Plato: Republic I



Plato: Republic. Plato’s Attack on the Traditional View of Justice as Ownership and his Defense of the Need for Philosophy

Walter Brogan

Villanova University

Eva Brann refers to Diogenes Laertius and other ancient sources to verify that Plato "combed and curled" his dialogues with utmost care. One story had it that at his death bed was discovered several rewritings of the beginning of the Republic that Plato had been working on. There is an interdependence of structure and interpretation, such that an interpretation of any section of the dialogue required that we look backward and forward in order to understand it. Furthermore, there was an internal interpretative aspect to Platonic writing, despite the notable absence of authorial privilege in Plato's texts. The content of the dialogue is about the form of the dialogue, and the form of the dialogue demonstrated the content. This backtracking onto itself, this reflection on its own progress as a way of writing is the method of Platonic philosophy. It is a method particularly suitable to destabilize the tendency of philosophy to solidify its findings into sophistic doctrines.

The Republic is a model of carefully planned construction. Thus the central message at the heart of the Republic, the journey of the individual beyond the multiplicity of illusion to the oneness of the Good and back again, cannot be understood aside from its place in the dialogue as a whole. The way the dialogue is framed at its beginning and end by the story of descent and the need to ascend from the underworld. Piraeus is beneath Athens. The ascent back to Athens is steep and Socrates has to struggle to win his ascent by conquering the rulers of discourse in the Piraeus. The Republic is the story of this ascent. The final Books of the Republic, however, tell the story of the philosopher's need to descend again. They tell about the descending order of the polis, and these Books are structurally parallel to the ascending order of the polis described in Books II-IV. The Republic ends with the Myth of ER, a story of the soul's journey to the underworld and its struggle to reemerge.

In Book VII, after concluding that the philosopher is the true ruler of the polis, Socrates asks a question that captures the theme of the Republic.: "Do you want us now to consider how such people (philosophers) will come into being and how one will lead them to the light, just as some are said to have gone from Hades up to the gods? (521c) It is only in this movement out of the descent and towards that which more properly rules the human condition that the philosopher emerges. The Republic, therefore, is again about the recovery from fallenness. The human condition can only be understood by plunging into the depths of its bondage to what is below and learning from it as well as climbing to the heights and being guided by this ascent. This is perhaps the significance of beginning this dialogue about the polis with the trip to Piraeus and to a Dionysian festival in honor of Bendis, the Thracian goddess who attends souls on their way to the underworld. But it is also thematically notable that the ascent of the philosopher takes him beyond the city, beyond Athens, to a vision of the good that is beyond Being and beyond the heavens. Thus, on both sides, the philosopher has a questionable relationship to the city and circumscribes its boundaries.

Philosophy begins in Piraeus. Thus the view of justice emerges out of the discussion of injustice, the view of the one out of the manifold of opinions in which the one is ruling, although hidden from sight. Philosophical awareness begins when the soul is no longer absorbed by its view of the shadows and turns in the right direction. The soul first begins its ascent only when it becomes aware of opinion as opinion, that is, only when it frees opinion and sees opinion as pointing beyond itself to another path of thinking (to its source in truth?)

The Republic --politeia-- is about the formation of the polis (the city). The Greek polis cannot be adequately equated with our notion of society, or automatically aligned with any familiar notion of political life. An excellent work that traces the historical transformations that have occurred on the way from the Greek polis to the modern nation-state is Hannah Arendt's book: the Human Condition. Along the way, a blurring of the issue with regard to the relationship of the private and the public has taken place. This is a central theme of the Republic. The Republic is equally about the make-up of the city and its organization as it is about the organization of the individual soul, the city within oneself.

I want to work through Book One in a certain way. I would like to look at the arguments about justice and injustice within the context of a portrayal of the primary discussants. In other words, it seems to me that we can learn as much about the issues involved by looking at who is speaking as we can by examining what is said. The three main characters are: Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus.

Cephalus

The word Cephalus (Κέφαλoς), as you may know, means head in Greek. He is in fact the head of the household, the father of Lysias and Polemarchus. We meet him returning with his crown from sacrificing to the gods; he departs the scene early announcing that he must return to his sacrificing. So Cephalus symbolically embodies the prominent positions of religion and family in the formation of the State.

