484A–487A Socrates and Glaucon
487B–506C Socrates and Adeimantus
506D–511E Socrates and Glaucon
Note
When Socrates and Glaucon have agreed that any genuine philosopher has all the virtues and is perfectly suited to rule a city, Adeimantus speaks up once again on behalf of popular opinion. Socrates gradually persuades Adeimantus that the popular prejudice against philosophy results from experience with two types of impostors, those who pretend to know how to manage political life without philosophy, and those who pretend to practice it. But the genuine philosopher must study something that transcends justice, by which it and all human life are governed and illuminated. Even an indirect approach to that study is demanding, and Glaucon returns to the discussion as Socrates offers two of the most famous images in the dialogue, inviting the use of two different kinds of imagination, the sun and the divided line. These two prepare the way for a third image that begins the following book, which will complete Socrates’ central exposition of what philosophy is and why it is inescapably needed.
[484A] “So the philosophers, Glaucon,” I said, “and those who aren’t philosophers, have shown up in a certain respect for who they each are, now that we’ve gone through some long discussion with a lot of effort.”
“Well,” he said, “it probably wouldn’t be easy to do with a short one.”
“It appears not,” I said. “Anyway, it seems to me they could be brought to light in a still better way if it were only about this that it was necessary to speak, and one didn’t need to go through [484B] the many things that remain for someone who’s going to get a clear sight of the way a just life differs from an unjust one.”
“What’s after this for us, then?” he said.
“What else but what comes next?” I said. “Since those capable of reaching what’s always the same in the same respects are philosophers, while those who aren’t, but are in a shifting condition as they wander among the many things, are not philosophers, which of them ought to be leaders of a city?”
“How should we state it,” he said, “if we were to speak in a measured94 way?”
“That whichever sort show themselves capable of safeguarding the laws and practices of cities,” I said, “are the ones to appoint as guardians.”
“That’s right,” he said.
[484C] “And is this clear too,” I said, “whether a blind person or one who has sharp sight ought to watch over anything as its guardian?”
“How could that not be clear?” he said.
“Well, do they seem any different from blind people, those who are lacking in knowledge of what each thing is in its being, who have no clear pattern in the soul and no capacity to look off, the way painters do, to what’s truest, constantly referring back to there and contemplating it with as much precision as possible, so that here too [484D] lawful practices involving what’s beautiful and just and good may be established if they need to be established, while they also watch over the ones that are in place in order to preserve them?”
“No, by Zeus,” he said, “they aren’t much different at all.”
“Then are those the people we’re going to set up as guardians, rather than the ones who’ve discerned each thing that is, without being left behind them in experience either, or lagging in any other part of virtue?”
“It would surely be strange to choose other people,” he said, “so long as these weren’t left behind in the other respects, since they’d stand out in that very thing that’s just about the most important one.”
[485A] “Then shouldn’t we explain this, the way in which the same people will be able to possess both the one and the other sort of attributes?”
“Very much so.”
“What we were saying when we started this discussion is that it’s necessary first to get a clear understanding of their nature, and I imagine that if we agree sufficiently about that, we’ll also agree that it’s possible for the same people to possess these attributes, and that nobody other than these people ought to be leaders of cities.”
“How so?”
“Let this be agreed to by us about the natures of [485B] philosophers, that they always have an erotic desire for what can be learned that reveals to them any of the being that always is and doesn’t wander around under the sway of coming to be and passing away.”
“Let it be agreed.”
“And also,” I said, “that they desire all of it, and don’t willingly give up any part of it, small or larger, or more honored or less, just as we were going over before about lovers of honor and erotic lovers.”
“You’re putting it rightly,” he said.
“Then consider after that, whether it’s necessary for those who’re [485C] going to be the sort of people we were describing to have in their nature this attribute as well as that one.”
“What’s that?”
“An aversion to falsehood,95 and never to be willing to accept what’s false, but to hate it and love truth.”
“Likely so,” he said.
“It’s not just likely, my friend, but entirely necessary for someone of an erotic nature to love everything akin to and at home with his beloved.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Well, could you find anything more at home with wisdom than truth?”
“How could that be?” he said.
“So is the same nature capable of being a lover of wisdom and [485D] a lover of falsehood?”
“By no means.”
“Therefore the one who’s a lover of learning in his very being has to stretch out toward all truth straight from youth as much as possible.”
“In its entirety.”
“But we’re surely aware that for anyone whose desires incline strongly to one thing, they’re no doubt weaker for things other than that, as if they were a stream that’s been channeled off in that direction.”
“Surely so.”
“So in the person in whom they’ve flowed toward what’s learnable and everything of that sort, I imagine they’d be concerned with the pleasure of the soul itself, by itself, and would pass by those that come through the body, if he’s not pretending to be [485E] a philosopher but truly is one.”
“That’s a big necessity.”
