truncated later, it is clear that this was perceived as the culmination of the dialogue. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Der platonische ‘Parmenides’ und seine Nachwirkung” [1983], in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7: Griechische Philosophie, vol. 3: Plato im Dialog (Tübingen: Mohr, 1991), 316/translated by Margaret Kirby as “Plato’s Parmenides and its Influence,” Dionysius 7 (1983): 6; John M. Dillon, general introduction to Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides by Proclus, trans. Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), xi–xliv.
The Herbert Marcuse Archive in Frankfurt holds a transcript (PP) of Heidegger’s 1930–31 seminar on Plato’s Parmenides (supposedly co-organized with the classical philologist Wolfgang Schadewaldt, although Schadewaldt’s actual role in the seminar remains unclear). The transcript has not been incorporated into the seminar notes published in GA 83, 23–37, and its authorship and accuracy are unclear, even though its tone is unmistakably Heideggerian. It gives a rather striking picture of Heidegger’s reading of the Parmenides. Contrary to the Neoplatonic interpretation, Heidegger here puts the weight on the second hypothesis (Parmenides 142b1–155e3), which develops a notion of a nonabsolute unity that does involve beingness and is therefore both one and many. What seems to particularly attract Heidegger is the discussion of the temporal character of such a unity: in the third hypothesis (155e4–157b5), auxiliary to the second and often regarded as a part of it, Plato’s Parmenides introduces an enigmatic notion of a mediating “instant” (to exaiphnēs) that is in transition (metabolē) between unity and plurality, static presence and becoming, identity and otherness. Heidegger quickly assimilates the Platonic instant to his own notion of Augenblick, going so far (according to the transcript) as to declare the third hypothesis to be “the most profound point to which Western metaphysics has ever advanced” (PP, 15). For Heidegger, the main outcome of the Parmenides seems to be the realization that in order for there to be a unifying “one-over-many” in the sense of the Platonic Idea, this unity cannot be conceived in the manner of a simple determinate entity. Rather, the unifying unity must be able to accommodate contrary attributes: unity and multiplicity, being and nonbeing, self-identity and difference from self, static presence and becoming. “Maximal truth has been attained when appearance and nonbeing have been included within truth and being. [.╯ .╯ .] Thereby the question of being has been transformed [. . .]” (PP, 24). In other words, the Idea must be comprehended as something radically different from particular determinate beings, and this comprehension involves temporality, a specific kind of temporal present that is not simply present, not simply a “now,” but rather precisely a complicated present in which presence in the sense of identity and staticity intertwines with nonpresence in the sense of multiplicity and becoming. However, if this was indeed Heidegger’s conclusion in the seminar, the fact that Heidegger did not later systematically return to the Parmenides suggests that he is hesitant about this reading and remains as perplexed by the enigmatic dialogue as most other interpreters. In a remark in a 1941–42 seminar (GA 88, 328) Heidegger seems to dismiss the radicality of the Parmenides: “Plato’s dialogue Parmenides discusses the ‘hen,’ the One, because the Idea is the one and the selfsame wherein the essence of all particular things is gathered.” Georg Picht (“Die Macht des Denkens,”