkness or inaccessibility in beings qua beings. Heidegger then puts this complex relation in terms of what he calls das Zwischen, or the Between. He writes, Die Ent-gegnung ist das Aufreien des Zwischen, in das zu das Gegeneinander, als eines Offenen bedrftiges, geschieht.12 That is, the self-concealing movement into appearance by which beings become present before us tears open a place or a Between, which must not be understood as relating two independent entities, but rather as a mutually constituting relation between us and Beyng. Heidegger writes elsewhere in the Beitrge, da ein Zwischen zwischen uns und dem Seyn west und da dieses Zwischen selbst zur Wesung des Seyns gehrt.13 Moreover, this Between does not only belong essentially to the movement of Beyng, but it is equally as essential to us, insofar as it constitutes the da or the there into which human beings must enter and begin to think in order to become Dasein. Which is to say, in order to become properly ourselves. The task that Heidegger then presents to us is to think within the Between, understood as the place wherein the double movement of Beyng occurs and makes us what we are. To summarize, we must understand the Between, as Heidegger presents it, as what binds together thought and Beyng by the movement towards, which is the appearance or emergence into presence of beings. But we must also see in the Between what distances thought from Beyng by the movement away, which is appearances necessary and constitutive self-concealment behind the present beings it brings about. It is important to note here that, although openness or Begegnung is now troubled by an essential Ent-gegnung, it is not the case, as it might seem, that Heideggers thought is now wholly un-phenomenological. Heidegger is indeed calling already for something like what in his last seminar in 1973 he terms paradoxically a Phnomenologie des Unscheinbaren,14 but let
Ibid. Ibid., 236. 14) Heidegger, Vier Seminare (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), 137. For discussions related to this paradox in the phenomenological project, see Franoise Dasturs article, Phenomenology of the Event: Waiting and Surprise, in Hypatia 15, no. 4, (Fall 2000): 17890, as well as Miguel de Beisteguis The Transformation of the Sense of Dasein in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), Research in Phenomenology 33 (2003): 22146.
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us not understand this too hastily. What is called for here is still a thinking of beings in their appearance, but one that acknowledges the limit inherent in appearance, and an interpretation of beings, which acknowledges the limit of its access to meaning in the sense of the ground for their being what they are.15 Beings thought and interpreted within the Between are approached as traces of a movement into presence, wherein the region of unconcealment in which they emerge does not itself appear, and the ground for their appearance is groundlessness itself. I would like to emphasize here that, although Heidegger insists that Beyng no longer be determined by the presence of present entities, this does not entail some definitive turn away from beings toward Beyng. Rather, as Heidegger writes, the task is die Wiederbringung des Seienden aus der Wahrheit des Seyns.16 Non-metaphysical thinking would still direct itself toward beings, but would, in so doing, situate itself within the Between. In this brief discussion of one central aspect of Heideggers thought in and after the Beitrge, I have attempted to emphasize and clarify the role of the Between for Heidegger; and I have insisted that non-metaphysical thinking, as presented there, remains quasi-phenomenological. These two points will allow us, in the second part of the paper, to identify the philosophical activity of Platos Socrates in the early dialogues as an approach to beings that is non-metaphysical in precisely Heideggers sense. That is, I hope to show that Platos Socrates attempts to think in the Between brought about by the selfconcealing appearance of beings. II. Plato and the Between The early dialogues present us with Socratic conversations. It is my contention that these conversations exhibit first and foremost a method of moving from an improper to a proper relation to Being, with respect specifically to the issue of human virtue. This claim requires some clarification, and I would

15) Peter Trawny discusses die Wahrheit des Seyns in terms of the appearing of things and the call to think the limit in this appearing. He concludes his discussion, Insofern wir sozusagen die ganze Wahrheit verstehen wollen, drfen wir sie nicht nur einseitig als Lichtung, sondern als Lichtung der Verbergung begreifen, als eine positive Erkenntnismglichkeit also, fr welche die Grenze der Erkenntnis konstitutiv ist. See his Martin Heidegger (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2003), 94. 16) Beitrge, 4.