“Then certainly such a person would be moderate and in no way a lover of money, because money and extravagant spending are taken seriously for the sake of things that it behooves anyone else but this person to be eager for.”
“That’s how it is.”
[486A] “And here’s something it’s no doubt also necessary to consider when you’re going to judge a nature as philosophic or not.”
“What’s that?”
“That you don’t overlook whether it has its share of pettiness, since a focus on inconsequential things is presumably what’s most contrary to a soul that’s intent on constantly reaching out toward the whole that comprises all of what’s divine and human together.”
“Most true,” he said.
“When someone’s thinking has a grandeur to it, and a contemplation of all time and of all being, do you imagine human life could possibly seem to be anything greatly important?”
“Impossible,” he said.
[486B] “Then such a person also won’t regard death as a terrible thing?”
“Not in the least.”
“Then in a cowardly and petty nature, the way it looks, there’d be no trace of genuine philosophy.”
“It doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“What about it then? Is there any way an orderly person who’s no lover of money and not petty and doesn’t make pretenses and isn’t a coward could become a hard bargainer or unjust?”
“There’s none.”
“So when you’re considering whether a soul is philosophic or not straight from youth, you’ll also take this into consideration, whether it’s just and civilized or antisocial and fierce.”
“Very much so.”
[486C] “And I don’t imagine you’re going to leave out this.”
“What’s that?”
“Whether learning is easy for it or hard. Or do you expect anyone would ever be sufficiently fond of anything that he did if he was doing it with pain and accomplishing little with a lot of effort?”
“That couldn’t happen.”
“And what if he was full of forgetfulness and couldn’t retain anything he did learn? Would it be possible for him not to be empty of knowledge?”
“How could he not?”
“So if he worked with no profit, don’t you imagine he’d necessarily end up hating both himself and that kind of activity?”
“How could he not?”
[486D] “Then let’s not ever accept a forgetful soul among those that are adequately philosophic, but let’s look for one that needs to be good at remembering.”
“Absolutely so.”
“But we’d claim that anything of an unmusical and graceless nature would pull it in no other direction than into disproportion.”
“What else?”
“And do you regard truth to be akin to disproportion or to being in proportion?”
“Being in proportion.”
“Then in addition to the rest, let’s seek out the kind of thinking that’s in proportion and graceful by nature, that its own innate tendency will cause to be easily drawn to the look of each sort of being.”
“How else?”
[486E] “What about it then? Do we seem to you to have gone through things that are in any way not each necessary and attached to one another for a soul that’s going to get hold of what is in an adequate and complete way?”
[487A] “Most necessary indeed,” he said.
“Then is there any way you could find fault with such a pursuit, when no one could ever become able to pursue it adequately if he were not by nature good at remembering, a quick learner, lofty in his thinking, graceful, and a friend and kinsman of truth, justice, courage, and moderation?”
“Not even the god of scorn could find fault with such a thing,” he said.
“And when such people have been brought to complete fulfillment by education and age,” I said, “wouldn’t you turn over the city to them alone?”
[487B] And Adeimantus said, “Socrates, no one could say a word against you about these things, but every time people hear what you’re saying now, they have an experience something like this: they believe that from inexperience in questioning and answering they’re led a little off course by the argument at each question, and when the little deflections have been added up at the end of the discussion, a big blunder blazes up that’s opposite to the things they said in the first place, and like unskillful checker players who end up getting backed into a corner by people who are skilled at it, and have no [487C] way to make a move, they too end up backed into a corner and not having any way to say anything in their turn by this other sort of checkers played not with game pieces but with arguments.96 But that certainly doesn’t make the truth be any the more that way, and I speak as one looking at the present instance. Because someone might now claim he’s not able to oppose your statement on the grounds of any particular thing you ask, but is able to see in fact that all those who get themselves involved in philosophy, and don’t drop it after dabbling in it while young for the sake of [487D] education, but dwell on it longer, become for the most part quite warped, not to say completely depraved, while those who seem the most decent sort are still affected by the pursuit you’re recommending in this way at least, that they become useless to their cities.”
And when I heard this, I said, “But do you believe those who say that are mistaken?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I’d be pleased to hear how it seems to you.”
“You’d hear that to me, at any rate, they appear to be telling the truth.”
[487E] “Then how is it right to say” he said, “that cities will have no rest from evils until philosophers rule in them, if we agree that they’re useless to the cities?”
“You’re asking a question,” I said, “that needs an answer given by way of an image.”
“And I guess you’re not in the habit of speaking in images,” he said.
