ABSTRACT
Phenomenology and Greek philosophy have been framed largely in terms of the discussion of the relationship between the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and the method and most basic phenomenon uncovered in Edmund Husserl and Husserl Heidegger’s phenomenological research. This chapter assesses the major suppositions behind Heidegger’s formulation of the relationship between Plato and Aristotle and phenomenology. It presents Husserl’s account of the historical importance of the Socratic response to sophistical skepticism for the origin of philosophy, and the systematic importance of that response for the transcendental phenomenological problem of the transcendence of the world. The chapter also presents Jacob Klein’s phenomenological interpretation of Plato’s theory of eidetic numbers, as a theory of the possibility of the most basic structures of philosophical intelligibility. Husserl’s phenomenological engagement with Greek philosophy is driven by his account of what can be characterized as his account of the interrelated double origin of philosophy.
