Remarkably, Plato never gives a complete discussion of any kind of Goodness or virtue, ending in anything like a final definition. What we find instead are several passages describing the end of the process as a wondrous personal experience of Goodness in its pure and perfect form, with no description of the content of this experience. The 7^th Letter says in fact that it would be impossible for one person to engage in this inquiry, arrive at a description of Goodness, and then convey this to another person who had not herself been personally engaged in the process. This is the reason why Plato says that he has never and will never give a written discussion of the nature of Goodness: He expresses this point in a letter now called The Seventh Letter: ML

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 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...

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The next passage, from Plato’s Symposium, speaks more directly of the relation between perceptions of Goodness in concrete cases, and the final dawning in the mind of the presence of Goodness itself. Using the example of beauty as a kind of Goodness, it pictures perceptions of beauty in concrete individual cases as the lower rungs of a ladder. One "climbs the ladder" by abstracting from these concrete examples concepts of beauty that are more general. These concepts are also progressively purified, to represent beauty in a more pure and perfect form, so that the process has a quasi-religious character comparable to a religious initiation leading up to a final "revelation" of "heavenly beauty." ML

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.

We can see in this passage the essential relationship between the two ends of Plato’s ladder. At the lower end are concrete examples of some kind of goodness. The goodness in question here is beauty, and an indispensable first step in learning about this kind of goodness is falling in love with the beauty beheld in one beautiful body. But a beautiful body is not beauty itself. The same body that is beautiful now will someday not be beautiful. To grasp beauty itself one must learn to mentally extract a mental concept of beauty from concrete examples of beauty – to grasp what Plato elsewhere calls the "Idea" or "Form" of beauty.

Grasping this Idea or Form (eidos) of beauty is partly a matter of generalizing – grasping a general Form that one can now see is instantiated in many different concrete examples. It is also a matter of purifying and perfecting one’s concept of beauty – the mental Form of beauty that one gradually comes to perceive represents "heavenly" beauty, beauty in a highly exalted form. At the top of the ladder one catches a glimpse of a "heavenly" beauty that makes concrete examples of beauty at the bottom of the ladder seem pale by comparison. In the ideal case this vision of heavenly goodness transforms the person beholding it, so that this goodness comes to inform her being as well.

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The present interpretation of Plato is based largely on connecting passages like the 7^th Letter and Symposium passages quoted above, with passages like the one quoted from the Laches, illustrating "Socratic method." The Symposium and 7^th Letter passages describe the ideal positive result of prolonged engagement in Socratic discussion.

Just as beautiful bodies are a necessary starting point for learning about beauty, stories exemplifying courage are a necessary starting point for learning about courage. But just as it is a mistake to identify beauty itself with one beautiful body, Laches was mistaken in identifying courage itself with the concrete story of a person standing at his post and not running away. Concrete examples are not stable representations of goodness – just as the same beautiful body will one day become not beautiful, the same act of not running away will under different circumstances become an example of foolish stubbornness rather than wise courage.

The discussion of courage in the Laches shows not only how the use of more examples of courage can help in generalizing, but also how the use of counterexamples can help in purifying and perfecting one’s concept of courage. The 7^th Letter describes what one might find at the end of a very long and difficult inquiry into the X that constitutes the goodness of good courage, "The study of virtue... 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." ML

The image of the ladder in the Symposium points to the positive relation between concrete reality and the realm of pure Forms of Goodness – concrete examples participate in the Forms, and so can form steps on a ladder by means of which the mind can ascend to the realm of Forms.

The image of cave-shadows in the Republic points to the negative relation between concrete reality and the realm of pure Forms. Even though the shadows are shadows of the true reality of the Forms, people tend to get attached to the shadows themselves. That is, they are very concrete minded in their thinking. They tend to identify "reality" with concrete, visible objects and events, and they get used to thinking in concrete images.

Plato thinks that true Goodness in itself cannot be identified with any concrete reality or concrete image, consequently this concrete mindedness is an obstacle to grasping pure Goodness in itself. People who are concrete minded become easily disoriented when they try to deal with non-concrete Forms. This is represented in the cave story when one person turns away from the shadows on the cave wall and is blinded by the light he encounters at the cave entrance. Concrete minded people are also very attached to the idea that reality consists of concrete objects, and are very resistant to any criticism that undermines the security they find in their concrete world. This is represented in the cave story when the freed person returns to the cave and tries to free the others by convincing them that what they are looking at is only shadows of the real world outside the cave.

The following is a translation of Plato’s passage presenting this parable. ML

Imagine men living in an underground cave-like dwelling place, which has a way up to the light along its whole width, but the entrance is a long way up. The men have been there from childhood, with their neck and legs in fetters, so that they remain in the same place and can only see ahead of them, as their bonds prevent them turning their heads. Light is provided by a fire burning some way behind and above them. Between the fire and the prisoners, some way behind them and on a higher ground, there is a path across the cave and along this a low wall has been built, like the screen at a puppet show in front of the performers who show their puppets above it.

See then also men carrying along that wall, visible over its top, all kinds of artifacts, statues of men, reproductions of other animals in stone or wood fashioned in all sorts of ways.

[These men] are like us.

Such men could not see anything of themselves and each other except the shadows which the fire casts upon the wall of the cave in front of them? And is not the same true of the objects carried along the wall?

