Our reading of the Seventh Letter starts from the assumption that philosophizing is based on an unceasing dialectical exercise that moves between phenomenology and hermeneutics of the real. Our goal here is, on the one hand, to justify the relevance and pertinence of philosophical hermeneutics and its appropriate application to philosophical texts and, on the other hand, to point out what we see as the core of that letter, viz. sketching the basic features of true philosophy and thus of true philosophers according to our reading of Plato's writing. As a whole, our reflection intends to be a kind of response to Plato's letter as it presents our position about the present exercise of philosophy. This is done through two interconnected moments: we begin by discussing some hermeneutical assumptions of the reading of Plato's text, then we express our praise of true philosophy.
Plato; Seventh Letter; dialectics; Gadamer; hermeneutics