Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue

Topics in Historical Philosophy

by Cătălin Partenie (Editor), Tom Rockmore (Editor)

For Martin Heidegger the "fall" of philosophy into metaphysics begins with Plato. Thus, the relationship between the two philosophers is crucial to an understanding of Heidegger--and, perhaps, even to the whole plausibility of postmodern critiques of metaphysics. It is also, as the essays in this volume attest, highly complex, and possibly founded on a questionable understanding of Plato.As editors Catalin Partenie and Tom Rockmore remark, a simple way to describe Heidegger's reading of Plato might be to say that what began as an attempt to appropriate Plato (and through him a large portion of Western philosophy) finally ended in an estrangement from both Plato and Western philosophy. The authors of this volume consider Heidegger's thought in relation to Plato before and after the "Kehre" or turn. In doing so, they take up various central issues in Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) and thereafter, and the questions of hermeneutics, truth, and language. The result is a subtle and multifaceted reinterpretation of Heidegger's position in the tradition of philosophy, and of Plato's role in determining that position.

264 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 26, 2005

About the author

Catalin Partenie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the National School of Political Studies and Administration, Bucharest. Previously a fellow of the University of Quebec at Montreal, he has also taught at Concordia University in Montreal and held visiting research positions at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hastings Center in New York, and the British School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he was an Onassis Fellow. He has translated into Romanian Plato’s Timaeus (in collaboration), Critias, and Menexenus, and is co-editor of Plato’s Complete Works in Romanian (Humanitas). He has also co-edited (with Tom Rockmore) Heidegger and Plato (Northwestern University Press).