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like to begin with one of Aristotles assessments of Socrates, which are based on Platos character in the early dialogues.17 Aristotle writes,
Socrates made his central concern [] the ethical virtues [ ] and first sought to define [] these according to the whole []. . . . It is well-spoken to say that he sought the What is x? [ ]. (Met. 13.1078b1719)18

In this passage, Aristotle tells us that Socrates is concerned, not with ontology, but with the ethical question of how to live well, or how to live according to human , excellence or virtue. Nevertheless, his philosophical method proceeds by expressly and repeatedly asking his interlocutors to articulate virtue as it is, which entails some understanding of Being within the project of articulating the Being of virtue.19 If this is so, then it is fair to ask, how does Socrates understand Being in the early dialogues and in what way do human beings properly relate to what is, given this understanding? Further, Aristotle notes an essential aspect of Socratic conversation when he remarks that Socrates sought to define human virtue , which is usually translated as general or universal but means literally something like according to the whole. Socrates seeks to define, or , literally to mark the boundary of , what virtue is according to the whole. This is a precise and essential description of Socratic conversation as depicted in the early dialogues. For Socrates always attempts to bring his interlocutors to consider virtue or a virtue, not as it appears bound by and limited to the multiple contexts of their everyday lives, but rather as bound by the whole that always implicitly encompasses all of these contexts. To take one representative example from the Laches, an examination of that aspect of human virtue which manifests itself as courage, Socrates begins, Let us first attempt to say, Laches, whatever courage is (La. 190de), thereby directing the discussion toward the Being of the virtue in question. The warhardened general responds that there is no difficulty in doing that, and he goes on to state that courage is a willingness to remain at ones post in battle. The elenchus or refutation that follows is textbook Socrates, for Laches is

W. K. C. Guthrie, Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971), 3539. In the ellipsis between these two statements is a parenthetical remark about Democritus and the Pythagoreans. 19) G. Vlastos, The Socratic Elenchus, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983): 2758.
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then brought to see that there are many things that appear as courageous even to him, which either contradict or fall outside of his first attempted definition. Thus, Socrates implores Laches to try again, this time stating not only how courage appears in warfare, but rather also at sea, in illness, in poverty, in affairs of the state, and even in controlling pleasure and desire (191de). This illustrates the general character of Socratic, elenctic conversation. Socrates interlocutors are routinely shown to have mistakenly identified virtue or a virtue with its appearance in a specific context. Insofar as they make this mistake, Socrates interlocutors represent the everyday attitude of the many, which is always bound by the concerns of the task at hand and never considers the implicit whole. Socrates aims, with his refutations, to bring his interlocutors to see that the Being of virtue is not identical to any of these immediately graspable appearances, and he does so by making them confront the multiplicity and complexity of virtues appearances throughout these various contexts.20 The elenchus is thus the movement out of an improper relation to Being with respect to virtue. But what then is the proper Socratic relation to the Being of virtue, toward which Socratic elenchus moves its participants? In the scholarship on the early dialogues, it is largely agreed that for Socrates the proper relation, whereby one would think the Being of virtue according to the whole, would have to be, at least ideally, some kind of or of virtue. Socrates uses these terms indiscriminately when he draws what is called the craft-analogy with virtue.21 That is, when, as he often does, Socrates poses the question of who might be able to teach virtue as the various experts can teach their crafts, such as medicine, shoemaking, flute-playing, and many others.22 Given his employment of this analogy,
20) In her article, Le mirroir aux triple reflets, Revue de Philosophie Ancienne I (1986): 532, Marlne Zarader writes the following of the nonmetaphysical thinking for which Heidegger calls: La pense doit se transmormer: elle ne doit plus tre la saisie dune substance et pas mme lelucidation dun sens, mais la mmoire dune difference. It is precisely this recollection of a difference that I believe Socrates wishes to bring about with the negative or destructive moment of his elenchus. 21) Cf., for example, Prt. 357b, where, in describing virtue in its contextually determined appearance, the supreme art of measuring pleasures, Socrates refers to whatever exactly this craft and knowledge is [ ], making no distinction between the two terms. 22) See Ap. 20a-b, Euthphr. 11e-14c, La. 198d-199a, Chrm. 164a-166d, 174b175a, Euthd. 274e275a, 288d292e, Prt. 355e-357, Grg. 90b91b, 464b466a, Rep. I.341c342e. Cf.

