notwithstanding the possibility of failure, the insecurity and confusion described at the second stage is not an arbitrary event, but rather a positive event toward the realization of existence proper.48 I submit that, during the early 30's, Heidegger does indeed consider the confusion found at the second stage of the allegory as a necessary step toward genuine freedom. But I will develop this point in my discussion of the fourth stage of the allegory. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to say a few things about Heidegger's conception of true freedom, as deployed in his reading of the third stage of the allegory. 3.3. The Third Stage Heidegger's understanding of genuine liberation is clarified in his discussion of the third stage of the allegory. Although his analysis45. Deconcealment is a fundamental act of human beings in the sense that it grounds the manifestedness of beings (see, Heidegger, The Essence of Truth, THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF HEIDEGGER'S READING OF THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE 21 most genuine modality of de-concealing - namely, the de-concealing that at once reveals and transforms human essence - is the deconcealing occurring within the questioning stance of philosophy.52 During the early 30's, Heidegger presents Plato as a transitional thinker who is, on the one hand, riveted to the primordial experience of truth as the interplay of concealment and unconcealment and, on the other hand, expresses the forgetfulness of fundamental concealment in treating untruth as pseudos. Heidegger rejects those interpretations that treat Platonic ideas as objective beings or categories of thinking.53