“That’s nice,” I said. “You’re mocking me after you’ve dropped me into an argument that’s so [488A] resistant to demonstrations? Just listen to the image, then, so you can see even better how tenaciously97 I make images. Because the experience that the most decent philosophers undergo in relation to their cities is so hard to get at that there’s not a single other experience like it, but it’s necessary to pull things together from many places in order to give an image of it and a defense on their behalf, the way painters depict goatstags and the like by amalgamating things. Think of something like this as happening in connection with either many ships or one: There’s a shipowner of a size and strength beyond all those on the [488B] ship, but a little deaf and likewise somewhat shortsighted, and another problem like those is that his knowledge of seafaring skills is a little short too. The sailors are divided against one another over the steering, with each one imagining that he ought to be at the helm, even though he’s never learned the art and can’t point to a teacher he’s had or a time when he was studying it, and on top of that, they claim it’s not even teachable, and they’re ready to cut someone to pieces for even saying it is. [488C] They’re always pushed in around the shipowner himself, begging and doing everything to get him to turn over the helm to them, and sometimes, when they don’t persuade him but others do instead, they either kill the others or throw them out of the ship. When they’ve put the gullible shipowner out of action with mandrake98 or liquor or something else, they rule the ship and make their own use of what’s in it, sailing it while drinking and feasting the way such people are likely to. On top of [488D] that, they show their approval for anyone who’s clever at grasping a way for them to rule, by using either persuasion or force on the shipowner, by calling him skilled at sailing and at helmsmanship, and someone who knows his stuff about a ship, while they revile anyone who’s not that sort as useless. As for the true helmsman, they don’t even understand that it’s necessary for him to pay attention to times and seasons, to the sky and the stars and winds and everything pertaining to the art, if he’s going to be a skilled ruler of a ship in his very being. They imagine that it’s not possible to acquire the skill and practice of how one gets the helm whether anybody wants him to or not, [488E] and to acquire helmsmanship too at the same time. So with things like that going on around the ships, don’t you think the one who’s a skilled helmsman in the true sense, in his very being, would be called [489A] a stargazer and a windbag and useless to them by seafarers on ships that are operated in that way?”
“Very much so,” said Adeimantus.
“Now I don’t imagine you need the image to be analyzed to see that it resembles the condition of cities in relation to the true philosophers, but that you understand what I mean.”
“Very much so,” he said.
“Well first of all, then, teach the image to that fellow who’s surprised that philosophers aren’t honored in their cities and [489B] try to persuade him that it would be much more surprising if they were honored.”
“I’ll teach it,” he said.
“Also that you’re telling the truth that the most decent people engaged in philosophy are useless to most people; tell him, though, to blame their uselessness on those who have no use for them and not on the decent people. It’s not natural for a helmsman to beg sailors to be ruled by him, or for the wise to go to the doors of the rich—the one who came up with that cute remark99 told a lie; what’s naturally true is that, whether it’s a rich person or a poor one who’s sick, it’s necessary to [489C] go to the doors of the doctors, and necessary as well for everyone who needs to be ruled to go to the doors of someone capable of ruling, not for the ruler to beg the ruled to be ruled, if in truth they’re to get any use out of him. But he won’t be mistaken if he likens the politicians who now rule to the sailors we were just talking about, and likens those spoken of by these people as useless star-babblers to helmsmen in the true sense.”
“Totally right,” he said.
“As a result of these things, then, and in these circumstances, it’s not easy for the [489D] best pursuit to be well thought of by people whose pursuits are its opposites, but the biggest and strongest slur on philosophy comes from people who claim to be pursuing it, the very ones the complainant against philosophy is talking about when you declare that he says most of those who go into it are completely depraved, while the most decent ones are useless; I admitted that what you said was true, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“And haven’t we gone over the cause of the uselessness of the decent ones?”
“Thoroughly.”
“So do you want the next thing we go over to be the inevitability of depravity [489E] in most of them, and for us to try to show, if we’re able to, that philosophy is not the cause of that?”
“Very much so.”
“Let’s listen and speak, then, by casting our memories back to the point at which we were going over the sort of nature that has to be innate in someone who’s to be [490A] a gentleman.100 If you’ve got it in mind, the first point was that truth led him, and he needed to follow it completely in everything or else be a fraud who has no part in true philosophy in any way.”
“It was so stated.”
“And isn’t this one thing that’s so violently contrary to popular opinion amongst the opinions now held about him?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“So won’t we be giving a defense that’s tailor-made by saying the following? That someone who’s a lover of learning in his very being would be of such a nature as to strive toward what is, and wouldn’t [490B] linger with the many particular things that have a seeming of being, but would keep going and not blunt the edge of his erotic desire or let up from it until he gets hold of the nature of what each thing itself is with the capacity of the soul that’s suited to get hold of such a thing, and is suited to it by its kinship with it, and once he’s come near by means of that and joined with what is in its very being, and has given birth to intellectual insight and truth, he’d discern and be truly alive and be nourished, and in that way cease from his labor pains, but not before that.”
“That’s tailor-made in the utmost possible degree,” he said.
“What about it then? Will this person have anything to do with loving falsehood, or just the opposite, hate it all?”
[490C] “Hate it,” he said.
