‘WHAT SIMPLE DESCRIPTION…CAN NEVER GRASP’: HEIDEGGER AND THE PLATO OF MYTH A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Megan Halteman Zwart Stephen H. Watson, Co-Director Stephen Gersh, Co-Director Graduate Program in Philosophy Notre Dame, Indiana December 2009 ©Copyright by Megan Halteman Zwart 2009 All rights reserved ‘WHAT SIMPLE DISCRIPTION…CAN NEVER GRASP’: HEIDEGGER AND THE PLATO OF MYTH Abstract by Megan Halteman Zwart It is commonly taken to be the case that Heidegger is a bad reader of Plato. Calling his reading of Plato impatient, violent and coercive, critics argue that Heidegger’s caricature of Plato is driven by his life-long desire to deconstruct the tradition of western philosophy from Plato onward. I argue that this assessment of Heidegger’s unsympathetic Plato is itself a caricature. In an effort to mitigate this critique of Heidegger’s reading of Plato, I argue that Heidegger engages with two different Platos— one with whom he shares deep sympathies even as he is harshly critical of the other. I call the Plato who frequently evokes Heidegger’s ire the ‘logocentric’ Plato; this is the Plato who, in spite of his promising efforts, could never overcome logos or move beyond dialectic, and therefore sets the stage for the tradition’s overreliance on logos as syllogistic logic and propositional truth. But in his better moments as a reader of Plato, Heidegger shines a light on a very different Plato. I will call this Plato the ‘muthocentric’ Plato because this is the Plato who makes his points with myths, images, allegories and stories. This Plato erodes the preeminence of logos to make space for alternative Megan Halteman Zwart discourse and becomes Heidegger’s ally in his effort to re-describe hermeneutic phenomenology as a descriptive method that allows beings to show themselves not merely by means of the theoretical discourse of logos, but also by means of non- theoretical, alternative discourse including myth and poetry. In advancing this claim, I focus on Heidegger’s lectures on Plato which appear from the 1920’s to the early 1940’s, including his lectures on Plato’s Sophist, the cave allegory of the Republic, and the Theaetetus. In each of these lecture courses, I show that the traditional reading of Heidegger’s Plato has obscured his sympathy to the Plato of myth and allegory. These close readings lay the groundwork to view Heidegger’s later move towards non-theoretical discourse as a continuation of his early attention to muthos discourse in Plato, rather than as an abrupt transition. To Jane Bishop Halteman, who twice altered her career for me—once to care for me as a child and once to care for my children. ii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. v INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MUTHOS AND LOGOS.................................. 11 1.1. Introduction.................................................................................................... 11 1.2. A Brief History of the Terms Muthos and Logos prior to Plato.................... 12 1.3. Plato’s Use of Myth ....................................................................................... 20 1.4. A Survey of Scholarly Interpretations of Plato’s Use of Myth...................... 35 CHAPTER 2: HEIDEGGER’S HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ITS CRITICS.................... 45 2.1. Introduction.................................................................................................... 45 2.2. Heidegger’s Historiography........................................................................... 48 2.3. Attacks on Heidegger’s Plato......................................................................... 51 2.4. Gadamer on Heidegger’s Plato ...................................................................... 61 CHAPTER 3: HEIDEGGER’S SOPHIST LECTURES .................................................. 76 3.1. Introduction.................................................................................................... 76 3.2. Heidegger’s Discussion of Logos in Plato’s Sophist ..................................... 80 3.3. The Phaedrus Detour..................................................................................... 88 3.4. Plato’s Phenomenological Orientation .......................................................... 97 iii CHAPTER 4: ‘PLATO’S DOCTRINE OF TRUTH’ AND THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH HEIDEGGER’S INCONSISTENT INTERPRETATIONS OF PLATO’S CAVE ALLEGORY....................................................................................................... 113 4.1. Introduction.................................................................................................. 113 4.2. Heidegger’s Unsympathetic Plato: ‘Plato’s Doctrine of Truth’ .................. 117 4.3. Heidegger’s Sympathetic Plato: The Essence of Truth................................ 138 4.4. Interpreting the Differences: How We Might Reconcile ‘Plato’s Doctrine of Truth’ and The Essence of Truth............................................................. 168 CHAPTER 5: HEIDEGGER’S THEAETETUS LECTURES ........................................ 174 5.1. Introduction.................................................................................................. 174 5.2. Heidegger’s Reading of the Theaetetus ....................................................... 176 5.3. Commentary on the Theaetetus Lectures..................................................... 206 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 209 6.1. Amplifying the Attack on Metaphysics and its Consequences.................... 212 6.2 Muthos of the Early Greeks: The First Beginning..................................... 216 6.3 Heidegger’s Poetics: The Other Beginning .................................................. 228 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 238 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing a dissertation can feel like a lonely enterprise; locked away in a windowless carrel, working through dusty texts, one might get the sense that she is in this alone. I am very thankful to many people that this was not the case during my work on this project. I am, of course, grateful to my co-directors, Stephen Watson and Stephen Gersh who were always patient as I worked at my own pace, but who were astonishingly quick to give feedback and help when approached for it. They seemed always to strike just the right balance between offering suggestions for improvement and encouraging forward momentum. I am also thankful to the rest of my committee—Karl Ameriks, Gary Gutting and Gretchen Reydams-Schils—for their willingness to read my dissertation and offer helpful suggestions. I cannot imagine life on Notre Dame’s campus without those who made up my community of friends and colleagues; these were the people who were willing to trade ideas and commiserate in the library or over coffee, particularly Suse and Jamie Hebbeler, Joel Dodson and Maryam Zomorodian I am endlessly grateful to my family for all the help I received from them through this process. My husband Jeff’s quite, unwavering support is remarkable—from his willingness to follow me to South Bend almost a decade ago, to his commitment to working very hard to support our family, he has never been anything but helpful, patient and proud. I credit my children, James and Amelia, for giving me the sense of balance v and perspective I needed to finish this project. One cannot allow herself to become overly obsessed with her work if there are the pressing matters of diapers to be changed, stories to be read and towers to be built. I am also blessed with extended families who provide not only an emotional support system, but who also are helpful in myriad practical ways. I must say a special thanks to my brother, Matthew Halteman who paved my path in so many ways—from stoking my initial interest in philosophy as a high school student, to offering specific textual resources and general academic advice throughout my work at Notre Dame. I have remarkable parents and parents-in-law, Jim and Jane Halteman and Carrie and Able Zwart, who have selflessly shared substantial amounts of their resources with us, particularly their time, which has made the lengthy process of writing this dissertation possible. Special thanks must go to my mother, Jane Halteman, who has logged thousands of miles driving weekly from Chicago to provide the bulk of our childcare. Her endless energy for nurturing our children and the selflessness with which she rearranged her own career to make mine possible, are the greatest acts of generosity of which I have been the recipient. vi INTRODUCTION It is commonly taken to be the case that insofar as Heidegger is a reader of Plato at all, he is not a good reader of Plato. One doesn’t have to look far for evidence that Heidegger unfairly cites Plato as the arch-villain at the beginning of the history of metaphysics. After all, Heidegger locates in Plato the moment when ‘already at the beginning of its history, Western philosophy takes off on an erroneous and fateful course.’1 Heidegger elsewhere explicitly claims that ‘Metaphysics is Platonism,’2 an oft- cited equation that is taken to disparage