This essay discusses several key passages in Plato's writing that are central to the interpretation given in the previous essay, which is frankly revisionist, in the sense that it departs strongly from the currently dominant interpretation.
The main difference between this interpretation and most other interpretations is that this interpretation takes a pragmatic rather than a metaphysical approach to Plato's doctrine of the Forms.
The metaphysical approach takes Plato's statements about the Forms very literally, as claims that the Forms are actual entities that exist in an unseen realm. For example, alongside specific courageous actions that exist and are visible to us, metaphysical Platonism asserts there is another entity that exists in an unseen realm called "The Form of Courage." Truths about the Form of Courage are "metaphysical" truths, one of whose characteristics is that they are "eternal truths," existing unchangingly throughout time, unlike courageous people, for example, who belong to the world of change. This metaphysical approach then faces the difficulty of saying how exactly it is that we can know about the existence and nature of these other entities or truths.
Plato's writings themselves offer no proofs for the existence of these entities, certainly no proofs that will stand up to modern criticisms of the whole idea of eternal truths. At best, "metaphysics" describes an ambitious philosophical project stimulated by Plato's writings, in need of rational foundations that Plato's writings do not provide, which many subsequent philosophers tried to provide, but which in modern times has become one of the main targets of philosophical criticism.
The pragmatic approach adopted here takes as primary, instead, the pragmatic function that Platonic Forms are supposed to fulfill in the life of the ideal Platonist. They are supposed to be, as Plato says, "divine paradigms" after which the ideal Platonist models herself and her own personality. A good moral model is a model that will invariably make a person a better person when she better and better approximates this model in her own life.
Concrete-mindedness in one's conception of moral norms is the main obstacle to formulating moral ideals that can be shown to be invariably good and admirable, since Socratic inquiry can show that following any norms concretely conceived can sometimes lead to attitudes and behaviors that are not admirable. Mentally separating the Form of Courage from all images of visualizable courageous behavior is a very important, but entirely pragmatic, solution to this pragmatic problem.
This view of the Forms does not require rational proof that they literally exist as separate entities, only that we trust that we can recognize admirable courage when we see it in the case of unproblematic cases. The Platonic Form of Courage has the same kind of reality that we perceive in concrete courageous examples. It achieves its status as an "unchanging," invariably reliable, personal guide to moral goodness when it is mentally separated from all the accompanying appearances which tend to attract more attention because of human concrete-mindedness.
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The first Plato-passages I want to comment on are connected passages that occur in different places, in Book 7 and Book 5 respectively.
The passage from Book 7 centers on what are at first sight some trivial observations about long and short fingers. But this passage is important in the present context because, when brought together with other passages in Book 5, it suggests a way in which Platonic Forms resolve problems connected to contradictions brought to light in Socratic inquiry.
In the passage in Book 7, Plato asks us to consider a person looking at three fingers on a hand, the little finger, the ring finger, and the middle finger. Is the ring finger short or long? Answer: It is short in relation to the middle finger, but long in relation to the little finger.
Plato analyzes this observation about the short-and-long finger in a very odd way. He imagines the sense of sight reporting to the mind contradictory things about the same single finger. It reports the single finger to be both long and short, confusing the mind. The sense of sight itself is unable to resolve this contradiction, but there is another mental capacity noesis, mental understanding, which is able to resolve the contradiction. Noesis can do this because it has the ability to understand concepts which are not tied to any concrete material objects.
As Plato pictures it the mind is confused because the sense of sight sees "finger," "long," and "short" all mixed together as though they were one thing. Only noesis, as purely mental understanding, is able to resolve this contradiction, because, unlike sight, it is able to mentally separate the two contradictory concepts "long" and "short" from each other and from the concrete finger.
In Plato's words
[In the case of the ring finger] the sense of sight sees "long" and "short," but not as separate, but as mixed together [in one finger]. So in order to clarify this, mental understanding [noesis] is compelled to see "long" and "short" not as mixed together but as separate, the opposite way from sight.
And it is from some such circumstances that it first occurs to us to ask, "What is ‘the long', and again of ‘the short'?'' And so we call these [latter] things "mentally understood" (noeton) and the other things "visibly seen" (horaton.)
Some among our sensory perceptions [aisthesis] do not call upon no sis to examine them... Others certainly summon the help of no sis to examine them because aisthesis/sense-perception produces nothing sound. They do not call for help...if they do not at the same time signal contradictory perceptions [enantian aisthesis]; I describe those that do as calling for help whenever the sense perception does not point to one thing rather than its opposite.