“And if truth leads the way, I don’t imagine we’d ever claim that a chorus of evils could follow it.”
“How could it?”
“But a healthy and just state of character would, with moderation also in attendance.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Then what need is there to force the rest of the chorus that belongs to the philosophic nature to line up again from the beginning? Because you remember, no doubt, that, as properly belonging with these things, courage, loftiness of mind, quickness at learning, and memory went along with them. And you objected that, while everyone would be obliged to agree [490D] with the things we were saying, if someone left the arguments aside and looked to the people themselves that the discussion was about, he’d claim to see that some are useless and many are depraved with every sort of vice. In examining the cause of the slur, we’ve come now to this question: why in the world are most of them depraved? And for the sake of that, we took up again the nature of those who are philosophers in the true sense, and defined it from necessity.”
“That’s it,” he said.
[490E] “So,” I said, “what we need to do is look at the corruptions of this nature, at how it’s destroyed in most people while a small remnant escape, the ones who are not depraved and whom people call useless, and after that [491A] look at those who imitate this, and settle into the practice of it, to see what sort of natures souls have that go into a pursuit that’s unfit for them and beyond them, so that they hit the wrong note often, so as to attach to philosophy everywhere and for everyone a reputation of the sort you describe.”
“What corruptions do you mean?” he said.
“I’ll try,” I said, “to go through them for you if I’m able to. I imagine everyone will agree with us about this, that such a nature, having all the attributes we assigned it just now if it was going to become [491B] a philosopher in the full sense, springs up on few occasions and in few human beings—don’t you think so?”
“Emphatically.”
“And for these few, think how many and great the potential disasters are.”
“What, exactly?”
“The most surprising thing of all to hear is that every one of the things we praised in the nature tends to ruin the soul that has it and tear it away from philosophy. I’m talking about courage, moderation, and everything we went through.”
“That’s a strange thing to hear,” he said.
[491C] “And what’s more,” I said, “on top of these things, all the so-called goods corrupt it and tear it away—beauty, riches, bodily strength, family connections with power in the city, and everything akin to these; you get the type of things I’m talking about.”
“I get it,” he said; “I’d also be glad to learn more precisely what you mean.”
“Then grasp it as a whole in the right way,” I said, “and it will appear very evident to you, and the things said about it before won’t seem strange.”
“How do you advise me to do that?” he said.
[491D] “With every seed or growing thing,” I said, “whether in the ground or among animals, we know that one that doesn’t get the food or the climate or location suited to it in each case will be that much more lacking in what’s proper to it, the more vigorous it is, since presumably what’s bad is more antagonistic to something good than to something that’s not good.”
“How could it not be?”
“So I imagine it’s reasonable for the best nature to come off worse than an inferior one from being in too unfavorable an environment.”
“It is.”
“Then, Adeimantus,” I said, “won’t we claim that with souls too, [491E] those with the greatest natural talents become exceptionally bad when they get bad guidance in youth? Or do you imagine that great injustices and undiluted vice come from an inferior nature rather than from one with youthful vigor ruined by its upbringing, and that a weak nature will never be the cause of great things either good or bad?”
“No,” he said; “that’s how it is.”
[492A] “Well then, I imagine that if the nature we set down as that of the philosopher meets up with suitable learning, it will necessarily come into every virtue as it grows, but if it’s brought up without being seeded and planted in suitable soil, it will come instead into everything opposite, unless it happens to get the help of one of the gods. Or do you believe, the way most people do, that some young people are corrupted by sophists, and that any sophists in a private capacity cause any corruption even worth [492B] mentioning, and that it’s not the very people who say that who are the greatest sophists and who educate in the most complete way and turn out young and old, men and women, as the sort of people they want them to be?”
“When, exactly?” he said.
“Whenever a multitude of them sits down together in one bunch,” I said, “in assemblies or law courts or theaters or army camps or any other gathering in common of a crowd, and, with a lot of racket, blame some of the things that are said and done and praise others, excessively [492C] in both cases, shouting and clapping, and added to that, the rocks and the place in which they are, by echoing, make the racket of blame and praise double. In a situation like that, what do you imagine a young person, as the saying goes, has in his heart? Or what sort of private education will hold up against it for him, and not be inundated by that sort of blame and praise to be swept off and carried by the tide in whatever direction it takes, so that he’ll claim the same things are beautiful and shameful as they do, and make a practice of doing the very things they do, and be like them?”
[492D] “That’s a big necessity, Socrates,” he said.
“And we haven’t yet spoken of the biggest necessity,” I said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“What these educators and sophists impose by deed in addition to speech when they fail at persuasion. Or aren’t you aware that they punish anyone who’s not persuaded with penalties in dishonor, money, and death?”
“Yes, very harshly,” he said.
“So what other sophist, or what sort of private discussion going in the opposite direction do you imagine will prevail over these?”
