PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF TRUTH

divine. Ever since being got interpreted as ἰδέα, thinking about the being of beings has been metaphysical, and metaphysics has been theological. In this case theology means the interpretation of the "cause" of beings as God and the transferring of being onto this cause, which contains being in itself and dispenses being from out of itself, because it is the being-est of beings.

This same interpretation of being as ἰδέα, which owes its primacy to a change in the essence of ἀλήθεια, requires that viewing the ideas be accorded high distinction. Corresponding to this distinction is παιδεία, the "education" of human beings. Concern with human being and with the position of humans amidst beings entirely dominates metaphysics.

[142 {GA 9: 236}] The beginning of metaphysics in the thought of Plato is at the same time the beginning of "humanism." Here the word must be thought in its essence and therefore in its broadest sense. In that regard "humanism" means the process that is implicated in the beginning, in the unfolding, and in the end of metaphysics, whereby human beings, in differing respects but always deliberately, move into a central place among beings, of course without thereby being the highest being. Here "human being" sometimes means humanity or humankind, sometimes the individual or the community, and sometimes the people [das Volk] or a group of peoples. What is always at stake is this: to take "human beings," who within the sphere of a fundamental, metaphysically established system of beings are defined as animal rationale, and to lead them, within that sphere, to the liberation of their possibilities, to the certitude of their destiny, and to the securing of their "life." This takes place as the shaping of their "moral" behavior, as the salvation of their immortal souls, as the unfolding of their creative powers, as the development of their reason, as the nourishing of their personalities, as the awakening of their civic sense, as the cultivation of their bodies, or as an appropriate combination of some or all of these "humanisms." What takes place in each instance is a metaphysically determined revolving around the human being, whether in narrower or wider orbits. With the fulfillment of metaphysics, "humanism" (or in "Greek" terms: anthropology) also presses on to the most extreme — and likewise unconditioned — "positions."

Plato's thinking follows the change in the essence of truth, a change that becomes the history of metaphysics, which in Nietzsche's thinking has entered upon its unconditioned fulfillment. Thus Plato's doctrine of"truth" is not something that is past. It is historically "present," not just in the sense that his teachings have a "later effect" that historians can calculate, nor as a reawakening or imitation of antiquity, not even as the mere preservation of what has been handed down. Rather, this change in the essence of truth is present as the all-dominating fundamental reality — long established and

181