The Platonic phenomenon of the τρίτον τι and the question of the 'ontological difference' in Martin Heidegger's lecture 'Plato: The Sophist' (WS 1924/1925)

Abstract

This article examines the interpretation of several paragraphs (§§ 68, 69, 70, and 71) of the Marburg lecture course delivered in the winter semester of 1924–1925, Plato: The Sophist, concerning the Platonic phenomenon of the τρίτον τι (“a third something”: PLATO, Sophist 250b7–10) (§ 71), on the basis of Plato’s account of the Gigantomachy concerning being in the Sophist (246a–250e). In resolving the discussion, I trace the remote origin of the question of “ontological difference” through a phenomenological appropriation of Plato: by positing movement and rest as beings (ὄντα), being-there also posits being as something exceeding them. In this sense, first, there emerges a new understanding of the unity of being on the basis of the possibility of communication between the sensible and the intelligible. Second, by rejecting the division asserted by the dualists, who “separate” intelligible Forms from their temporal or sensible exemplifications, the Platonic argument requires admitting the participation of movement in the intelligible and, in this sense, obliges the Forms to participate in one another. Third, the Eleatic Stranger consequently proposes articulating the unity of being with its multiplicity, both in reality and in language. Within this broad ontological conception, movement and rest, unity and multiplicity, coexist.