Nietzsche and Heidegger

a glance to the right

pp. 223-284

in: Paul Bishop, German political thought and the discourse of Platonism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

Thanks to Friedrich Schleiermacher, a translator and commentator in Plato, the nineteenth century had seen a revival of interest in Platonism in Germany. If Marx is the totemic thinker for the political Left, Nietzsche is frequently, albeit mistakenly, associated with the political Right. Nietzsche's correspondence reveals a fundamental ambivalence in his attitude towards Plato, while Heidegger's relation to the Greeks in general and to Plato in particular helps clarify the relation between the discourse of Platonism and the tradition of German Political Thought. In his lecture course On the Essence of Truth and in his Rectoral Address, Heidegger offers an analysis of the allegory of the cave and discusses Socrates's remark in the Republic, "all that is great stands in the storm" (497d).