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scholars have concluded that Socrates advocates some kind of knowledge or of virtue as the ideal way to overcome the confusion of the everyday attitude and achieve a proper thoughtful relation to what virtue is according to the whole.23 Against this common position, a position held incidentally by Aristotle as well,24 I will argue that according to the early dialogues, it is emphatically not by means of that we acknowledge and respond appropriately to the way in which the Being of virtue appears or presents itself to us. Rather, this proper relation to Being is achieved only within philosophical, elenctic conversation itself. A. Socratic Discussion and Openness to Beings Although, as illustrated by Laches above, the everyday attitude of is indeed always focused wholly on context-specific appearances, it is important to note that it is not for this reason cut off from or separated from the Being of virtue. Rather, for Socrates, these many appearances are by definition appearances of what virtue is. That is, in the various of the everyday attitude, the Being of virtue does indeed or seem or appear, but it does so in limited, context-specific ways. That this is the case becomes clear if we consider the fact that Socrates privileged method of discussion, elenchus, must by definition approach what virtue is from within the everyday opinions of his interlocutors. There is no attempt to ground philosophical thinking upon, for instance, intuitively grasped truths or indubitable first principles. Rather, Socrates merely asks for his interlocutors personal opinions on virtue, as is indicated when he tells Charmides simply, at the outset of their discussion, Say what is in your opinion [ ] (Chrm. 159a). From his interlocutors
also Alc.I 103a109c and 111a., where the comparison is less explicit, but still present in the investigation of who advises the on matters of virtue, as various experts would advise the well on technical matters such as building a wall or a ship. 23) For this opinion, see H. von Arnim, Platos Jugenddialoge und die Enstehungszeit des Phaidros (Berlin: Teubner, 1914), 14154; J. Gould, The Development of Platos Ethics (New York: Russell and Russell, 1955), 7; Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4: Plato: The Man and his Dialogues, Earlier Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 130; T. Brickhouse and N. D. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 9293; C. D. C. Reeve, Socrates in the Apology (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1989), 132142, and T. H. Irwin, Platos Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 6870, 7273. 24) See Eth. Eud.1216b2.

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original opinion and by way of variation and comparison with nothing but other opinions, Socrates hopes to arrive at a proper relation to the Being of virtue. In fact, it is this original immersion in that Gregory Vlastos refers to as the problem of the Socratic elenchus, for it has not been at all clear to Vlastos and many others,
How Socrates can claim to have proved that the refutand is false, when all he has established is the inconsistency [of the interlocutors original opinion] with premises whose truth he has not undertaken to establish in that argument.25

Indeed, in the Topics and Sophistici Elenchi, Aristotle also criticizes the doxastic immersion of such a method, but under the general category of . Aristotle claims that such an elenchus will never allow one to deduce the real nature of anything, since one does not ground ones demonstration upon or first principles of knowledge.26 What these critics all fail to acknowledge here is the quasi-phenomenological character of Socrates method of investigation. This is not to say, of course, that he employs anything like a reduction or an epoch, but simply that he understands the original appearances of virtue to relate necessarily to what virtue is and that he studies these appearances in the hopes of illuminating the Being of virtue. Thus, the starting point of Socratic conversation, I propose, reflects something like Heideggers Offenheit des Inmitten des Seienden as discussed above. That is, there is an always prior Begegnung of human beings and their world, or between human experience and Being through the or appearances of the everyday attitude. And yet, even if, as I have been arguing, Socratic discussion entails a kind of original human openness to Being, it is certainly not the case that ordinary are for Socrates already the proper way of relating to what virtue is as it is. As I stated above, the principal aim of Socrates elenchus is to enter into a proper relation to the Being of virtue, thus implying that the basic assumption of his interlocutors, that the Being of virtue is identical to its various context-specific appearances, is not yet a proper relation. But the question still remains unanswered as to what the nature of this proper relation is. Socrates does indeed show again and again that, in the context-specific appearances of virtue, what virtue is appears only in obscure, vague, partial,
Vlastos, 30. For the unphilosophical character of , see Top. 105b30 and 155b7, and for the claim above, see Soph. el. 172a15.
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or even self-contradictory ways. However, we are not thereby forced to conclude that Socrates advocates an overcoming of the everyday attitude by securing a universal and teachable -like knowledge of the Being of virtue. Indeed, in the first speech of Platos Apology of Socrates, there is a very clear indication that he does not believe such a to be the proper human relation to virtue as it is. For there Socrates introduces the craft-analogy in discussing virtue, and then explicitly distinguishes this from the relation brought about and maintained by his own privileged manner of philosophical discussion, elenchus. B. Socrates and Human Wisdom At this point in his Apology, Socrates is attempting to respond not to the formal charges facing him, impiety and the corruption of youth, but to the long-standing and pervasive slander of the many. As Socrates sees it, the many have for years mistakenly identified him with the sophists and at least some of their animosity towards him is a result of this misidentification. Thus, as one part of his defense, Socrates takes pains to distinguish himself from these self-proclaimed educators. He first introduces the sophists by praising their ability to teach virtue as a fine thing (Ap. 19e). The ironic character of this praise becomes clear when Socrates spells out in a bit more detail precisely what knowledge the sophists claim to possess. He does so by reporting a conversation he had with Callias, a man well known to have spent more money on the sophists than anyone else in Athens (Ap. 20a). Socrates asks him,
Callias, if your two sons were colts or calves, we could find and engage an expert [] for them, one who would make them fine and good with respect to their appropriate virtue [ ]. One among the horse breeders or farmers, perhaps. Now, since they are humans, do you have in mind some expert for them? Is there some expert in this sort of virtue, the human and political kind [ , )? (Ap. 20a-b)