[492E] “None, I imagine,” he said.
“No,” I said, “and even to try is the height of folly. A state of character related to virtue in a different way, that runs counter to the education it’s gotten from these people, doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened, and won’t happen, my comrade—a human one, that is, though for the divine sort let’s follow the proverb and make an exception from the statement, since it behooves us to be well aware that if anything whatever might be saved [493A] and become what it ought to be in such a state of political life, if you say it was saved by divine dispensation you won’t be speaking badly.”
“It doesn’t seem any different to me,” he said.
“Then in addition to that,” I said, “let this also seem so to you.”
“What?”
“That none of the private professionals whom these people call sophists and regard as rival artisans teaches anything other than these opinions held by most people, the ones they give as opinions when they’re assembled in groups, and he calls that wisdom. It’s the very sort of thing someone would do if he was making a close study of the moods and desires of a big and strong [493B] beast he was fostering, to learn the way he ought to approach it and the way to get hold of it, and when it’s hardest to handle or most gentle, and what makes it become that way, and on what particular occasions it’s in the habit of uttering its vocal sounds, and what sounds in response calm it or make it fierce when they’re uttered by someone else. And once having learned all that by being around it and spending time with it, he’d call it wisdom, and having systematized it like an art he’d turn to teaching, knowing nothing at all about what’s in truth beautiful or shameful among these opinions and desires, [493C] or good or bad, or just or unjust, he’d name all these things after the opinions of the great animal, calling what delights it good and what annoys it bad, but he’d be calling necessary things just and beautiful; he’d have no other account to give of them, but as for the nature of the necessary and the good, and the great extent by which they differ in being, he’d neither have discerned it nor be able to show it to anyone else. Now before Zeus, wouldn’t someone like that seem to you to be a bizarre teacher?”
“To me, yes,” he said.
“And does there seem to be any difference between that fellow and the one who regards it as wisdom [493D] to have made a close observation of the mood and pleasures of the many and various assembled people, whether in painting or music or politics? Because if anyone consorts with them for showing off either poetry or any other craft or service to the city, making the masses his sovereigns over and above the ways they necessarily are, there’ll be the proverbial Diomedean necessity101 for him to turn out what they applaud. But as for that stuff’s being in truth good or beautiful, have you ever yet heard anyone give an argument on its behalf that wasn’t ludicrous?”
[493E] “And I don’t imagine I ever will either,” he said.
“Now keeping all these things in mind, let that former point be brought back to mind: with respect to the beautiful itself, as distinct from the many beautiful things, or to any given thing itself, as distinct from its [494A] many particular instances, is there any way a multitude is going to stand for that or believe there is such a thing?”
“No way in the least,” he said.
“Therefore,” I said, “a multitude is incapable of being philosophic.”102
“Incapable.”
“And therefore, it’s a necessity that people who do engage in philosophy will be criticized by them.”
“A necessity.”
“And also by all those private persons who attach themselves to the crowd and desire to gratify it.”
“Clearly.”
“So do you see any salvation from that for a philosophic nature, so that it will stick with its pursuit in order to get to its end? Keep in mind the results of [494B] the things we went over earlier, since it was agreed by us that quickness at learning, memory, courage, and loftiness of mind belong to this nature.”
“Yes.”
“Then right away, such a person will be first among children in all things, especially if his body grows as a match for his soul.”
“How could he fail to?” he said.
“So I imagine when he gets older, his family and fellow citizens will want to use him for their own interests.”
“How could they not?”
[494C] “Then they’ll be lying at his feet, begging and honoring, getting their hooks into him early by flattering in advance the power he’s going to have.”
“It does tend to happen that way,” he said.
“So what do you imagine someone like that will do in such circumstances,” I said, “especially if he happens to be from a big city, and rich and well born in it, and also good-looking and tall? Won’t he be brimming with unattainable hope, considering himself [494D] good enough to handle the affairs of the Greeks and the barbarians too, and won’t he lift himself to a lofty height over these things, filled up with pretentious preening and a vapid, stupid, smugness?”103
“Will he ever,” he said.
“Now if someone made a quiet approach to a person in that situation and told him the truth, that he had no sense in him and needed some, and that it’s not obtainable unless one slaves over the acquisition of it, do you imagine it would be as easy as falling off a log to get him to hear that through so much interference?”
“Far from it,” he said.
“But then if, due to being of a good nature and having an affinity for discussion,” I said, “he somehow has an insight and is turned back and drawn [494E] toward philosophy, what do you imagine those people are going to do who believe they’ll be losing the use of him and his company? Is there any length they won’t go to, any word they won’t utter, both about him, so that he won’t be persuaded, and about the one doing the persuading, so that he won’t be able to, as they plot against him in private and institute adversary proceedings in public?”
[495A] “That’s a big necessity,” he said.
“So is there any way such a person is going to engage in philosophy?”
“Not at all.”
