simplest clarity of their relationships. In this regard, the everyday state of affairs by which the framemaker frames and produces frames gave a thinker like Plato something to think about-for one thing, this: in the production of tables the tablemaker proceeds πρὸς τὴν ἰδέαν βλέπων ποιεῖ, making this or that table "while at the same time looking to the Idea." He keeps an "eye" on [177] the outward appearance of tables in general. And the outward appearance of such a thing as a table? How is it with that, seen from the point of view of production? Does the tablemaker produce the outward appearance as well? No. οὐ γάρ που τήν γε ἰδέαν αὐτὴν δημιουργεῖ οὐδεὶς τῶν δημιουργων. "For in no case does the craftsman produce the Idea itself." How should he, with axe, saw, and plane be able to manufacture an Idea? Here an end (or boundary) becomes manifest, which for all "practice" is insurmountable, indeed an end or boundary precisely with respect to what "practice" itself needs in order to be "practical." For it is an essential matter of fact that the tablemaker cannot manufacture the Idea with his tools; and it is every bit as essential that he look to the Idea in order to be who he is, the producer of tables. In that way the realm of a workshop extends far beyond the four walls that contain the craftsman's tools and produced items. The workshop possesses a vantage point from which we can see the outward appearance or Idea of what is immediately on hand and in use. The framemaker is a maker who in his making must be on the lookout for something he himself cannot make. The Idea is prescribed to him and he must subscribe to it. Thus, as a maker, he is already somehow one who copies or imitates. Hence there is nothing at all like a pure "practitioner," since the practitioner himself necessarily and from the outset is always already more than that. Such is the basic insight that Plato strives to attain.
But there is something else we have to emphasize in the fact that craftsmen manufacture implements. For the Greeks themselves it was clearly granted, but for us it has become rather hazy, precisely because of its obviousness. And that is the fact that what is manufactured or produced, which formerly was not in being, now "is." It "is." We understand this "is." We do not think very much about it. For the Greeks the "Being" of manufactured things was defined, but differently