This passage offers a typical example of how Socrates introduces the craftanalogy with virtue. It must be remarked that the analogy arises explicitly in the form of a question. Socrates asks if there is any manifest or expert overseer in teaching virtue, like there is an expert in raising horses or cattle. It is then Callias who responds by asserting what Socrates here poses in the form of a question: there is indeed such a virtue-expert in the person of

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Euenus of Paros and his services can be secured for five minas. Socrates remarks, I thought Euenus happy, if he truly does possess this and teaches it for so little (Ap. 20b; emphasis added). In his answer to Callias, Socrates returns Euenuss possession of this to a hypothetical condition; that is, if he possesses such an art, he must be happy. And this hypothetical is then colored by the strong sarcasm of the comment, and teaches it for so littlefor five minas was in fact no mean sum. Indeed, when Socrates later names a monetary penalty he could pay for his crimes, he offers one mina (Ap. 38b), which is the equivalent of one-hundred drachma, one drachma being the sum paid in fifth-century Athens to a laborer for a whole days work. Thus, one of Euenuss seminars would have cost as much as a daylaborers wages for nearly a year and a half. This is all by way of saying that in Platos Apology, the sophists are the ones identified as laying claim to a of virtue, and Socrates places their claim in a very questionable light.27 Socrates then distinguishes himself from the sophists in this respect, stating, Certainly I would pride and preen myself if I had such a knowledge, but I do not have it (Ap. 20c.). However, Socrates does not leave off here, simply stating that he does not happen to possess this craft-knowledge of human virtue. He goes on to make the more radical claim that a -like knowledge of virtue is not even a possibility for human beings. He does so when he characterizes his own relation to the Being of virtue specifically as human wisdom [ ] (Ap. 20d). He says,
For it may well be that I am wise in this way, while those of whom I was just speaking are perhaps wise with some greater than human wisdom [ ], or else I cant say what [it is]. For I, at any rate, do not know this and whoever says that I do is lying and slandering me. (Ap. 20de) The contemporary scandal involving the man Socrates chooses as spokesman for the sophists claim to a of virtue should also be considered here, since Socrates seems to be referring to it with the aside, for Callias has two sons. At about the same time as Socrates trial, a man named Andocides took advantage of a certain scandal in order to win a court case wherein the zealous Callias was prosecuting him for impiety. It seems that Callias had wedded a woman, then taken her mother as a mistress, and had had a son by each of them. Initially, Callias swore an oath that the son by his legal wife was his only son, but later he swore again that his mother-in-laws child was also his. Thus, Callias already reputedly sketchy character (cf. Aristophanes Birds 283286 and Frogs 428430), now specifically his unconventional familial relations and his untrustworthiness, would surely have come to mind with Socrates introduction of Callias as spokesman for the sophists. On Callias denial and then acknowledgment of his second son, see Debra Nails entry on Callias in her The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and other Socratics (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 2002), 6874.
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In the opposition that Socrates builds here between his own kind of wisdom as human and the of virtue claimed by the sophists as greater than human, one cannot help but think of the tragic theme of hubris. Whereas Socrates lays claim to a wisdom that operates within the essential and proper limitations of mortal understanding, the sophists press on beyond these limits and overlook what distinguishes mortals from divinities. This is surely not far from Socrates mind, as he moves directly into a discussion of the well-known oracle story, explicitly in order to call the god at Delphi as my witness as to whether this wisdom of mine is in fact wisdom and of what sort it is (Ap. 20e). In any case, what is evident is that for Socrates the proper human relation to what virtue is cannot be a -like knowledge of virtue, but must rather involve the recognition of human limits. The question might arise at this point, if Socrates advocates no such as at least the ideal relation between human thought and the Being of virtue why does he introduce the craft-analogy for virtue not only in reference to the sophists, as just mentioned, but repeatedly throughout the conversations of the early dialogues? The answer, I believe, resides in the fact that Socrates does not see himself as introducing the craft-analogy at all, but as coaxing it out of the presuppositions of his interlocutors. And this is not only true of Socrates conversations with the great public men of his day, but also of those discussions with young men, who represent the uncorrupted potential of the everyday attitude. This is to say, even the everyday attitude is characterized by presuppositions that entail a -like grasp of virtue. As is most clear in the Protagoras,28 but also in the Meno and the Politeia,29 the animosity against the sophists came about at least in part as a result of this everyday confidence. Every upstanding Athenian citizen thought himself secure in his practical knowledge of virtue or excellence and also in his ability to teach this to his children. For this reason, sophistic was widely perceived as an encroachment upon the domain of the average citizen.30 Given this, Socrates can be seen to draw both his young and nave as well as his old and accomplished interlocutors into an affirmation of the craftanalogy with virtue, because he knows that they already implicitly endorse such an analogy and even presume to possess this of virtue. And Socrates does this, surely, so that he can in turn demand of his interlocutors that they exercise a widely recognized capacity of the craftsman, the capacity
28) 29) 30)