“Do you see, then,” I said, “that we weren’t speaking badly in saying that, after all, even the very parts that go to make up a philosophic nature, when they turn up in a bad upbringing, are in a certain way the cause of one’s falling away from the pursuit of it, as are the so-called goods, riches and all such trappings?”
“No indeed,” he said; “it was rightly said.”
“So, you strange fellow,” I said, “this is the destruction and corruption, [495B] so great and of such a kind, of the best nature in relation to the best pursuit, and few of them come into being anyway, as we claim. And those who wreak the greatest havoc on their cities and on private people come particularly from among these men, and so do those who do the greatest good, if they happen to be drawn that way. A puny nature never does anything great, nothing at all, nothing for a private person and nothing for a city.”
“Most true,” he said.
“So when these people, for whom she’s most suited, desert her in this way, [495C] they leave philosophy abandoned and unfulfilled and they themselves live a life that’s neither suited to them nor true, while she, like an orphan with no relatives, suffers disgrace when others, unworthy of her, come in their place; these others make her incur the sort of accusations you declare are hurled at her by her accusers, that some who hang around her are good for nothing while most are good for plenty of evil.”
“Yes, those’re the things that’re said at any rate,” he said.
“And it’s fair to say them,” I said. “Because other puny little people notice that this place has become vacant, but is chock-full [495D] of beautiful names and outward appearances, and like escapees from prisons who run off to temples, they too are well pleased to hot-foot it out of the arts into philosophy, whichever ones of them happen to be the most refined in the concerns of their own little arts. For even with philosophy in such a shape, it’s still left with a more lofty status in comparison to the other arts, and many defective natures aspire to it, but just as their bodies are maimed by their arts and crafts, so too their souls [495E] have gotten stunted and crushed by their menial occupations. Or is that not necessary?”
“It very much is,” he said.
“Do you suppose it’s any different to see them,” I said, “than a short bald blacksmith who’s come into some cash, newly let out of jail and cleaned up at the bathhouse, wearing a freshly made cloak, decked out as a bridegroom and about to marry the boss’s daughter because she’s poor and abandoned?”
[496A] “Not much different,” he said.
“Then what sort of offspring are such people likely to father? Won’t they be illegitimate and mediocre?”
“That’s a big necessity.”
“So what about people unworthy of an education, when they come around and associate with philosophy in a way she doesn’t deserve? What sort of thoughts and opinions will we claim they’ll generate? Won’t they be truly fit to be listened to as pseudo logic, nowhere near having in them anything true born or worth paying any mind to?”
“Completely and totally,” he said.
“So, Adeimantus,” I said, “there’s a very tiny remnant left of [496B] people who associate with philosophy in a manner worthy of her, probably someone well-born and well-bred in character but held down in banishment, who stands by her in accord with his nature for lack of people to corrupt him, or a great soul, when he’s born in a small city and disdains the city’s concerns because he sees beyond them, and presumably also a slight few, naturally gifted, might come to her from another art they justly hold in low esteem. And there might also be the sort of curb that holds our companion Theages in check, because [496C] all the other things designed to drive someone away from philosophy are there for Theages too, but taking care of the sickliness of his body, by shutting him off from politics, restrains him. Our own case, the divine sign,104 is not worth talking about, since it might have happened with one other person before, or none. Those who’ve come to be among these few, and gotten a taste of how sweet and blessed an attainment it is, have also seen well enough the insanity of most people, and that none of them, in minding the concerns of their cities, is doing anything wholesome, to put it in one word, and that there is no [496D] ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and survive, but instead is like a human being fallen in among wild animals if he’s not willing to join the rest in doing injustice and not sufficient as one person to hold out against all the savage beasts. Before he could be of any benefit to the city or his friends, he’d get himself killed, and would be useless to himself as well as to everyone else. Taking all these things into account, he keeps quiet and minds his own business, like someone in a storm, standing out of the dust and spray carried on the wind under the shelter of a little wall. Seeing the others filled with lawlessness, [496E] he’s content if he himself can live his life here clean of injustice and impious deeds, and at his exit from it, make his departure in a gracious and benign manner, with beautiful hope.”
[497A] “That’s certainly not the smallest accomplishment he could leave with,” he said.
“And not the biggest either,” I said, “as long as he doesn’t happen to have a suitable polity; in a suitable one he himself will grow more and he’ll safeguard the things shared in common along with those kept in private. But the things on account of which the slur on philosophy has taken hold, and that it has done so unjustly, seem to me to have been stated in a measured way, unless you still have something else to say.”
“I have nothing further to say about that,” he said, “but which of the current polities do you say is suitable for it?”
