OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
Greeks, to have something in "sight") either that they are, or that they are not, nor how they are in their visible aspect (ἰδέα)."
πολλὰ γὰρ τὰ κωλύοντα εἰδέναι ἥ τ’ ἀδηλότης καὶ βραχὺς ὢν ὁ βίος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. "Many, that is, are the things that prevent the apprehending of the being as what it is: both the un-openness (concealment) of beings and the brevity of man's course in history.
In view of this thoughtful circumspection on Protagoras' part, it is no wonder that Socrates says of him (Plato, Theaetetus 152 b) εἰκὸς μέντοι σοφὸν ἄνδρα μὴ ληρεῖν. "We may suppose that he (Protagoras), as a sensible person, was not (in his statement about man as the μέτρον) simply babbling."
The fundamental metaphysical position of Protagoras is merely a narrowing down--which means, nonetheless, a preserving--of the fundamental position of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Sophism is only possible on the basis of σοφία, i.e., on the basis of the Greek interpretation of being as presence and truth as unconcealment — an unconcealment which remains itself and essential determination of being, which is why that which presences is determined out of unconcealment, and presencing out of the unconcealed as such. But how removed is Descartes from this beginning of Greek thought, how different is the interpretation of man which represents him as subject? In the concept of the subiectum, there still lingers on the sound of the Greek essence of being (the ὑποκεῖσθαι of the ὑποκείμενον) in the form of a presencing that has become unrecognizable and unquestioned (namely, that which lies permanently at hand). Precisely because of this, we can recognize in this concept of presencing the transformation of the fundamental metaphysical position.
It is one thing to preserve the always limited sphere of unconcealment through the apprehension of what presences (man as μέτρον). It is something different to proceed into the unlimited region of possible objectification through the calculating of the representable of which everyone is capable and which is binding on all.
Every subjectivism is impossible within Greek Sophism since man can never, here, become subiectum. This cannot happen because, in Sophism, being is presencing and truth is unconcealment.
In unconcealment, φαντασία happens: the coming to appearance, as a particular something, of that which presences — for man, who himself presences to what appears. Man as the representing subject fantasies, however, he moves in imaginatio in that his representation imagines the being as object into the world as picture.
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