In these cases we need to call upon... noesis, to examine whether each of the things announced to it is one or two...
These comments about long and short fingers are very odd and implausible in themselves. (Who is ever actually puzzled by this supposed problem?) They are important because of the way they connect to the contradictions uncovered in Socratic inquiry, and what they suggest about Platonic Forms as a way of resolving these contradictions.
In fact, as detailed at length in the previous essay, the human habit of representing goodness by means of concrete visible images does generate contradictions which are a frequent source of moral confusion. For example, if I try to represent "rightness" by means of the visible image of one person returning property to its owner, then Plato's story of the weapons-owner gone insane will be a source of some confusion. Here it is plausible to say that I will see the same action "giving to each what is his" as being both right (on some occasions) and not-right (on other occasions).
In a different passage in Book 5, Plato himself connects the observations about the long/short contradiction in the case of fingers, and the right/not-right contradiction in other cases.
He says in one passage (479b)
What about the many things that are "double"? Are they any less "half" than "double"? So with things "long" and "short", - - can these things be said of them [any more than] the opposite?...
No... Each of these things partakes of both opposites.
In the immediately preceding passage (479a) he uses the same ideas to describe contradictions that arise in relation to virtue-concepts:
Is there any one of the many "beautiful" things that will not appear "shameful"? or any one of the many "right" things that will not [appear] "not-right"? Or any one of the many "holy" [things that will] not [appear] "unholy"?...
Here also Plato uses the same imagery of contradictory forms somehow getting "mixed together" in single concrete things or images:
Since "the beautiful" is the opposite of "the shameful," they are two... Since they are two, each is one. And in respect to "the right" and "the not-right," "the good" and "the bad," and all the Forms... each is one, but because of mingling with bodies and actions and each other, each appears everywhere under many appearances.
The Form of Beauty, mentally understood (by noesis) as something separate from concrete bodies and concrete actions, is something single containing no contradictions within itself. But when we perceive beautiful bodies and beautiful actions, we are not perceiving this single Form as single, but as mingled with other Forms, sometimes with opposite Forms. This mixing with other Forms is what makes the single Form "Beauty" appear to us in so many different and diverse ways.
Taken together, these passages from Book 7 and Book 5 are important in the present context because they suggest the kind of connection between Socratic inquiry and Platonic Forms detailed in the previous essay, which is central to the present critical interpretation of Plato. I would make these connections more clear and explicit in the following ways:
First, these passage invite us to see Platonic Forms as embedded in our perceptions of concrete visible behavior. Laches was stirred to admiration by the sight of a soldier bravely standing at his post and not running away. Visual perceptions or images of this kind are the ultimate basis for our knowledge of courage and the other virtues. This is the crucial positive function that sense-perceptions have as bases for our knowledge of Platonic Forms.
Secondly, perceptions of visible behavior are also, however, sources of confusion, an obstacle to our knowledge of the true virtue, if we take visualizable images as precise representations of true virtue, only and always good. This negative aspect of sense-perceptions is what is brought out by contradictions uncovered in Socratic inquiry. Laches becomes confused when he sees that the same action, "standing at one's post and not running away" can actually represent contradictory things, admirable courage and non-admirable stupidity. Arguments in the previous essay gave many reasons why we can expect this to be always the case so long as our concepts of goodness are closely connected to images of visible human behavior or visible results of human behavior.
Thirdly, such contradictions can be resolved if a person is able to mentally separate the concept courage from all connection to any image of visible behavior or visible results of behavior. This is why separation from anything visible to the senses is a key characteristic of Platonic Forms, as virtue-concepts representing what is always and only good and admirable.
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The discussion so far has focused on the character of Platonic Forms as "separated" concepts, concepts separated from connection to any concrete visualizable images. Later philosophers called these "abstract" or "general" concepts, comparable for example to general concepts like "yellow" that refer to many different yellow objects, or to abstract mathematical concepts like "two" that refer to many different pairs of objects. (Remarkably, Plato uses no Greek words comparable to terms now in use, such as the words "concrete," "abstract," "general," or "concept." He generally speaks more concretely of "the beautiful" [to kalon], or "beautifuls" [ta kala, beautiful things or beautiful conduct]. He seems to stand at a transition point between very concrete thinking and abstract thought that become commonplace among later philosophers.)
