Plato on Being

1. Plato believed that ________________________________________________________________________________ All particular things that _________ partake of this “form” Plato on Being

2. If I asked you to draw a circle, you’d draw a circle. • However, this circle as Plato would say is not ever going to be perfect no matter how hard we try • Even if this is computer generated… • So the question then becomes, _______________ ________________________________? • Plato answer to this was: YES, there must be a perfect circle, which all particular circles copy.

3. Plato’s notion of this perfect circle is that this perfect circle is unchangeable. • You cannot erase it • It exists independently of you and it continues to exist even if you are not thinking about it • It is not even located in space or time • It cannot be pointed out or photographed • It cannot be said that it even existed at a certain time, it has no history

4. Though this perfect circle does not exist in time and space and is not visible, _______________________________________ _______________________________________. • It is the ideal circle rather than a material circle and thus more real than any material object • It is the purest form of existence • The ideal is the ultimate model for all circles

5. Because the perfect circle gives form to material circles Plato called it a FORM By “Form”, he meant the essence of any _________________ circle

6. Heidegger came to regard language as the ultimate reality. He appeared to be calling poetry the most authentic language and he in fact used poetry for illustration of his own ideas. Martin Heidegger

7. What is "being" asks Heidegger in Being and Time? • His answer was to… _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________. • Heidegger was very idiosyncratic. He indulged in extended word play, and employed his own spelling, vocabulary and syntax. One famous coining was Dasein: literally "to be there". Martin Heidegger: Being and Time

8. _________has no essence beyond what it can make itself be — i.e. no fixed nature or inveterate tendency. • Man alone has Dasein, and he cannot escape it. Nor is there anything more fundamentally human, to which he can dedicate his life. • The world is disclosed to us through and in Dasein: disclosed without mediation by concepts, propositions and inner mental states. • Truth is Dasein'sdisclosedness. ____________________.

9. In contrast to Plato, Heidegger argued that Western philosophy has been on the wrong track as a result of Plato’s “forms” • He argued that there was no difference in ______________________________________ • He identified material things (shoe, tree, human) as _________and he said ___________is that in virtue of which these material things exist Martin Heidegger on Being

10. “Being” he said could be best understood in time but not the time portrayed by clock time • _____________________________ • Suggested that we should think of “Being” as a _____________________________ • If we understand it as a verb than “Being” stands as a kind of background from which all material things stand out

11. Compare “Being” to something like light Objects are made visible by means of light, but light itself is not seen and is not itself an object If light is seen at all, it is by means of the objects it illuminates In the same way, “Being” is not itself a being, but it is by meaning of “Being” that particular beings stand out and become intelligible Consider the following…

12. As humans, _____________________________ ________________________________________ • We are not material things (like Plato believed) we are defined by future-oriented possibilities of “Being” • ____________________