[497B] “None whatsoever,” I said, “but that’s in fact the accusation I’m making, that among the cities there are now there’s none constituted in a way that’s worthy of a philosophic nature, and that’s why it gets twisted and altered, just as a foreign seed planted in alien ground has a tendency to be overwhelmed and fade into the native vegetation, so too this species doesn’t now hold onto its own capacity but falls away into a character alien to it. But if it should catch on to the best polity, [497C] best in just the way it too is, then it will make it plain that the rest of the natures and pursuits are merely human but this one was godlike all along in its very being. And it’s obvious that you’re going to ask next what this polity is.”
“You haven’t quite got it,” he said; “I wasn’t going to ask that, but whether it was the one we went over in founding the city, or something else.”
“In every other respect it’s the same,” I said, “and in respect to this very thing it was mentioned then too that there would be a need for someone always to be in the city who has a rational understanding of [497D] the polity, the very same understanding that you, the lawgiver, had in setting down the laws.”
“That was mentioned,” he said.
“But it wasn’t made sufficiently clear,” I said, “out of fear of what you folks have made all too clear by not taking no for an answer—that the demonstration of it would be long and difficult, since even the part that’s left is not the easiest of all things to go through.”
“What’s that?”
“By what means a city will avoid being destroyed by taking philosophy in hand. Anything big risks a fall, and as the saying goes, beautiful things are hard by their very nature.”
[497E] “Nevertheless,” he said, “let the demonstration get its completion by having this become evident.”
“That won’t be prevented by a lack of willingness,” I said, “but if anything, by a lack of ability. You’ll be here to see my zealousness anyway. Watch now how enthusiastically and audaciously I’m going to argue that a city ought to take up this pursuit in just the opposite way it does now.”
“How’s that?”
[498A] “Now,” I said, “those who take it up are adolescents just out of childhood, and between that and running a household and making a living they get close to the hardest part of it and then give it up, because they’re made out to be consummate philosophers; and by the hardest part, I mean what’s implicit in speech.105 Later on, if they’re invited along while others are doing this, they consider it a big thing if they’re even willing to be listeners, thinking one ought to do it as recreation. And nearing old age, outside of a certain few, they’re snuffed out much more than Heracleitus’s sun,106 inasmuch as they don’t get fired up again.”
[498B] “How should it be?” he said.
“Completely opposite; as adolescents and children they should take in hand an adolescent-style education and age-appropriate philosophy, and take very good care of their bodies, at a time when they’re growing and maturing into manhood, to secure an assistant for philosophy. And as the years go forward in which the soul begins to be full-grown, they ought to intensify the exercise of it; but when bodily strength is declining and they get out [498C] of politics and armed service, from then on they should be put out to pasture to range unfettered and do nothing else, except as a recreation, those, that is, who are going to live happily and, at death, round out the life they’ve lived with a fitting destiny in that other place.”
“It’s true you seem to me to be speaking enthusiastically, Socrates,” he said, “though I imagine most of the people listening to you are still more enthusiastic about resisting and aren’t going to be persuaded by any means, starting from Thrasymachus.”
[498D] “Don’t stir up a fight between Thrasymachus and me,” I said, “now that we’ve just become friends, not that we were enemies before that. Because we’re not going to give up our efforts until we either persuade both him and the others or make some headway into that life, in case they meet up with such discussions when they’ve come to life again.”
“Oh, you’re talking about a short time, then,” he said.
“No time at all,” I said, “as compared to the entirety of it, though it’s no wonder most people aren’t persuaded by these arguments. Because they’ve never seen in existence what we now insist is,107 though [498E] they have seen a lot more phrases like this purposely matched up instead of falling together spontaneously the way they just did. But a man completely measuring up to and matching up with virtue in word and deed to the limit of what’s possible, holding power in a city [499A] that’s another of his kind, that they’ve never seen, not even one, much less more than one. Or do you think so?”
“By no means.”
“And they certainly haven’t come to listen enough to beautiful, liberating discussions either, my blessed friend, discussions of the sort that strain by every means to seek the truth for the sake of knowing, and keep their distance from the cute and contentious arguments that strain toward nothing other than outward show and competition in lawsuits as well as in private gatherings.”
“That they haven’t,” he said.
[499B] “Well, it was for these reasons,” I said, “and from foreseeing them then, that we were frightened, but we kept speaking anyway, forced into it by the truth, saying that no city or polity, and likewise no man either, would ever reach fulfillment until by chance some necessity possesses those few philosophers who aren’t depraved, but are now called useless, to take into their care the running of a city whether they want to or not, and makes them pay heed to the city, or else until a true erotic desire for true philosophy, by some divine inspiration, comes over those who are now [499C] in power or hold kingships, or over their sons. And I claim there’s no reason at all to think it’s impossible for either or both of these things to happen; if so, we’d justly be laughed at for idly saying things like mere prayers. Isn’t that so?”
“It is.”