But besides the "abstract" character of the Forms, the present interpretation emphasizes also the character of Platonic Forms as highly inspiring concepts, inspiring because they are "transcendent" in their goodness. I want next to comment on some passages in Plato in which this feature of the Forms is brought out.
One of the most important passages in this context is a speech in the Symposium which Plato puts in the mouth the priestess Diotima. In this speech, Diotima speaks of a mental ladder, leading from specific concrete beautiful things on the bottom rungs of the ladder, to an ecstatic vision of "Beauty Itself" (the Form of Beauty) at the top.
This passage illustrates again the double relation between concrete reality and Forms separated from concreteness. On the one hand, we only become acquainted with beauty by perceiving concrete beautiful people and things (we cannot leap directly to the top of Plato's ladder). On the other hand, we can only grasp Beauty Itself, the pure Platonic Form of beauty, through a mental grasp of beauty as a concept separated from all connection to any concrete image. But the language in this passage also makes clear the inspiring character of this mentally grasped "Beauty Itself," which is likened to a religious revelation powerful enough to transform the person to whom Beauty Itself has finally been revealed.
The passage reads as follows (I have changed the order of the paragraphs):
First of all... he will fall in love with the beauty of one individual body... Next he must consider how nearly related the beauty of any one body is to the beauty of any other, when he will see that if he is to devote himself to loveliness of form it will be absurd to deny that the beauty of each and every lovely body is the same... Next he must grasp that the beauties of the body are as nothing to the beauties of the soul... And after this he will be led to contemplate the beauty of laws and institutions... and... the sciences, so that he may know the beauty of every kind of knowledge.... [The strangeness to modern ears of "beautiful laws" reveals the difference between the Greek word kalon and the normal English translation "beauty." Kalon in some contexts means something more like "fine," "wonderful," "highly admirable."]
Starting from individual beauties, the quest for the one Beauty existing in all must find him ever mounting the heavenly ladder, stepping from rung to rung -- that is, from one to two, and from two to every lovely body, from bodily beauty to [other kinds of beauty, and finally] to the special lore that pertains to nothing but the beautiful itself, until at last he comes to know what beauty is.
Whoever has... viewed all these aspects of the beautiful in due succession is at last drawing near the final revelation. And now... there bursts upon him that wondrous vision which is the very soul of the beauty he has toiled so long for.
It is an everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which neither flowers nor fades, for such beauty is the same on every hand, the same then as now, here as there, this way as that way, the same to every worshiper as it is to every other. This vision of the beautiful will not take the form of a face, or of hands, or of anything physical. It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor something that exists in something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is -- but subsisting in itself and by itself in an eternal oneness. Other things participate in this beauty, but however much these things may flourish and deteriorate, beauty itself will become neither greater nor lesser, but will always be the same inviolable whole...
If it were given to a man to gaze on beauty's very self -- untainted, unmixed, and freed from the mortality that infects the frailer loveliness of flesh and blood -- if it were given to man to see the heavenly beauty face to face -- wouldn't you say that this man has the most enviable life, whose eyes had been opened to the vision, and who had gazed upon it in true contemplation until it had become his own forever? When a man looks upon beauty's visible image, then and only then will true virtue come to life in him -- true virtue and not just apparent virtue, because it is virtue's own self that has come to life in him, not just a semblance of virtue.
A comparable passage occurs in Plato's Seventh Letter. This passage is occasioned by reports Plato has heard about someone who wrote a work "On the Good" in which he claims to explain Plato's ideas about true goodness. Plato claims that no such work can be written on this subject, because a grasp of true Goodness is something that each person must accomplish for herself, based on her own practice of Socratic inquiry.
One statement... I can make in regard to all who have written... with a claim to knowledge of the subjects to which I devote myself... Such writers can in my opinion have no real acquaintance with the subject. I certainly have composed no work in regard to it nor shall I ever do so in the future, for there is no way of putting it in words like other studies.
Acquaintance with it must come rather after a long period of attendance on instruction in the subject itself... when suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and at once becomes self-sustaining...
The study of virtue and vice... must be carried on by constant practice over a long period... After practicing detailed comparisons of names and definitions and visual and other sense perceptions, after scrutinizing them... by the use of question and answer... at last in a flash an understanding... blazes up, and the mind, as it exerts all its powers to the limit of human capacity, is flooded with light...
