PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF TRUTH

be visible. The reflection proper focuses on the visible form's appearing, which is imparted in the very brightness of its shining. The visible form provides a view of that as which any given being is present. The reflection proper aims at the ἰδέα. The "idea" is the visible form that offers a view of what is present. The ἰδέα is pure shining in the sense of the phrase "the sun shines." The "idea" does not first let something else {behind it) "shine in its appearance" ["erscheinen"]; it itself is what shines, it is concerned only with the shining of itself. The ἰδέα is that which can shine [das Scheinsame]. The essence of the idea consists in its ability to shine and be seen [Schein- und Sichtsamkeit]. This is what brings about presencing, specifically the coming to presence of what a being is in any given instance. A being becomes present in each case in its whatness. But after all, coming to presence is the essence of being. That is why for Plato the proper essence of being consists in whatness. Even later terminology shows this: quidditas, and not existentia, is true esse, i.e., essentia. 'What the idea, in its shining forth, brings into view and thereby lets us see is - for the gaze focused on that idea - the unhidden of that as which the idea appears. This unbidden is grasped antecedently and by itself as that which is apprehended in apprehending the ἰδέα, as that which is known (γιγνωσκόμενον) in the act of knowing (γιγνώσκειν). Only in this Platonic revolution do νοεῖν and νοῦς (apprehending) first get referred essentially to the "idea." The adoption of this orientation to the ideas henceforth determines the essence of apprehension [Vernehmung] and subsequently the essence of "reason" ("Vernunft").

[132 {GA 9: 226}] "Unhiddenness" now means: the unbidden always as what is accessible thanks to the idea's ability to shine. But insofar as the access is necessarily carried out through "seeing," unhiddenness is yoked into a "relation" with seeing, it becomes "relative" to seeing. Thus toward the end of Book VI of the Republic Plato develops the question: 'What makes the thing seen and the act of seeing be what they are in their relation? What spans the space between them? 'What yoke (ζυγόν, 508 a 1 ) holds the two together? The "allegory of the cave" was written in order to illustrate the answer, which is set forth in an image: The sun as source of light lends visibility to whatever is seen. But seeing sees what is visible only insofar as the eye is ἥλιοειδές, "sunlike" by having the power to participate in the sun's kind of essence, that is, its shining. The eye itself "emits light" and devotes itself to the shining and in this way is able to receive and apprehend whatever appears. In terms of what is at stake, the image signifies a relationship that Plato expresses as follows (VI, 508 e I ff.): τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ τὴν ἀλήθειαν παρέχον τοῖς γιγνωσκομένοις καὶ τῷ γιγνώσκοντι τὴν δύναμιν ἀποδιδὸν τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέαν φάθι εἶναι. "Thus what provides unhiddenness to

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