So much is put on the table for us in the conversation between Cephalus and Socrates, that it is difficult to signal out what might be particularly important for us to notice. For example, Cephalus chides Socrates for not coming more often. He considers himself a worthy interlocutor, since, due to old age, he no longer is distracted from philosophy by physical desires ((πιθυμία) and pleasure (κατ( σ(μα (δovαί). We need to ask whether this is truly something Socrates would find interesting. Then again, there is in general the issue of old age that is raised. You might recall in the Phaedrus that it was thought that writing might be a kind of good, philosophical writing if it is viewed as geriatric therapy. Like Sophocles, Cephalus indicates that there is no eros or madness in his life. And he counts this as a blessing. For him, eros is associated with bodily pleasure, whereas reason and discourse requires the suppression of the body. [the city of contented cows]. So the schema here introduced dichotomizes pleasure and reason. Pleasure is a mad master that is unable to be controlled, that unleashes a ferocious, destructive force of disorganization and that causes us to be led by outside forces beyond our control. In contrast, reason is non-erotic and controlled. Cephalus' understanding of logos aligns logos with stoic detachment and calculativeness. It is clear that for him, being an excellent human being, being the one who should rule because of his or her excellence involves a kind of calculativeness that always makes sure the books are balanced so that one is never caught off guard. The somewhat pathetic portrait takes on added poignancy when one realizes that Cephalus is defined by his being on the threshold of life, in other words by his relationship to death. Can one's death, one might ask, ever be an issue that is detached from one's desire for life. Does philosophy deal with the human condition by attempting to sever the connection between love (eros) and death (thanatos) in the way Cephalus is suggesting.

So let's see what Socrates does with Cephalus' self-caricature. Strangely, he raises an apparently unrelated question. He suggests that Cephalus' goodness, his ability to be the just person, may not be due to his way of being or character, but due to his ousia, his “substance,” that is, his wealth and possessions. The issue of wealth and property, and the related issue of inheritance attached to kinship, are put out on the table. Questions concerning the notion of justice as distribution of wealth and as a basis for ownership are raised. But what Socrates appears to be especially interested in here is the question of indebtedness. Cephalus has portrayed himself as without debt and without guilt. For Socrates, justice is always about owing and responsibility.

Cephalus responds that while inheritance may be necessary, it is not a sufficient condition for justice. It is a matter of how we use our property. Justice involves having a proper balance with regard to money --neither too much nor too little. In other words, justice is defined by Cephalus as moderation.

Very quickly, let's look at what is at stake here. Clearly Cephalus has committed himself to an account of justice that is very familiar to us. The just person is the property owner who leads a life of moderation and exercises his or her right to garner and grant inheritances. Moreover the just person avoids lying or becoming in other ways indebted to anyone for fear that the gods who keep the accounts might demand reparation in the next world.

But the task of defining justice quickly passes to Polemarchus.

What is it about Cephalus' definition that proves inadequate? What are the inner contradictions that collapse his argument?

1. Cephalus has a pre-political sense of justice; yet the notion of debt indicates that relation to the other is at the center of justice. Cephalus remains fundamentally rooted in self-interest, in saving himself, and is unable to account for the political dimension.

2. Cephalus is rooted in the private realm --in the care for family, etc.-- but has no relationship to appetite and desire and sexuality.

3. Cephalus says that justice is a matter of character but he defines acting justly in terms of possessions without relation to character or disposition of the people involved. Socrates makes this clear when he asks if Cephalus would give back the gun to a madman.

Cephalus proves incapable of transcending the private realm to give an account of justice that would show how one brings about just relationships between members of the community. Cephalus' understanding of justice as minding one's own business fails to question how to do this in the face of the conflicts and tensions of human life.

Polemarchus, his son, inherits the debate.

Polemarchus:

His name literally means warlord. In fact, his it becomes almost immediately apparent that his position on justice represents conflict and competition. The virtue he espouses is courage. For him, justice is a purely public virtue. His definition of justice is: to render to each what is fitting, what is owed. To do good to the friend and harm to the enemy.

Polemarchus' definition is typical of the military definition of justice. It is a purely political, Spartan-like concept of the guardian class which is unable to give any account of the private sphere. Polemarchus is like the noble watchdog who will attack all outsiders, even those who are good, while protecting insiders regardless of their character.