The ecstatic experiences described in these two passages are in themselves unimportant for present purposes. One can profit from Socratic inquiry without having such highly unusual experiences. What is important is that these passages clearly indicate that the Platonic Form of some given virtue is not only more general and abstract than concrete instances, it also represents the admirable and inspiring character of that virtue in more intense and concentrated, more inspiring form.
This is the basis for my comparison in the previous essay to the chemical process of extracting and distilling rose perfume, "rose essence," from actual rose bushes. "Rose essence" contains the pleasant smell in a much more intense and concentrated form than it is contained in actual rose bushes. In the same way, the Platonic "essence" (ousia) of a particular virtue contains what we find admirable and inspiring about concrete specific examples of that virtue, but contains this in a more intense and concentrated form. This is why Plato can report or imagine the ideal ending of a Socratic inquiry ("practicing detailed comparisons of names and definitions and visual and other sense perceptions") as a highly emotional and personally transforming ecstatic vision of that virtue's goodness.
A personal grasp of a separated Platonic Form not only solves problems connected with contradictions uncovered by Socratic inquiry. In the ideal case it would also be uplifting and "soul satisfying." This makes sense of an otherwise puzzling passage in Republic Book 6.
Regarding "the right" and "the beautiful," many would prefer the seemings [ta dokounta] not the reality likewise with doing and possessing and seeming those things.
But regarding Goodness, possessing things that have the seemings [ta dokounta] satisfies no one, but they seek things that have the reality [ta onta]. Everyone here disregards seeming [doxa].
[What has the reality is] that which every soul seeks, and on account of this does everything, having a sense of what it is [ti einai], but puzzled and unable to adequately get what it is, or have a trustworthy belief about it as of other things, and because of this not able to obtain what is [truly] beneficial in other things.
Interpretation: Individuals like to impress others with their virtue, and in this case the reputation or external "seeming" [doxa] of rightness and beauty serves as well or better than the actual possession of these virtues. (Earlier in the Republic Plato speaks at length of those who prefer the seeming of rightness, and the difficulty of preferring the reality to the seeming.) But in this passage "the good" [agatha] stands for what is actually deeply satisfying to the possessor herself - a better English translation in this passage might be "what is meaningful," or "what makes life meaningful."
This makes for a plausible claim: That every individual ("every soul") does whatever she does in hopes of making her life a more meaningful life, and that no one is satisfied with merely appearing to have a meaningful life. Every individual does what she does in hopes that what she does in life will make her life more meaningful. But most people are confused and puzzled about this, and ultimately unsatisfied, because concrete-mindedness makes them attracted to the external and concrete "seeming" (doxa, ta dokounta) of meaningfulness, and they don't apprehend the Platonic Forms which contain its full reality (ta onta), the full reality of meaningfulness, which alone is really soul-satisfying.
I make special note here of the specific meanings of the Greek terms ta onta "things that have the reality" and doxa/ta dokounta "[things that have] seeming" here, because I think the same meanings implied in this passage are pertinent in another Republic passage quoted below. That is, here ta onta "things that have the reality" of goodness clearly refers to what it is about goodness that is truly and deeply meaningful and satisfying, whereas doxa "seeming" refers to more superficial external appearances that might impress others. These appearances (ta dokounta) might seem that they will make one's life more meaningful, but end up promising more than they can deliver, because their seeming (doxa) goes far beyond their real being (on) - their seeming to promise satisfaction goes beyond their real ability to satisfy.
These observations will be important in comments below on Republic 479D-480a, where most commentators translate doxa as "opinion," laying the stress, mistakenly I believe, on the subjectivity and uncertainty of knowledge of concrete particulars (as in "it's only your opinion"). My understanding relies instead on the connection between doxa and dokein "to seem," so that the important point is that a person who relies on doxa is relying on concrete external appearances ("seemings") visible to the senses, in contrast to a person who has a mental grasp of Forms separated from all connection to visible images.
The above discussion prepares for a reading of a key passage in the Republic Book 5. Statements in this passage are very often quoted in discussions of Plato's "theory of Forms," but this passage is also important in the present context because it shows Plato connecting his theory of Forms to the practice of Socratic inquiry.
474B announces the aim of this long discourse (474B-480A), which is to give Plato's definition of what he means by the term "philosopher."
The passage important in the present context begins (475D) by contrasting true philosophers with some people who go around to towns and villages to all the Dionysiac festivals, which were in Greece at the time occasions for theatrical performances and partying (Dionysos was the Greek god of wine and dance). Plato calls these "lovers of sights" (philo-theamones) and "lovers of sounds," whom he contrasts with true philo-sophoi, "lovers of wisdom" who "love the sight of the truth."
