ABSTRACT

Heidegger's interpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave heavily focuses on this 'transitional' character of 'education'. Though Heidegger's philosophy claims to address the question of Being pure and simple, the complex turns its path had to take were due to this 'hermeneutic' approach which looks at the totality of history as the text par excellence. Allegory of the Cave is isolated as a self-contained text may there be between Plato and Heidegger prima facie two different ways of reading the same text. Heidegger places Plato primarily in the latter framework. Heidegger could indulge in analysing Plato's motives against Plato's own self-knowledge. Plato and Heidegger are, in point of their 'truth' theory, at odds with each other by holding onto the model of'being' and that of'saying', respectively. In a different context, his reading of Plato belongs to the broader tradition of inquiry that asks the question of quid juris.