The discussion of justice with Polemarchus makes a major advance over that of Cephalus. With Cephalus the issue of indebtedness and ownership came to the fore. With Polemarchus, this issue is thematized. What does it mean to owe a debt to others, what is their due? Polemarchus answers that it is whatever is suitable to them. Thus we shift from justice as rooted in self interest to justice as belonging to the other.

1. Who is the friend? Polemarchus defines the friend as anyone belonging to the city and the enemy as the alien. Justice requires us to do good to those who belong to us and defend our fellow citizens from those outside who would attack us. At the core, he espouses a notion of justice that is tooted in nationalism. Socrates argues that it is possible to be wrong about who the friend is, that one could appear to be a friend but not be deserving of the good that is owed to the friend.

argument: the guardian who defends the friends must also best know how to steal from them in order to beware of the enemy who wants to harm. Thus they are most capable of injuring. The just person is a thief who steals for the benefit of friend or to harm enemy. Thus there is no essential difference between the just and the unjust person except for the fact that the just person knows who the true friend and the true enemy is. Justice requires knowledge. The capacity to distinguish the apparent friend from the true friend. The friend turns out not to be the person who happens to be next door, but the just person. Every human being is capable of justice and injustice regardless of his or her position in the city or outside it. [ this is the universal space of philosophy in contrasts to the territorial position of Polemarchus].

defeat: the purely external definition of justice that Polemarchus first offered is discarded. The guardian cannot blindly pursue justice. Justice is not a matter of conventional contracts. The association that binds a just community together is not arbitrary but rooted in the worthiness of the members. [knowledge is dangerous to the bind of the city]. A criterion beyond the authority of law is announced. Justice responds to a different limit than the boundaries of the city.

2. Justice and art (techne)

Socrates asks when specifically justice has an application, what its use is, what it does, in what way it benefits (like doctor and pilot). Polemarchus says it is useful in war and contracts. But Socrates argues even here the expert is preferred except when things are already going right.

What are we to make of the uselessness of justice? Justice is not good for anything in particular but it is the architectonic virtue and skill, the one that accompanies all other skills and directs them towards the good. Thus justice can never be associated with the opposite of good, that is, it can never direct itself towards harming the other. It always aims towards and knows the good (unlike the doctor who knows illness).

Socrates argues that to harm the enemy is really to make him or her less excellent, less good. And thus less just. Justice would then produce injustice, which is contradictory. [vengeance and retribution would seem to be ruled out].

Conclusion

Polemarchus is more dialectical than Cephalus. He begins with a definition and begins by dividing what is one's own from what is not.

Inner contradictions

1. Justice as art needs to distinguish appearance from reality but has no basis for doing so in itself. It has no vision of the overriding unity which might form the basis for this decision.

2. all art has a function but justice alone is useless. It has no specific eidos to define its task. It is both techne and not techne.

3. All art deals with opposites --health and sickness, etc. But justice does not. Its vision is directed only towards the good and excludes its opposite. It is not a relationship of contrariety but of contradiction.

4. Polemarchus is unable to account for the presence of justice in the private realm; but justice is not purely external; it is a virtue of the soul.

Polemarchus is a quintessential soldier. Courage in itself is unable to properly distinguish the kind of behavior that is appropriate to one's situation and therefore cannot rule the city. It requires being ruled by one who knows who the friend is. Polemarchus loses himself in purely external relations to others. Nevertheless, Polemarchus has reintroduced conflict and competition into the city and these elements become the material out of which the city of the Republic is formed.

The way has been paved for Thrasymachus who believed he can resolve the incompatibility between knowledge and conflict that has emerged.

Book I ends with the taming of Thrasymachus. Justice is opposed to the unlimited striving and lack of measure that characterized the position of Thrasymachus. Justice is especially opposed to competition as the basis for a political relationship. T. seems to have been especially mollified by the Socratic insistence on not confusing the two separate and distinct arts: the art of money-making and the art of justice (dikaiosune). It might be worth noting that the issue of wealth has been at the heart of Socrates' discussion with all three characters in Book I. With Cephalus, it was a question of whether he was just simply to protect his wealth and inheritance. In the case of Polemarchus, it was a question of whether justice was only useful to protect monetary deposits. And finally, Socrates again reduces Thrasymachus' notion of justice as self-gain and self-aggrandizement to a desire for accumulating wealth. By separating the issue of wealth and material prosperity from the issue of justice, Socrates opens a space for the story of the human soul and its character. The rest of the Republic will occupy that space.

