The Catastrophe of Platonism (Idea and Representation)
Here we can draw a parallel with the biblical subject of the appearance of the snake in the earthly paradise. It would seem that heaven, Adam, and Eve abide in bliss and abundance; but even in this beautiful and fresh world, forces of coming misfortunes already make themselves known. And even before then, even at the dawn of Creation, when order is first being created and all creatures are close to God, the first of the Angels, of the entities of light, of the ministering spirits, rebels and is overthrown into the abyss with his supporters. From this abyss he later percolates into the earthly paradise. And at the end of times his power will be extended over the world, over the cosmos. But the devil, evil, the presage of the end, appears already in the first pages of the sacred history of the World. In a cloudless, happy heaven his supple body twines around the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil and tempts Eve to try the fruits. Likewise, within the first Beginning, in the situation of the highest tension of spiritual forces and the "heavenly" primordial philosophizing, the great pre-Socratic jump, when philosophy, becoming ontology, still hesitates in indecision [over] how to interpret the being of beings, the end is already drawing near. This "first end" is an end within the first Beginning. Heidegger never regarded this end disdainfully, lightly, arrogantly, contemptuously. He honoured it and was delighted by it, because it was indeed something great. Even in error and delusion there is sometimes scale and scope worthy of veneration.