In what follows, it is important to remember these lovers of theater and partying as concrete examples of what Plato refers to several times as "sight-lovers," or "lovers of sights and sounds and colors." If we think of these theater-goers as people who Plato claims have doxa rather than true Knowledge [episteme] about beauty, this makes implausible the common translation of doxa as "opinion." It is important to remember this overall context in the main discussion, which I give here with some comments:
| Plato’s text Since "the beautiful" is the opposite of "the shameful," they are two... Since they are two, each is one. And in respect to "the right" and "the not-right," "the good" and "the bad," and all the Forms... each is one, but because of mingling with bodies and actions and each other, each appears everywhere under many appearances. I make a distinction like this: I set apart... the sight-lovers and lovers of skill and action, and separate them from those whom our talk concerns, who alone are rightly called lovers of wisdom [philo-sophous]. The lovers of sound and sights delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes, and everything that artful skill creates out of these, but their thought is unable to see and take delight in the nature of the Beautiful Itself. [Those are] few who are able to approach Beauty Itself, and see it by itself. [So we have one kind of person] who attends to beautiful actions, but does not attend to the Beautiful Itself, nor is able to follow when someone tries to guide him to the knowledge of it. [And then there is the person who is] the opposite of these: someone who recognizes the Beautiful Itself, and is able to see both it and what participates in it, and does not mistake what participates in it for it itself, nor mistake it itself for what participates in it. |
My comments This entire passage should be understood as the retrospective view of Plato’s ideal philosopher who has already been troubled by the kinds of contradictions uncovered through Socratic discussion, and has already realized how these problems can be resolved by mentally separating Platonic virtue-Forms from concrete examples of virtue. The theater-going "sight-lovers" will see a great many diverse beautiful scenes. Plato’s philosopher, whose mind is fixed on the pure Forms, will see each scene as made up of a mixture of relatively unchanging pure Forms - - apparent diversity is due to diverse mixings of the same forms. (Note that here Plato seems to envisage Forms of badness as well as of goodness.) This paragraph illustrates one of Plato’s main terms to describe the relation between the Forms and concrete actions: Concrete actions "participate in" the Forms.
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| 479a [Suppose there is] a person who does not think there is the Beautiful Itself, or any Idea of Beauty Itself always remaining the same, but who attends to many beautiful things - - the sight-lover, I mean, who cannot endure to hear anybody say that the beautiful is one and the just one, and so of other things. Is there any one of these many beautiful things that will not appear shameful? And of the right things, that will not seem not- right? And of the holy things, that will not seem unholy? And again, do the many double things appear any the less halves than doubles? And likewise of the long and the short things, the light and the heavy things - - can these things be said of them [any more than] the opposite?... |
The description of an Idea of
Beauty "always remaining the same" provides one of the main bases for the
metaphysical interpretation of Plato. Taken literally in a modern context,
this is easily understood to mean that there is one and only one true
definition of Beauty transcending all cultural diversity and all historical
change. But Plato makes no mention here of problems having to do with cultural diversity and historical change. First he mentions "sight-lovers," which evokes the very different context of those who enjoy beautiful theatrical scenes. Then he refers to contradictions that occur when one tries to define "rightness" and other virtues in concrete terms, which evokes the context of Socratic inquiry aimed at uncovering these contradictions. Socratic inquiry shows that, when concretely defined, the same action ("giving to each what is his") will sometimes be right and sometimes not right. Only the Form "Rightness," separated from everything concrete, will remain "always the same" in its ability to represent something truly good and admirable. Such Forms will also provide a unified focus for moral commitment, bringing unity to the individual philosopher’s moral life amid the diversity encountered in life’s circumstances. |
| So in regard to each of these
many things: "Is" it more than it "is- not" whatever one might say it is?
It is like those who pun on double meanings at banquets, or the children's riddle about the eunuch and his hitting the bat - - what they say he hit it with and as it sat on what. These things too are double-meaninged, and it is impossible to conceive firmly any one of them to "be" or "not-be," or both, or neither.
[There is not] a better place to put them than that midway between being [ousia] and not being [me einai]. For we shall surely not discover a darker region than not-being [me on], that something should "not be" still more, nor a brighter region than being [on], that something should "be" still more. We would seem to have found, then, that the many conventions of the many people about the beautiful and other things are tumbled about in the mid-region between what "is-not" and what exactly "is." Anything of this kind... must be called "what one has impressions about" [doxaston] not what is Known [gnoston], the wanderer between being caught by this in-between [mental] capacity [i.e. doxa].