[We might mention that the issue of the relationship of wealth to justice is much more important than we are acknowledging. Indeed if justice is defined as the organizing principle of the good city and the lack of justice is defined as a lack of limit and definition, it is not clear why wealth represents such a challenge to the reign of justice. But if we recognize that a city can indeed survive very well without justice if it substitutes wealth as an organizing principle, then we get a better sense of why wealth presents such a massive challenge to the operation of justice. In many ways money can be an effective substitute for justice. Like justice, it is everywhere (universal measuring principle). It accompanies all the other arts as a motivating principle. It too gradates and determines the relative worth of things (fair distribution). It too allows for sharing, especially for justice as reciprocity in the exchange of goods. The city that is ruled by money can appear as harmonious as the just regime. One may suspect that this substitution of a quantitative measure of worth, this leveling of everything to a common denominator, and this subservience to the marketplace leaves something to be desired, but it is still not clear what is missing. Why is justice intrinsically worthy for its own sake? Why is justice an end, rather than a means? Why do we need justice if the criterion is only a matter of what is useful and what works? These are questions that remain unanswered at the end of Book I.

Perhaps we should now, before turning to this larger question that shifts the entire ground of the argument, bring up a question: is this space of the soul that we spoke of earlier a non-material space? Does the philosophical concept of justice require the suppression of materiality, the repression of the body? What would be the result of a thesis that tethered the birth of philosophy to the elimination of material concerns? And is this the direction of Platonic philosophy in the Republic? I do not think one can read Books II-V in any other way than as a narrative about the kind of city that would emerge were one to systematically control and eliminate the body and sexuality as a ruling factor in the ideal regime. What does the issue of prosperity and wealth as the basis of human relationships have to do with this question of the body? Are we to understand that if the body remains an important issue for us, then we inevitably must constitute the relationship among citizens as power relationships and property relationships along Thrasymachian lines?

Then the further question becomes: is this non-erotic city the philosophical, the Platonic city? If not, then why must the story of this city be told so prominently in the Republic as to have been interpreted in such a way by the tradition?

Book II

The Three Waves of Doxa (opinion) at the beginning of Book II.: (whose voice is this? Is it Thrasymachus? Is Books II-V the rewriting of the speech of T.?) What are Glaucon and Adeimantus after? Not justice as beneficial and not justice as both beneficial and intrinsically worthy, but justice as worthy for its own sake. The paradigm is pleasure --intrinsically enjoyable and pursued for its own sake.

1. The origin of justice: a mean between the desire to do injustice and the fear of suffering injustice [Hobbesian fear, Social Contract Theory regarding the emergence of justice as a compromise]. We need to note that justice is not natural but really emerges out of weakness. This origin does not respond to the Thrasymachian possibility of a totalitarian regime where the fear of the other is eliminated because the distinction between the self and the other is destroyed. There is only one will in such a regime. Therefore there is no justice.

2. Gyges Ring. When given free license without concern for reputation, would it be preferable to choose justice or injustice? The story, of course, is about invisibility and the public eye. One of the characteristics of the portrait of the ideal city that is soon to be drawn is that in such a city, it is impossible to withdraw from public sight. To this extent, the ideal city resembles that of Polemarchus --for whom reputation and honor was the preeminent virtue.

The point is that noone would choose to be just if you could eliminate the fear of being caught. The ideal is to be unjust while seeming to be just. The ideal is to eliminate the conflict between appearance and reality. Glaucon demonstrates this by contrasting a Job-like character with the opposite. The whole story is, of course, a reverse account of the story of Oedipus. The just person who seems unjust has his eyes plucked out, etc. Whereas, the unjust person who seems just ends up as ruler, takes whom he wants in marriage, etc. Such an unjust person is better able to do good to the friend and harm to the enemy, and better able to make sacrifices to the gods and pay them off like Cephalus tries to do.

