Post #5 of my commentary on Heidegger’s anaylsis of Plato’s Theaetetus, written in the lead up to my exhibition: The Aviary
Our perceptions of objects in their perceivedness converge in a unity. When we see or hear we are not aware of our ears or eyes, “we do not see colour in our eyes, and we do not hear sounds in our ears…we see the colour on the book cover, we hear the sound of the door that someone slams.” (126) All these perceivable objects in their variety, converge in a “single sighted nature,” within “one region of the perceivable surroundings.” (127)
This single region of perceivability is there waiting to take in the plethora of perceptions that we have constantly to deal with. It does not originate from what we see, hear etc. Instead It is already there, waiting upon what converges in it, that which we constantly encounter in perception.
We have a sighted nature which holds up this region of perceivability, and which Plato calls soul. The soul is as one with this region itself: “This self-maintaining region which surrounds us belongs to ourselves, and is thereby a constant sameness;” it is “something in itself that is in or by ourselves.” (Plato) Therefore the soul is that which perceives, in the sense of “taking up the perceiving relationship to the perceivable.” This leads Plato to define the soul as that “which allows us to perceive all the objects of perception through the senses as instruments.”
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Derek Hampson 