See Prt. 319a325d. Cf. Men. 90c92e and Rep. 6.492a493a. Guthrie, The Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 39.

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to , or give an account of, their understanding and thereby teach it to others.31 Again, this is not because Socrates advocates a -like relation to the Being of virtue but so that he can expose a lack of any such knowledge among those who presume to possess it. The craft-analogy, then, finds its place strictly within the greater project of Socratic elenchus. C. Socratic Elenchus and Self-Concealment in the Appearance of What Is This brings us to a difficulty that has troubled many interpreters of the early dialogues: If there is no chance of ultimately arriving at a dependable, practical knowledge of virtue, can there be any real value in Socratic elenchus? Does it do any real good if it is purely destructive? In the Apology, Socrates gives a definitive and often misunderstood answer to these questions. He says, famously,
The greatest good for a human being [ ] happens to be giving accounts of virtue [ ] every day, along with the other things about which you hear me discussing and examining myself and others [ ], for the life without examination is not worth living for a human being [ ]. (Ap. 38a)

In this passage, Socrates claims that the elenctic discussions of human virtue depicted in the early dialogues, which accomplish nothing but the refutation of ordinary , are nevertheless themselves the greatest good for a human being. The qualification for a human being here seems to echo Socrates earlier description of the properly human wisdom he claims to possess. But then, is Socrates claiming that the highest height to which human wisdom can aspire is self-conscious ignorance? Not at all, if by ignorance here we mean a condition wholly oblivious to the Being of virtue, that is, wholly isolated in ones merely subjective opinions and cut off from virtue in its objective truth. Socratic elenchus does not bring about an awareness of our human ignorance in this sense, because it operates, as discussed above, always within everyday , understood not as merely subjective opinion but as the always prior appearance of what is.
This is clear throughout the early dialogues, as Socrates again and again demands of his interlocutors that they explain to him their craft-like grasp of the Being of virtue. But it is also clear in Aristotles analysis of in the Metaphysics. See Met. 1.981a12b9 and 7.1032a32b14.
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Rather than ignorance, Socrates preferred term for the condition that his discussions produce is aporia. As he says of himself in the Hippias Major,
Hippias, friend, you are blessed because you know what things a human being ought to practice and youve practiced themsuccessfully, as you yourself say. But Im held back by my crazy luck, it seems, for I am always wandering around in aporia. (Hp. Ma. 304b)