Let us remember again that Thrasymachus' position was that justice is the advantage of the stronger. The argument there pivoted on the difference between what appeared to be advantageous to the ruler and what truly was advantageous, and the fact that these two were not necessarily the same. In Book II, this distinction collapses. The lack of congruity between appearance and reality is acknowledged, but a way of conquering both through a kind of double art --the art of appearing to be one thing while actually being another-- is posited. This becomes a major issue in the next Books. Plato tries to eliminate the art of doubling. Each art has to mind its own business, etc. Plato is, of course, aware of the fact that the doubling of appearance and reality involves the problem of imaging. And so, the problem of image becomes the central political and philosophical question of the Republic. On the surface, it would appear that Plato's strategy in his battle with Thrasymachus, involves banning the image makers and eliminating the distinction between image and original.

3. The gods. Adeimantus deals with Cephalus' concern not so much about reputation among people but with the fear of reprisal in the afterlife. Mythology is full of evidence that the gods can be paid off, if indeed there are gods.

The doxic argument (that is central to Nietzsche) is concluded at 366d:

Except for someone who from a divine nature cannot stand doing injustice, no one is willingly just; but because of a lack of courage, or old age, or some other weakness, men blame injustice because they are unable to do it"

The complaint is that the grounds for the whole discussion of justice need to shift. What does justice and injustice do in themselves to the soul of the human being, what is the intrinsic character of each? To discover this, extrinsic considerations of benefits and consequences need to be put aside.

Glaucon and Adeimantus point out that this story has never been told. Socrates agrees but then he too defers telling the story of the just soul for the sake of a bigger story of justice in the city. It may not be unimportant that here in this transition, the question of writing reemerges. The city is the soul writ large, in large letters, inscribed on in a way that we can see it. In the Phaedrus, speech was said to be writing on the soul. Here justice, we are told, can be seen coming into being in logos, in speech (369a). The connection between logos and justice is established. What is the connection between the speech about justice and the coming to be just that happens to the soul of Glaucon in the course of the conversation?

The Three Cities

At the end of the Republic, in the myth of Er, we are told that each soul has to choose a pattern (a tupos), on the basis of which one gets a daimon that determines the quality of the soul on the scale of justice. In the story of the founding of the city, we are looking for an idea, a form that will give us a model for understanding the just soul. In this sense, the city is a representation of the soul, a painting of the soul. The most important aspect in the formation of the ideal city, we have said, turns out to be mimesis. The soul is essentially mimetic. Thus the pattern that is imitated is all important. In a strange reversal of priorities, the mimetic soul imitates the pattern of the ideal city in order to become what it truly is. Yet the ideal city is itself only presented as a representation of the ideal soul. This problem of mirroring would be dizzying were it not possible for the soul to break through to a relationship with what is original. We will see that this breakthrough occurs here in the Republic also in regard to beauty. But as we know, the peculiar character of beauty is that it collapses the difference between original and image; or better it pierces through the difference with its sheer brilliance.

1. The original city (epithumia). The city of those who come together out of utmost necessity (anankaia). The city of sows (contented cows). This is the healthy city. Each citizen has his or her own task. Each keeps to herself and fulfil his own function well. There is division of labor but no ruler. Desire is tied directly to necessity and does not grow out of bounds with what is needed. Harmony prevails because of the natural moderation that keeps one from wanting more than what belongs essentially to one's being. There is no violent appropriation of what is other. One symptom of this is that they are vegetarians.

"So they will have sweet intercourse with one another, and not produce children beyond their means, keeping an eye out against poverty and war." (372c)

2. The city of luxury (truphosa) (thumos). the city of Illness as a biopositive effect. The fevered city (phlegmainousa). Glaucon is furious about the first city. Animals, he says, sleep on the ground, humans are meant to sleep in beds and eat on tables. The human being is the creator of artifacts and convention. The human spirit is always reaching out for more than what is naturally there. We are not just bound by necessity but are beings of excess. This is city where anger, and therefore difference, is recognized as a legitimate human emotion. Here the people are meat-eaters and frill seekers and expansionists. Doctors are introduced. War results from the desire for more than one's proper share, from the refusal of the striving soul to be satisfied.