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"Is it more than it
is not whatever one might say it is." This clearly assumes the
predicative sense of "is." The question is not "Does it exist
always?" but "Is it always the kind of thing we say it is?" This predicative sense is reinforced by the comparison to puns, and to an apparently familiar children’s riddle, which Storey (p. 530-31) gives as follows: A man not a man Seeing and not seeing A bird not a bird Sitting on a limb not a limb Hit at it and did not hit it With a stone not a stone. The riddle’s answer: A half-blind eunuch saw (a man not a man, seeing did not see) a bat (a bird not a bird) perching on a reed (a branch not a branch) threw at it a pumice stone and missed (hit and did not hit it with a stone not a stone). In the context of the above statements, we have a clear and plausible sense for "midway between being and not-being." A bat is not something that is halfway between existing and not existing, but something that can be thought of as somewhere between being a bird and not-being a bird. In the same way trying to define rightness as "giving to each what is his," yields a definition that can be said to be between being right and not-being right. The idea of something being "between existing and not-existing" not only makes no sense in itself, but goes against indications in the context here. |
| Those who see many beautiful
things, but do not see The Beautiful... and see many right things but not
The Right, and everything like this - - we should say they "have
impressions" [doxazein] about everything, but do not Know what they have
impressions about. What about those who see each of those things, the things that always are the same? [We should] say they "Know," not that they "have impressions" [doxazein"].
[We should] say that those who take delight in and love those things about which there is Knowledge, the others [take delight in and love those things] about which there are "impressions" [doxa]... These love and give their attention to beautiful sounds and colors and similar things, but cannot bear the Beautiful as something that "is". [We should] call them "lovers of impressions" [philo-doxous] rather than "lovers of wisdom" [philo-sophous]... Those who delight in the "being" of each thing [hekaston to on] should be called "lovers of wisdom" [philo-sophous] not "lovers of impressions" [philo-doxous]. |
Most other
commentators translate doxa as "opinion," accentuating the idea of
subjectivity and uncertainty. I think this is a mistake. First, the discussions above suggest that Plato thinks of "giving to each what is his" is something visible to the senses (aisthesis), which is the source of contradictions, and these contradictions can only be resolved by formulating a concept of Rightness separated from anything visualizable. This is why I think the noun doxa, and the corresponding verb doxazein are best understood to refer to perceptions of the external manifestations of Rightness visible to the senses. This understanding relies on the connection between doxa and dokein, "to seem" which Plato draws attention to in several other Republic passages. Secondly, Plato brings up here again the example of the theater-going party people who "love beautiful sights and sounds and colors" - - in other words, who love what sensory impressions (aisthesis) tell them about beauty. Clearly Plato’s main point about these "sight-lovers" is not that they have only uncertain subjective personal "opinions" about what they see, but that they allow their minds to be carried away by the powerful impression that beautiful sights and sounds make on their senses. This prevents them from knowing the pure "being" of beauty, that which alone is "always the same," i.e. is always and only beautiful. At the end of this passage Plato makes use of all that he has said to give his derivation of the word "philo-sopher." Philein in Greek is "to love" while sophos means "wise." For Plato, only those who love and take delight in the pure being of Goodness are "wise." Others who do not really love the being of Goodness but only its external "seemings," are not philo-sophos but philo-doxai.
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Summarizing my interpretation of this passage:
The central problem is formulating ideal virtue-concepts that will invariably make a person a more and more admirable person as she comes closer to realizing these ideals.
Problems arise because of the common tendency to conceptualize virtue in terms of concrete, easy-to-understand visualizable images. Using such concrete images as a guide will sometimes lead to genuinely admirable actions, and sometimes lead to actions that are clearly not admirable. This is in contrast to the Forms which are unchanging in their ability to represent something good and admirable.
"Concrete image" is my way of describing something Plato refers to in various other ways:
- These are images of conduct that can be perceived by the physical senses (aisthesis), primarily the sense of sight. These are images of conduct that can be visualized. The Forms, by contrast, cannot be visualized, and so grasping them requires developing a mental capacity (noesis) able to think in concepts separated from anything concretely visualizable.
