BEGINNING OF THE DISCUSSION OF THEAETETUS' FIRST ANSWER
ἀλήθεια is there. However, TO ala6dvea6ai, becoming perceived, concerns nothing else but ὂ φαίνεται, that which shows itself, so we have the equation: αἰσθάνεσθαι = φαίνεσθαι, becoming perceived = self-showing. Without further ado, Plato describes that which shows itself as φαντασία. This equivalence of αἰσθάνεσθαι and ὂ φαίνεται (φαντασία) is to be found in the dialogue at 152 c 1 .
We must beware of translating this Greek word φαντασία by our word 'fantasy' [Phantasie], understanding this as imagination, and, in turn, understanding imagination as a psychological event or experience. We cannot get close to the meaning of the Greek word φαντασία in this way. Rather, what the word here refers to is:
1 . Not any kind of subjective psychological activity or the faculty thereto, e.g. 'power of imagination', but something objective [Gegenständliches].
2. From what was just said one might suspect that φαντασία, while not meaning imagination in the sense of a mental comportment, nonetheless refers to the object of imagination, i.e. what imagination is directed at, the imagined, what is only mentally construed, the un-real as distinct from the real, as when we say that someone is talking pure 'fantasy'. But this is also not the meaning of φαντασία. Instead, φαντασία in the Greek sense is simply the self-showing in its self-showing, in its self-presenting, in its presence, exactly like οὐσία: what is present (τὰ χρήματα) in its presence.1
A φαντασία is e.g. the moon itself that appears in the sky, that presents itself and is present; this is something that shows itself. Schleiermacher translates φαντασία quite correctly as 'appearance' [Erscheinung]; only one must not misunderstand this in the sense of 'illusion' [Schein]. The self-showing is the genuinely Kantian concept of 'appearance'. This book is an appearance, i.e. it is something that shows itself from itself. This is the meaning of φαντασία.
At 152 c 1 Plato makes a further crucial statement: φαντασία ἄρα καὶ αἴσθησις ταὐτὸν, which roughly translated means 'appearance and perception are the same'. αἴσθησις is equivalent to self-showing beings as such (cf. Parmenides: τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι2). What does this belonging together consist in? αἰσθάνεσθαι means to have immediately before oneself, e.g. in 'seeing'. What shows itself belongs to perceiving. Thus αἴσθησις also stands for φαντασία, for the perceived as such. If we follow the usual practice and translate αἴσθησις as 'perception', also understanding this in the usual way as a psychological