In such a city, of course, guardians (phulakes) will be necessary to regulate the competition and war that endangers the order of the city. The high-spiritedness of such people will require direction and outlets. training will become important. Therefore a trainer or ruler will be needed. But on the principle of one person for each task, the guardians will be distinct from farmers, merchants, etc. Those who are especially thumotic will be selected for this task of guarding.

The story of the remaining Books of the Republic becomes the story of the training of this aspect of the soul or this type of citizen, those who would learn to be savage to the enemy and gentle to the friend, those who could somehow sustain within themselves the normally destructive force of the opposition of these two principles --savagery and gentleness. Can there be a city that holds both of these possibilities-- vegetarianism and carnivorism-- together and still manages to eat well. Such will be perhaps possible only if the second city is purged to make room for the city of the philosophy, the kalliopolis, the beautiful polis. It is perhaps important to remember that the guardians have excessive desires. They are given only simple foods and gymnastic training for their bodies. They are exposed only to music with simple rythymn and to simple musical instruments for the training of their souls. They are also the products of censorship, being exposed only to stories of the gods that favor order, stability, lack of alteration; a god that is all powerful, all perfect, simple and non-vengeful. In other words a philosopher's god.

In Book VI, Adeimantus reacts surprisingly to Socrates' suggestion that the city can only be just if the philosopher is ruler. They seem to be led to this conclusion by the argument, but the conclusion is absurd. The philosopher is useless and has no skill. At 488a, Socrates responds that he can only demonstrate why this conclusion appears to be ridiculous, while not being at all preposterous by resorting to images, icons. Socrates calls himself one who is greedy for images. This is all the more ironic, given Socrates' earlier hostility to the image-makers and given the standard interpretation of the passages to follow which appear to insist that the philosopher must leave the level of imagination behind. The heart of the Republic --the sun simile, the divided line between the visible and the intelligible and the cave are and can be enacted only through imagination. The intellectual domain of the philosopher is the imagination. Socrates presents the following images to answer the objection that the philosopher is useless:

1. The First Image

488 The philosopher, like Thales, is a stargazer. In the story of the shipowner and the good pilot, Socrates presents an apology to show that the uselessness of philosophy is to be blamed on the corruption of the regime and its people. The crew has no knowledge of math and astronomy. Who is influential is determined by flattery and power play. The true pilot withdraws into private life.

2. The second Image

493b: The great beast story. The overriding point of all the images is that philosophy only appears useless because people are turned in the wrong direction. As a result they are left to their own devices and cleverness. They are not attuned to the divine, they do not draw their regime according to the divine pattern. 499b: "true erotic passion for true philosophy flows from some divine inspiration." The philosopher is able to listen to what is other. The exceptional person who is capable of listening to what cannot be seen or heard in the convictions of the many which lack the perspective to distinguish good opinion from bad, etc. is pampered by sophists. Under poor conditions and bad soil, the greater the soul the harder the fall since the mob will try to buy the great soul over to itself. There is even a greater danger for the potentially philosophical soul since such a soul is more tempted by hubris, by attributing to itself what comes from the other.

This issue of corrupting noble souls reminds us of Plato’s other dialogue, the Apology. Socrates was also accused of studying the heavens and corrupting the young, and denying the accepted dogmas of obvious truth. Here in contrast it is the sophists who are bitterly accused of appealing to decadent instincts. The philosopher must withdraw or be killed. The hostility and resistance of the multitude to philosophy is attributed to the fact that the philosopher must unravel their prejudices and desedimentize their interpretation of reality (Homeric dogmas). It is not the teacher who is at fault but the soil. What is it that the philosopher studies if not the habituated customs of the beast? To answer this, Socrates says, requires a new beginning, a longer road, a path that abandons the comic, non-erotic sketch that was previously drawn (504d), since in fact no sketch is possible. To tell this story of the soul, this sense of the just soul, the writing of the city is no longer adequate. The story of the just is a story beyond the polis (the city). This was hinted at earlier when we indicated that there may be a difference between the writing of the just soul in logos (the city) and the justice of the soul in itself. At 414, Socrates says for example that lying in logos is a pharmakon (a remedy) but lying in the soul is the worst evil and injustice because it eradicates truth and installs ignorance. We are embarking on a study of the good, which requires that we turn away from opinion, because it cannot be seen in that way. What is this good, Glaucon asks? Socrates says the good is what the soul pursues for its own sake, outside the economy of the useful and profitable. More he can say only analogously, through an image.

