Heidegger & His Platonic Critics: Strauss, Gadamer, & Patočka

Did Heidegger get Plato completely wrong? This book introduces the arguments of three prominent Platonic critics of Heidegger — Leo Strauss (1899-1973), Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), and Jan Patočka (1907-1977) — with the aim of evaluating the trenchancy of their criticisms. The author shows that these three thinkers uncover novel ways of reading Plato non-metaphysically and thus of undermining Heidegger's narrative concerning Platonism as metaphysics and metaphysics as Platonism. In their readings of the Platonic dialogues, Plato emerges as a proto-phenomenologist whose attention to the ethical-political facticity of human beings leads to the acknowledgment of human finitude and of the fundamental elusiveness of Being. These Platonic critics of Heidegger thus invite us to see in the dialogues a lucid presentation of philosophic questioning rather than the beginning of distorting doctrinal teachings.

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Welcome everyone to this meetup presented by Scott and Philip. Every second Monday we will get together to talk about this book (really more of a short booklet):

• Heidegger and His Platonic Critics by Antoine Pageau-St-Hilaire (2025, Cambridge University Press)

The format will be Philip's usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 10-15 pages before each session. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. We mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not do the reading. You probably are brilliant and wonderful - no argument there. But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.

Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is partly for philosophical reasons: We want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that Philip can explain if required.

Here is the reading schedule (pdf here):

• Sept 15th – "Introduction", up to page 18
• Sept 29th – "Strauss’s Zetetic Platonism", up to p. 28
• Oct 13th – "Gadamer’s Dialogical Platonism" up to p. 43
• Oct 27th – "Patočka’s Negative Platonism" & "Conclusion: Heidegger and the Plato Who Could Have Been", up to p. 64

After that we will be done and Scott and I will start another meetup on another book. The Pageau-St-Hilaire book (booklet?) is very short and we will only be reading it for 4 sessions.

Welcome! And enjoy!