If they could converse with one another, do you not think that they would consider these shadows to be the real things? Such men would believe the truth to be nothing else than the shadows of the artifacts.

Consider then what deliverance from their bonds and the curing of their ignorance it would be if something like this naturally happened to them. Whenever one of them was freed, had to stand up suddenly, turn his head, walk, and look up toward the light, doing all that would give him pain, the flash of the fire would make it impossible for him to see the objects of which he had earlier seen the shadows. What do you think he would say if he was told that what he saw before was foolishness, that he was now somewhat closer to reality and turned to things that existed more fully, that he saw more correctly? If one then pointed to each of the objects passing by, asked him what each was, and forced him to answer, do you not think he would be at a loss and believe that the things which he saw earlier were truer than the things now pointed out to him?

If one then compelled him to look at the fire itself, his eyes would hurt, he would turn round and flee toward those things which he could see, and think that they were in fact clearer than those now shown to him.

And if one were to drag him thence by force up the rough and steep path, and did not let him go before he was dragged into the sunlight, would he not be in physical pain and angry as he was dragged along?

When he came into the light, with the sunlight filling his eyes, he would not be able to see a single one of the things which are now said to be true.

I think he would need time to get adjusted before he could see things in the world above; at first he would see shadows most easily, then reflections of men and other things in water, then the things themselves. After this he would see objects in the sky and the sky itself more easily at night, the light of the stars and the moon more easily than the sun and the light of the sun during the day.

Then, at last, he would be able to see the sun, not images of it in water or in some alien place, but the sun itself in its own place, and be able to contemplate it.

After this he would reflect that it is the sun which provides the seasons and the years, which governs everything in the visible world, and is also in some way the basis of those other things which he used to see.

What then? As he reminds himself of his first dwelling place, of the wisdom there and of his fellow prisoners, would he not reckon himself happy for the change, and pity them?

And if the men below had praise and honors from each other, and prizes for the man who saw most clearly the shadows that passed before them, and who could best remember which usually came earlier and which later, and which came together and thus could most ably prophesy the future, do you think our man would desire those rewards and envy those who were honored and held power among the prisoners, or would he feel, as Homer put it, that he certainly wished to be "serf to another man without possessions upon the earth" and go through any suffering, rather than share their opinions and live as they do?

If this man went down into the cave again and sat down in the same seat, would his eyes not be filled with darkness, coming suddenly out of the sunlight?

And if he had to contend again with those who had remained prisoners in recognizing those shadows while his sight was affected and his eyes had not settled down - and the time for this adjustment would not be short - would he not be ridiculed? Would it not be said that he had returned from his upward journey with his eyesight spoiled, and that it was not worthwhile even to attempt to travel upward? As for the man who tried to free them and lead them upward, if they could somehow lay their hands on him and kill him, they would do so.

Do not be surprised that those who have reached this point are unwilling to occupy themselves with human affairs, and that their souls are always pressing upward to spend their time there, for this is natural if things are as our parable indicates.

Is it at all surprising that anyone coming to the evils of human life from the contemplation of the divine behaves awkwardly and appears very ridiculous while his eyes are still dazzled and before he is sufficiently adjusted to the darkness around him, if he is compelled to contend in court or some other place about the shadows of justice or the objects of which they are shadows, and to carry through the contest about these in the way these things are understood by those who have never seen Justice itself?

Anyone with intelligence would remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways and from two causes, coming from light into darkness as well as from darkness into light. Realizing that the same applies to the soul, whenever he sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he will not laugh mindlessly but will consider whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed because unadjusted, or has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is filled with a brighter dazzlement. The former he would declare happy in its life and experience, the latter he would pity, and if he should wish to laugh at it, his laughter would be less ridiculous than if he laughed at a soul that has come from the light above.

If these things are true, [then] education is not what some declare it to be; they say that knowledge is not present in the soul, and that they put it in, like putting sight into blind eyes

Our present argument shows that the capacity to learn and the organ with which to do so are present in every person's soul. It is as if it were not possible to turn the eye from darkness to light without turning the whole body; so one must turn one's whole soul from the world of becoming [gignomenon] until it can endure to contemplate reality and the brightest of realities to on kai tou ontos tou phanotaton], which we say is the Good.

Education then is the art of doing this very thing, this turning around, the knowledge of how the soul can most easily and most effectively be turned around; it is not the art of putting the capacity of sight into the soul; the soul possesses that already but it is not turned the right way or looking where it should. This is what education has to deal with.

The virtue of Understanding [phronesis] belongs above all to something more divine [theios], which never loses its capacity but, according to which way it is turned, becomes useful and beneficial or useless and harmful.

Have you never noticed in men who are said to be wicked but clever, how sharply their little soul looks into things to which it turns its attention? Its capacity for sight is not inferior, but it is compelled to serve evil ends, so that the more sharply it looks the more evils it works.

Yet if a soul of this kind had been hammered at from childhood and those excrescences had been knocked off it which belong to the world of becoming and have been fastened upon it by feasting, gluttony, and similar pleasures, and which like leaden weights draw the soul to look downward – if, being rid of these, it turned to look at things that are true, then the same soul of the same man would see these just as sharply as it now sees the things towards which it is directed.