Let us consider briefly the phenomenon that this word, aporia, names. The word itself is an abstract noun composed of the alpha privativum and the noun , which means a way through or over an impasse. Thus, aporia is literally the condition of waylessness before some kind of obstacle or barrier. However, for anything to present itself as an obstacle, one must want or need to reach a destination beyond that obstacle. That is to say, one must stand already in a certain relation of pre-understanding to that which lies beyond the obstacle. If one were to learn that there is an obstacle along the way from the agora to the Piraeus, but had no desire to go there or no idea where the Piraeus was, this situation would not produce a condition justly described as aporia. One experiences aporia only if one encounters an obstacle when one is already toward the Piraeus, if one is already on the way there and knows it in some sense as his or her desired destination. This is merely an indication that the condition produced by Socratic discussion is already bound to or open to its aim, the Being of virtue. But if the Socratic, elenctic discussion that keeps Socrates always wandering around in aporia is the greatest good for human beings because it produces human wisdom, then it is this condition that seems to be the genuine and properly human relation to what virtue is. Furthermore, this relation is proper precisely insofar as it acknowledges the self-concealment of what is as it is, according to which virtue in its very Being both appears to us and withdraws from our grasp. I believe that this interpretation of the negative or destructive quality of Socrates elenchus reflects something very much like Heideggers Ent-gegnung, insofar as an essential withdrawal is established in the very appearing of the Being of virtue, to which we are bound by an always prior Begegnung. Thus, in the continuous striving of Socratic elenctic questioning, human beings can be seen to situate themselves within an original openness to the Being of virtue, but nonetheless all the while confronting the withdrawal essential to the appearance of what virtue is. Which is to say, in their investigation of virtue, they situate themselves within the Between opened up by the self-concealing appearance of beings.

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In this short discussion of Socrates philosophical method, I hope to have indicated the way in which the early dialogues of Plato portray a thinking in the Between in a genuine accord with the first part of the papers discussion of Heideggers Beitrge. Given this, at least the early Plato can be viewed as privileging a kind of non-metaphysical thinking in precisely Heideggers sense.32 III. Conclusion Although Heideggers Plato-interpretation is not focused on the early dialogues and, thus, is not directly contradicted by the above interpretation, nonetheless, it has been shown that Heideggers claims as to the generally metaphysical character of Platos thinking must be resisted. Another consequence is that we must contest Heideggers claim that the early thinkers up to and including Plato only experienced the pre-metaphysical relation to their world but remained unable to think it. That is, it seems that in the early dialogues of Plato we can locate more than strictly negative evidence for the withdrawal of Beyng. However, as I stated at the outset, my aim here has not been to produce a scholarly corrective to Heideggers interpretations. Rather, my aim has been to identify the Being-focused, elenctic discussion of Socrates in the early dialogues as a way of thinking in the Between, or a way of maintaining a thoughtful relation to the self-concealing appearance of beings. In this, Platos Socrates would present us with one model of the non-metaphysical thinking for which the later Heidegger calls. Simple, elenctic question and answer, focused on the Being of what it investigates, can perhaps be a positive resource for non-metaphysical thinking today, once it has been understood as situated in a Between drawn open by the selfconcealing appearance of beings and as itself the full realization of human wisdom, in the sense of the properly human and thoughtful relation to Being. Understood in this way, Socratic discussion may be useful specifically for staving off certain pervasive threats to thinking today, especially to those of us who find Heideggers critique of metaphysical thinking compelling. With
However, this should apply as well to the middle and later Plato to the extent that the philosophical discussion depicted there continues to acknowledge the withdrawal essential to the Being of what appears. Possible foci for the study of this theme include the dialogue form itself, Platos employment of seemingly to mark the limits of , the function of , the governing and bridging role of the Good as beyond being, and as a fundamental relation of human beings and the Beautiful/Good as it is.
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the recognition that the language at our disposal is inherently historical and thus metaphysical, thinking after Heidegger is subject to the temptations of both silence and nonsense, the cessation of philosophical discourse altogether and the attempt to generate a new non-metaphysical language. It seems to me that Platos early dialogues offer us a model for thinking in relation to what lies beyond the limits of metaphysical language from within, and I hope simply to have suggested that possibility. Furthermore, the early dialogues seem to me to offer us a model for approaching ethical and political issues within the extra-metaphysical thinking called for by Heidegger. That is, these Socratic conversations pose essential ethical and political questions in the Between, in the space drawn open by the self-concealing appearance of what is. This seems to open up the possibility of engaging political and ethical problems, without betraying Heideggers insight as to the limits of the metaphysical concepts that traditionally ground those discussions.