- These concrete images are the external appearances, the "seeming" (doxa) of true virtue. It is incorrect to say that they represent nothing of the being of true virtue, but they do not represent the full being of virtue either. For the person able to grasp the Form containing the full being of a particular virtue (what it is that makes this virtue admirable), these external appearances will appear to lie between not-being-admirable-virtue and fully-being-admirable-virtue. Grasping the full being of a virtue again requires kind of knowing opposite knowing-appearances (doxazein), which Plato calls in this context episteme, or gnosis (the equivalent of noesis).
- No single concrete image will represent every instance of a particular virtue (e.g. there are many other "right actions" besides the action of giving back a person what belongs to him). So the person who thinks only in terms of concrete images will tend to conceive each virtue under multiple forms, and so will lack the unified and concentrated focus for moral commitment which Forms provide for the ideal Platonist. This is the main point of Plato’s contrast between "the one and the many" in this passage (e.g. "many right actions" and "one Form" of Rightness.)
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504c A measure of such things [as justice, sobriety, courage, and wisdom] that falls short in the least degree of being is not a measure at all, because the imperfect is not a measure of anything, although it appears to some that they have already done enough and there is no need to seek further. |
This passage again clearly implies that "being" (on) in Plato refers primarily to the perfect Form of a virtue. Only the Platonic Form of Beauty has the full "being" of beauty, and only it is fit to be used as a measure for self-evaluation. |
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484c-d Does it seem to you that those differ from the blind who lack knowledge of the being of each being and who have no vivid paradigm (paradeigma) in the soul not able to be like painters looking to the most true and always attending to what is "over there" (ekeise) and contemplating it most exactly establish also here norms about the beautiful and the just and the good... |
This passage again shows what Plato means by "being." Platonic "being" is something that can serve as a model to be mentally looked at and imitated in the same way that a painter looks at a model and imitates it with his paints. The "beings" in question here refer to the being of "the beautiful and the just and the good," i.e. the Forms of each of these virtues. The transcendence of these "Beings" is pictorially represented by saying they are "over there, " (ekeise) but able to serve as true models for concrete human existence "here." (enthade). "Most true" (alethestaton) here clearly does not refer to accurate knowledge of concrete entities, but to knowledge of the ideal perfect paradigms of the virtues. |
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485B Those of a philosophical nature always (aei) love the knowledge which reveals to them the being of the always-being (tes ousias tes aei ousēs), and is not wandering between becoming and decaying. |
A Platonic philosopher is one who loves "the being of the always-being." Taking "being" in the senses described above, "always being" does not mean "always existing." It refers to the fact that the Form of Beauty, for example, is something always beautiful, in contrast to the beauty of beautiful objects which become beautiful then subsequently become not-beautiful. |
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490a-c [the philosopher is] a true lover of knowledge, and does not dwell among the many things which appear to be (doxazomenoi einai) but would hold on his way and his love would not fail before he got in touch with the nature of each thing using that [part] in the soul to which it belongs to be in touch with these natures that [part] which is kin [to the natures of things] [This part of the soul is] that by which he draws close and communes with what really has being (migeis tō onti ontōs) generating understanding (noun) and truth [and so] knows and truly lives and grows. |
Here the Forms are called the "natures" (physei) of things. The abstract Forms of virtues are what "really have being," in contrast to many concrete examples of virtue which only "appear" to have the full being of these virtues. A true philosopher does not mentally dwell among the many concrete examples of virtue, but mentally communes (literally "mingles') with the Forms. One part of his soul is "kin" to these Forms - - this part consists partly of the capacity to grasp abstract concepts, and partly of that part which loves pure Goodness.
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500b-c ...the one who truly has his mind on the beings (ta onta) will not look below to the affairs of men and striving with them be filled with envy and hate but looking and contemplating those orderly things which always remain the same in all respects not wronging or suffering wrong from each other but all being harmonious and keeping within reason (kata logon echonta) he imitates them and makes himself like them as much as he can. [It is impossible] not to imitate what one loves. The philosopher, associating with the divine and harmonious (theios kai kosmios) will become harmonious and divine as far as is possible to a man. |
Plato sometimes refers to the Forms simply as "the beings." The Platonist philosopher does not see himself in the context of social life in this world, competing with others in a world full of competitive wrangling. He makes the "divine" Form the main objects of love in his life. He fashions his identity in relation to them, trying to become like them, and so himself becoming "divine" so far as is possible to man.
