PATHMARKS

the essence of ἀλήθεια belong together and belong within the same tale of the passage from one abode to another, the tale that is recounted in the "allegory of the cave."

The difference between the two abodes, the one inside and the one outside the cave, is a difference of σοφία. In general this word means being astute about something, being skilled at something. Properly speaking σοφία means being astute about that which is present as the unbidden and which, as present, perdures.^a Astuteness is not the equivalent of merely possessing knowledge. It means inhering within an abode that everywhere and primarily has a hold in what perdures.

The kind of astuteness that is normative down there in the cave — ἡ ἐκεῖ σοφία (516 c5) — is surpassed by another σοφία. This latter strives solely and above all else to glimpse the being of beings in the "ideas." This σοφία, in contrast to the one in the cave, is distinguished by the desire to reach out beyond what is immediately present and to acquire a basis in that which, in showing itself, perdures. In itself this σοφία is a predilection for and friendship with (φιλία) the "ideas," which bestow the unhidden. Outside the cave σοφία is φιλοσοφία. The Greek language already knew this word before the time of Plato and used it in general [141 {GA 9: 235}] to name the predilection for correct astuteness. Plato first appropriated the word as a name for the specific astuteness about beings that at the same time defines the being of beings as idea. Since Plato, thinking about the being of beings has become — "philosophy," because it is a matter of gazing up at the "ideas." But the "philosophy" that begins with Plato has, from that point on, the distinguishing mark of what is later called "metaphysics." Plato himself concretely illustrates the basic outline of metaphysics in the story recounted in the "allegory of the cave." In fact, the coining of the word "metaphysics" is already prefigured in Plato's presentation. In the passage (516) that depicts the adaptation of the gaze to the ideas, Plato says (516 c3): Thinking goes μετ᾽ ἐκεῖνα, "beyond" those things that are experienced in the form of mere shadows and images, and goes εἰς ταῦτα, "out toward" these things, namely, the "ideas." These are the suprasensuous, seen with a nonsensuous gaze; they are the being of beings, which cannot be grasped with our bodily organs. And the highest in the region of the suprasensuous is that idea which, as the idea of all ideas, remains the cause of the subsistence and the appearing of all beings. Because this "idea" is thereby the cause of everything, it is also "the idea" that is called "the good." This highest and first cause is named by Plato and correspondingly by Aristotle to τὸ θεῖον, the

^a Offprint from Geistige Überlieferung, 1941: Cf. Heraclitus, fragment 112.

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