Abstract

In his reading of the Sophist, Heidegger unfolds Plato’s late thought concerning the dialectics of the correctness of statements. This dialectics is described as gathering into one genus and dividing of the same genus, as dialectics of the community of ideas, and as the being-able-to-bewith- one-another of mind and idea. Hence, Plato’s solution of the question of truth is dialectical. He looks at the ideas through statements and conforms his mind to the ideas through the same statements. Thus the question arises: If one and the same statement represents both the manifestness of an idea and the conforming of the mind to this idea, how are we able to judge, whether our statement conforms to the idea? Plato answers: If the idea of sameness is present in a judgment, then a thing is said as it is, i.e. it is judged to be the same with itself. This solution is both richer and poorer than the description of truth in the parable of the sun in the Republic: It is poorer, because it leads further away from unconcealedness or the truth of things; it is richer, because it unfolds truth as a relation to the whole truth in the community of ideas, not as a relation to this or that singular idea.