“Phenomenology” as orientation of Philosophy itself: being᾽s Manifestation at the light of the world (Plato, sophist)

Abstract:

In the current paper, we try to show that what we use to call “phenomenology”, precisely in the sense evolved by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, doesn’t represent in any way an “innovation” of contemporary philosophy, but it brings back, in certain way, to the very origin of philosophy in Plato’s thought. We will focus on some cardinal passages of the Sophist in which the orientation of the act of philosophizing it is depicted as phenomenology, that is, as the search and manifestation, at the light of the word, of the being of beings: ζητεῖν καὶ ἐμ-φανίζειν λόγῳ τí ποτ᾽ἔστι. Finally, the paper will attempt to point how Plato assumed and took charge of such a task in its most radical way, risking his thinking to the point of all questioning: in the question for the sense of the being itself

Key words:

Phenomenology / philosophy, ontology, being, beings, true, appearance, manifestation