3. The Sun Simile (507b -509d)

The problem is first posed in terms of the one and the many. The Polla are seen but not intellected, whereas the ideas --the ones such as the beautiful itself and the good itself-- are intellected but not seen. These are two ways in which the soul can apprehend what is, namely as many or as one.

Socrates points out the need for yet a third thing besides the seeing and the seen, namely light which brings the two together. Beings are seen through something; our nearness to beings is mediated. Finally, there is the sun, the source of light, the cause of sight. Though aitia and arche, cause and origin of sight, it is interesting that the sun itself can nevertheless be seen, though it can also blind.

Truth and being are posed as analogous to light, to that which allows what is to be revealed and seen. Truth and being, then, are not ideas or forms. They are not the objects of thought. They are, like light, the yoke which ties together the knower and the known. The between. From the analogy, we can also ascertain that whatever the good is, it cannot be equated with knowledge and truth (508e), though it is the good which empowers knowledge and makes revealing possible. Also, truth belongs to what is revealed, not to knowledge. Truth has nothing to do with a correspondence between the visible and the intelligible; not is truth, for that matter, the correspondence between the intelligence (nous) and what is intellected. and certainly not the agreement between opinion and what is opined that comes from studying the beast or the shadows of the cave. Rather truth is the place, the topos or chora, that comes before and holds apart and together the twofold of knowing and known, of intelligible and visible. In one sense the twofold preceded the unity of the two in truth. In another sense truth as oneness and being comes before the twofold. Actually, what comes first is not the one nor the dyad, but a three fold, as, for example, the triad of the sun, the seen and sight.

In any analogy, there is a mirror play between the two parts. The one is the image of the other. The sun is analogous to the good (508c) What is analogy? In analogos, the one is gathered up into and on the basis of the other in such a way that the gathering is appropriate, suitable, proportionate --in a proper ratio. The simulacrum --if you will, the image, is simultaneous with what it images. It goes together with it. It does not simulate or distort what it presents. The higher realm accounts for the lower, and when the lower is seen in terms of the higher, a proper account, a proper logos, is achieved.

Secondly, the kind of relationship that is operative between sight and what is seen is analogous to the relationship that is operative between the intellect and what is intellected. What kind of relationship is this? Seeing and intellecting are called dynamis (power). They are powers. What is the power of seeing? It is the power of gathering and holding the manifold of what is seen in oneness.

The different places of the visible and the intelligible are not places in which different beings or kinds of beings show themselves. Rather, the two different realms indicate two different ways in which what is can show itself. In the intelligible realm, beings show themselves as they are, that is, in truth, in their being as such. In the visible realm, beings show themselves as mixed with darkness, as concealed. If this is so, then essentially the intelligible realm cannot be known simply by analogy to the visible realm. A further step is implied in this analogy. We must first somehow already know truth and being in order for beings to be visible. The analogy can only serve to remind us that our attunement to the whole is presupposed in our recognition of the parts. In this regard, the intelligible realm is not another level, but a level that comes before and takes up with it the visible realm.

The good provides truth and being to the thing known. But as the cause of knowledge, it too can be known. The good is responsible for the illumination of beings; it is said to be an overwhelming, shattering, utterly excessive beauty. But as beauty, it is accessible in the realm of beings. Yet it far exceeds being, we are told. It is beyond being. It is also beyond and in fact the cause of the forms seen in the intelligible realm. We have suggested that eidetic seeing is the capacity to see the one in the many, to see in terms of oneness. But the good is beyond the one in this sense. And yet because the good is the cause of knowledge and the forms that are known, it too can be known and it too can appear as form, as the otherness at the heart of form. Why? Perhaps because this oneness that it has fathered is the image of itself. The good both reveals itself and conceals itself as the one. Heraclitus, an early Greek philosopher) says physis kruptesthai philei --that which is responsible for coming into being loves to hide itself. In lighting up beings for us, it conceals itself; it turns us towards what is lighted up in its light, and not towards itself. In doing so, it traces the difference between itself and what is. It lets beings be. It withdraws and in its inaccessibility it makes possible the upsurgence of beings.

