43. According to Heidegger, the agathon is neither a being nor that which unconceals beings. Whereas the idea enables an orientation towards beings, the agathon is the space which grants the possibility of pre-ontological understanding. An inquiry into the agathon is an inquiry "into what grants being and unhidenness" (ibid., 79). THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF HEIDEGGER'S READING OF THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE 23 ing of Being - is a gift to human beings. In Heidegger's own words, freedom "receives its own essence from the more originary essence of uniquely essential truth."61 To be genuinely free, therefore, is to remain alert to that which gives freedom, namely the agathon, the Licthung, the abysmal interplay of concealment and unconcealment that lies at the core of the truth of Being.to the public realm. "The killing consists in the fact that the philosopher and his questioning are suddenly transferred into the language of the cave dwellers."72 Heidegger's point is profoundly anti-Socratic. If Socrates is this thinker who took the risk of ridiculing himself and even of dying with the aim of bringing philosophical thinking to the public sphere, Heidegger expresses his complete disregard for it. If philosophy is to remain true to itself, it must resist the public sphere. As he says, "it belongs to the essence of the philosopher that he is solitary [...]. He is all the more solitary because in the cave he cannot retreat. Speaking out from solitude, he speaks at the decisive moment."73 The portrait of the philosopher that Heidegger paints is that