Abstract

The author's project is an ambitious one: Not only does he dedicate a whole monograph to the centerpiece of Plato's metaphysical thought as it is contained in the similes of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic, he also points out connections between Plato's "greatest doctrine" and some highlights in the work of other European metaphysicians such as Kant, Fichte, the young Wittgenstein and Heidegger. As Ferber sees it, although their answers to the question of the ultimate foundation of philosophic truth may vary, their questioning calls for a foundation whose archetype is that of Plato's notion of the Form of the Good as what underlies both Being and Thought, the tertium quid that transcends all thought and being, the "epekeina tes ousias." In falling short of providing such a foundation that transcends the subject-object dualism, Ferber claims, the later philosophers have all fallen short of attaining the level of Plato's philosophizing : If philosophy is ever to be grounded adequately, then a "trialism" of the Platonic kind will have to be worked out.