(JB2015)
The experience of the unity of being1 dominates the first inception of Western philosophical thinking, finding an outstanding expression in the Poem of Parmenides. Unity determines the implicit limits set out in this inception and orients the subsequent metaphysical tradition that moves within these limits. From Plato to Hegel, philosophical logic and dialectic have constantly attempted to refer all individual concepts, notions, or meanings back to one absolute concept or point of reference. As we saw in Chapter 1, the Platonic Idea is the common (koinon) element of identity and permanence in the many particulars, the “one over many,” the universal concept that unifies individual instances; accordingly, in the Republic, the fundamental unity of being as such is discovered in the mutual community (koinōnia) of the Ideas or concepts, attainable through a dialectical process.1 This dialectical quest of metaphysics is the search for a unifying unity, for the unity of the many—i.e., a quest for unity that sets out from the many things that are, the quest for being1 as a universal feature common to all beings as its instances.
The idea is that to which the alternating, many things are referred back, the unifying One and therefore on, beingful [seiend] = unifying. As a consequence, the idea is the koinon [common] with regard to its multiplicity (hekasta [particulars]) […] from the very inception being as beingness is experienced and thought only in terms of “beings”—in terms of so-called beings [gleichsam Seienden], i.e., in terms of the many and with a reference to the many. (GA 65, 209/CPFE, 146/CPOE, 163, 164; tr. mod.)
- Plato, Republic VII.531c9–d3.[
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