discover what, at bottom, is problematic about it. For this reason their questions and answers move hither and thither in seeming disorder. On the one hand we discover the much proclaimed self-evidence of being; on the other hand we find, stubbornly juxtaposed to this, that the way in which the proper being of beings is to be grasped from presence remains incomprehensible.
I would therefore like to quote a very striking example from a Platonic dialogue, the Euthydemus. In doing this I must forgo describing the situation of the dialogue, the interlocking and overlaying of the two conversations, as well as the course, content, and intention of the work. The relevant passage can be fairly easily lifted out and treated on its own.
Socrates recounts to Crito a philosophical-sophistical conversation between Dionysodorus, Euthydemus, Cleinias, and Ctesippus. In the relevant passage,7 Socrates tells of his own contribution to this conversation: 'And I asked Cleinias why he was laughing in this way over the most beautiful and serious things'. Dionysodorus now took Socrates at his word and asked him, according to Socrates' report: 'Have you, Socrates, ever seen a beautiful thing?' 'Indeed', said Socrates, 'many, and of many kinds, my dear Dionysodorus'. The latter: 'Were these (the many beautiful things) other than the beautiful itself or one with this?' Socrates: 'I was totally embarrassed by this question, found no way out (ὑπὸ ἀπορίας), and had to admit to myself that it served me right for being so uppish. Nevertheless, I replied to the question by saying that "the individual beautiful things are something different to the beautiful itself. However, in every one of them something of (like) beauty is present"'.
Here – in the crucial answer of Socrates – there occurs, and quite naturally so. the word that is important to us, i.e. πάρεστιν, παρεῖναι, παρουσία. For what question is under consideration here? It is the question concerning what beautiful things are. It is not the question of what distinguishes beautiful things from ugly things, but of how we are to understand the being-beautiful of these individual beautiful things. Being-beautiful (beauty) pertains to every beautiful thing as beautiful. But how? If beautiful things are different from being-beautiful, then they are not themselves beautiful. Or if the being-beautiful of many things is the same as this (beauty), then how can there be many beautiful things? Socrates' answer, i.e. Plato's response and solution to this problem, asserts two things: 1. that beautiful things are distinct from beauty. 2. that nevertheless, beauty is present in each of them. This presence constitutes the
7 Plato, Euthydemus 300 e-30 1 a.
[62-64]