DIVIDED LINE

Let's begin our comments with the third, middle level of the line, the level of hypothesis.

A hypothesis is that on which something depends for its being or its being known. 1. A foundation (that which underlies); 2) a supposition for the being of the thing, a condition of its possibility. It is dianoia (formal thinking) that discovers the suppositions and therefore can understand the being and see more clearly what the being is. The visible things depend on these "originals" for their being. yet these suppositions cannot be seen in vision but only in intellect, through the discriminating power of logos. Finally, the hypothesis are 3) the presuppositions that have been settled upon before the argument begins and which will form the basis of the argument but themselves be taken over without question as granted.

It is important to get straight how dianoia operates on the third level of the line. We can do so by looking first at the bottom half of the line. The movement from shadow or reflection to what is reflected by the image is rather an easy one. The image announces itself as an image, as not having an independent being of its own; the every character of an image is to direct attention to what it is not, but represents in its appearance. No one thinks the chair that is represented in a painting is really the chair; nor do they think it is only colors on a canvass. On the other hand, when we actually see a chair, we feel no need to look further. there is a certain accepted familiarity that doesn't demand further investigation. We do not need to ask what it is.

What then occasions the movement beyond the seeing of things to dianoia? Plato discusses this in Book VII:

523b: when opposites are presented together in the same thing, the senses are inadequate and summon the intellect. It is dianoia that is capable of distinguishing and relating what appears to the senses as one but is counted as two.

In fact, the very ability to draw the divided line requires the activity of dianoia. In seeing an image we are already engaged in the activity of seeing both how the image and original are the same and how they are distinguished. The very possibility of seeing requires dianoia or thought; it requires numbering, for example. The art of numbering and counting is already presupposed by our seeing the thing as one thing. This is especially evident in our employing of notions like different, opposite and related.

It is also to be noted that dianoia uses the visible things as images. So the play between original and image is not divided between two realms --the intelligible and the sensible. Even in the intelligible realm, images are at play. Visible things are themselves images. That is, they partake of being and not being. They do not have the fullness of presence. They do not capture the fullness of being. For example, they reflect the oneness of being but are not themselves this oneness, These foundations of being which do not belong solely to any particular being are recognized in dianoia.

So dianoia has in common with eikasia (image making) that they both involve a kind of double seeing. Dianoia sees the visible things but it looks beyond them to what is assumed in seeing, to the conditions of the possibility of all seeing whatsoever. It is important to note that what provokes this looking beyond are the things themselves which suddenly become problematic. Is it big or is it small? To answer this question, we need to realize that we are looking at a being whose being is not totally determined in itself. We need to see beings in their relation to each other, as in advance related to each other. It is only if we are provoked by a philosophical perplexity to ask about the Being of the being that the movement to dianoia takes place.

The movement to dianoia (formal knowledge) is provoked by the fact that opposites (enantia) are present in the being that is seen (523 b-c) But Plato said earlier and also in the Phaedrus that dialectic is the art of dealing properly with contradictions. In fact dialectic was distinguished from eristic arguments on this basis. Here it is not dialectic but dianoia (a kind of thinking and knowing) that is said to distinguish and relate the units that are mixed together in perception. Dianoia clarifies what is perceived, throws light on what is obscured and confused in perception. But dianoia remains tied to the visible realm. It gains its field of endeavor from the visible forms and returns to apply its discoveries to the visible realm.

Mathematics is synthetic a priori knowledge. Arithmetic and calculation (logistics) are the first studies given in the training of the philosopher king, in the training of the one who is to bring together philosophy and politics, or, in other words, the visible and intelligible realms. Measuring and calculating are necessary in war and in philosophy. The other suitable studies that cross over the division are said to be geometry, astronomy and harmonics. All of these studies have in common a dual direction --down towards visible things and up towards the activity of thinking for its own sake, the arche of thinking.

The final movement of the soul is in the direction of knowledge or dialectic. At 532 e in Book VII, Glaucon urges Socrates to proceed to dialectic which should be the final resting place of the soul. But Socrates once again refuses Glaucon's request, saying that if it were possible, Glaucon would no longer be seeing an image but the truth itself. he goes on to say that the power of dialectic alone could reveal this "truth itself."

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