THE IDEA OF THE GOOD AND UNHiDDENNESS
sighted, the sight-able; it refers essentially to seeing. It does not hover around on its own, but is seeable and perceivable only in that viewing which as such perceives the visible, which as such forms and pre-forms the idea itself. The highest perceivable thing requires the deepest perceiving. The highest as well as the deepest: neither without the other. The idea, and especially the highest idea, is neither something objectively present nor something subjectively construed. It is precisely that which empowers all objectivity and subjectivity to what they are, by establishing a yoke between subject and object, a yoke under which they can first become subject and object. For a subject is such only when it relates itself to an object. This yoke is the decisive thing and is accordingly the first determination of what is yoked. The inadequate, indeed quite erroneous, conception of what stands in the yoke prevents the comprehension of the yoke and the definition of the yoked (commonly: 'object' — 'subject'; actually: manifestness, understanding of being).
§ 15. The Question Concerning the Essence of Truth as the Question Concerning the History of Man's Essence and His παιδεία
If, therefore, the perceiving of the idea constitutes the ground upon which man as a being comports himself to beings, then to the highest idea there must correspond a perceiving that occurs most deeply in the essence of man. The questioning which penetrates through to the highest idea is thus simultaneously a questioning down into the deepest perceiving possible for man as an existing being, a questioning of the history of man's essence that aims at understanding what empowers being and unhiddenness. We have followed this question of the history of man's essence in our interpretation of the cave allegory, and we have seen that it is a quite definite occurrence with quite definite stages and transitions.
What Plato says in the Seventh Letter (344 b 3) has precisely the same meaning. Only when this whole path of liberation has been traversed in all its stages, with full commitment to inquiry and investigation, does there occur the flash and illumination of understanding:
ἐξέλαμψε φρόνησις περὶ ἕκαστον καὶ νοῦς, συντείνων ὅτι μάλιστ᾽ εἰς δύναμιν ἀνθρωπίνην (344 b 7 /8).
'Only then is the perceiving of essence unfolded, the perceiving that stretches as far as possible, namely as far as the innermost capacity of man reaches.'
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