Abstract

My project is to articulate a re-opening of dialogical thinking at the end of metaphysics. To do this, I offer a reading of Socratic dialogue. I turn to Plato because it is the tension between the presuppositions of aporetic Socratic dialogue that prepares, in an essentially ambiguous way, the Platonic "step into" metaphysics. I take this Socratic ambiguity as a resource for a Heideggerian "step back" from metaphysics: understanding the failure of the presuppositions of aporetic Socratic dialogue locates the passage to a post-metaphysical thinking that will of itself be dialogical. ;The presuppositions of Socratic dialogue can be seen most clearly in an interpretation of the section of the Apology in which Socrates tells how he came to interpret the oracle that initiated his way of life. My work, therefore, focuses on this passage. ;I begin my reading of the Apology by placing it in its historical context, and then place the oracle interpretation within the context of the Apology as a whole. A detailed reading of the oracle interpretation follows, which leads to the determination of the guiding question of Socratic dialogue as, How can thinking serve the god? Using this question as a clue, I give an account ot the nexus of presuppositions that form the Socratic ethos. I then show how this ethos fails at the end of metaphysics. Finally I show how the lines of that presuppositional failure describe the opening of the "dialogical space" for a post-metaphysical thinking