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English has two words, "to exist" and "to be," where Greek has only one word, einai, which can mean either "to exist" or "to be." In this passage Plato frequently uses einai and its several related forms, the participle on, "being," and the verbal noun ousia, sometimes translated "being" or "essence."
When Plato uses any of these words in relation to Rightness Itself, metaphysical interpreters of Plato take him to be asserting the separate objective existence of the Form of Rightness. Accordingly, aei on, "always being" is understood and translated as "eternal existence," and "always being the same," is understood as transcending all cultural diversity and historical change.
Although the metaphysical interpretation has become by far the dominant interpretation today, it faces several problems. For example, first, cultural diversity and historical change are not the primary problems that worry Plato, and are certainly not problems that he claims to solve. Secondly, Plato offers no convincing rational arguments for the Form of Rightness as an eternally "existing" entity. Finally, Plato makes the peculiar statement in this passage below, that concrete right actions are "tossed about between being and not-being [on and m‘ on]". Ordinarily we think of something as either existing or not existing. What sense can it make to speak of a right action as something "between existing and not-existing"?
I advocate, instead, reading Plato’s statements about "being" in this passage in the context of the preceding discussions. This context suggests what Julia Annas calls the "predicative" sense of einai - - taking "is" to mean "is X" as when we predicate of a blackbird that it "is black." Used in this sense, the "being" of the virtue of rightness is the essence of what makes rightness admirable. Only the Platonic Form of Rightness has this "being" (on) or "essence" (ousia) of rightness in its most full and perfect form.
Socratic inquiry provides a rational basis for knowing which definitions of rightness do or do not have the full "being" of Rightness in this sense. Socratic inquiry shows that concrete definitions of rightness ("giving to each what is his") sometimes describe something right and sometimes something not-right. We know that some proposed concept of rightness always represents admirable rightness if it is able to withstand vigorous Socratic questioning (if it is able to "stand still" in the face of such questioning, as other Plato passages put it). Only the abstract Platonic Form of Rightness represents something always Right, always (aei) having the being (on) of Rightness.
This interpretation makes good sense of "between being and not being." Some actions have nothing at all of the "being" of Rightness - - in them one finds no rightness to know at all. But no concrete action is able to serve as an image of the full and perfect "being" of Rightness itself. In this sense, concrete right actions lie somewhere between "not- being-right" at all, and having full pure "being" of Rightness.
Saying that concrete images of right conduct are "between being and not-being" in this sense does not imply that the Form of Rightness has an entirely different kind of being than the rightness we perceive in concrete right actions (in philosophical language, it is not "ontologically" different). Rightness has only one kind of being, imperfectly represented in perceptions of the rightness of concrete actions, perfectly represented in the Form of Rightness. "Between being and not-being" is just another way of saying that right actions "participate in" the Form of Rightness, or that the Form of Rightness is contained in concrete visible images of rightness, but contained there "mixed with" other things besides rightness.
Corresponding to the contrast "being" vs. "between being and not-being," Plato says there are two kinds of knowing. We have true Knowledge, epist‘m‘, about what has "being." About what lies "between being and not-being" we have an inferior kind of knowing which Plato calls doxa. Under the influence of the metaphysical interpretation, almost all translators render doxa as "opinion," This evokes the idea familiar to modern philosophy that metaphysical truths are universal, necessary, unavoidable Absolute truths known to Pure Reason, which we can be absolutely certain about. This contrasts with other ("contingent") truths which we learn about through sense perception, which can always be mistaken. [Rorty quote]
Plato does of course insist that the Forms can only be known by a kind of mental understanding (noesis) separated from all connection to sense-impressions (aisthesis). But unlike modern philosophers, he never associates mental understanding with "necessary truths" supposedly known by pure reason. Far less does he ever try to prove that some particular conception of the Form of Rightness, for example, is a "necessary truth" that we can come to know by pure reason.
The present interpretation emphasizes instead the connection between doxa and dokein, "to seem." Sensory perceptions of right actions visible to our senses are perceptions of the external appearances, the doxa "seeming" of rightness, which may or may not be signs of the real "being" of Rightness, which can be grasped only by mental understanding separated from all sensory images. Plato himself brings out this meaning of dokein and doxa in an earlier discussion in the Republic, where he contrasts two persons:
- one has the seeming (dokein/doxa) of rightness without actually being a righteous person,
- the other actually is a righteous person, but does not have the reputation (doxa) of being righteous, and so does not get the social benefits of seeming to others to be so.