“So if any necessity has come along for people who are first-rate in philosophy to take into their care the running of a city, either in the limitless time gone by, or even now in some barbaric land, somewhere far [499D] outside our view, or if it will happen hereafter, we’re ready to contend in argument about this that the polity that’s been described did, does, and will exist whenever this Muse comes into power in a city. Because it’s not impossible and we’re not talking impossibilities; it’s difficult, and that’s granted by us.”
“That’s how it seems to me too,” he said.
“But would you also say that it doesn’t seem that way to most people?” I said.
“Probably,” he said.
“Blessed fellow,” I said, “don’t make a blanket accusation against the masses [499E] like that. They’d certainly have an opinion of a different sort if, by being encouraging instead of contentious, you dispelled the slander from the love of learning by displaying who the philosophers you’re talking about are, and [500A] differentiated their nature and pursuit the way we just did, so they won’t take you to be talking about the people they supposed. And if they look at it that way, you’ll certainly admit that they’ll take on an opinion of a different sort and give a different answer. Or do you imagine that anyone who’s ungrudging and civilized is harsh with someone who’s not harsh, or resentful of someone who’s not resentful? I’ll get in ahead of you and say that I believe such a harsh nature turns up in some few people but not in a multitude.”
“Don’t worry,” he said; “I’m of the same opinion.”
[500B] “And aren’t you of the same opinion on this very point as well, that it’s those outsiders who are to blame for the fact that most people are harshly disposed toward philosophy, because they barge in where they don’t belong like a bunch of drunks, hurling abuse among themselves, being fond of squabbling, and always making arguments directed at persons, doing what’s least appropriate to philosophy?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“Doubtless, Adeimantus, there’s no leisure for anyone who has his thinking truly [500C] directed toward the things that are to gaze down at the concerns of human beings and get filled up with resentment and malice over battling with them; instead, by gazing on and contemplating things in a regular arrangement and always in the same condition, that neither do nor suffer injustice among themselves, all disposed in order in accord with reason, they imitate these things and take on their likeness as much as possible. Or do you imagine there’s any way for anyone not to imitate whatever he dwells with and admires?”
“No possible way,” he said.
[500D] “So the philosopher who dwells with what’s divine and orderly becomes orderly and divine to the extent possible for human beings, though a lot of slander is hurled at them all.”
“Absolutely so.”
“So,” I said, “if some necessity arises for him to attend to instilling what he sees there into the characters of human beings in both private and public, and not just mold his own character, do you imagine he’d turn out to be a bad workman of moderation and justice, and of all virtue of the populace?”
“He least of all,” he said.
“So if the masses were to perceive that what we’re saying about him is true, would they be harsh against the philosophers and distrust [500E] us when we say that a city could never become happy unless artists using the divine model draft its outline?”
“They wouldn’t be harsh if they perceived that,” he said, “but exactly what [501A] type of outlining are you talking about?”
“Taking a city and the character of its people like a tablet,” I said, “first they’d wipe it clean, which is not very easy; but then you can be sure that in this respect they’d be different from the rest right from the start, in being unwilling to put their hands to either a private person or a city, or to draft laws, before they either receive them clean or make them that way themselves.”
“And rightly so,” he said.
“Then after that, don’t you imagine they’d sketch in the shape of the polity?”
“Of course.”
[501B] “Then, as they work out the details, I imagine they’d look in both directions, toward what’s just by nature, and beautiful and moderate and everything of the sort, and also toward that which they’re to introduce into human beings, mixing together and blending a manlike image out of the various pursuits, judging it by what even Homer called godlike, or bearing a god’s image,108 when it arises in human beings.”
“Right,” he said.
[501C] “And I imagine they’d erase one thing and draw another in again until, as much as they could, they fashioned human states of character favored by the gods to the greatest possible degree.”
“In that way the drawing would come to be the most beautiful at any rate,” he said.
“Well then,” I said, “are we in any way persuading those folks you claimed would be rushing at us full speed, that the artist of polities we were commending to them then is of this sort? They got riled up about him because we were turning the cities over to him, but have they gotten any more calm about hearing that now?”
“Much more,” he said, “if they have any moderation.”
[501D] “And on what basis would they have any grounds to dispute it? Will they claim philosophers aren’t lovers of what is and of truth?”
“That would certainly be absurd,” he said.
“Well then, that their nature, that we’ve gone through, isn’t at home with what’s best?”
“Not that either.”
“Well what about this? That such a nature, when it happens upon suitable pursuits, won’t be completely good and philosophic, if any is? Or will they claim the ones we ruled out are more so?”
“Of course not.”
[501E] “So will they still get angry when we say that until the philosophic kind comes to power in a city, there will be no rest from evils for a city or its citizens, and the polity we’re telling a story about in speech won’t reach fulfillment in deed?”
“Less so, maybe,” he said.
“Then,” I said, “are you willing for us not to say they’re less angry but that [502A] they’ve calmed down and been persuaded in every last detail, so that they’ll consent, if for no other reason than from being ashamed?”
“Very willing indeed,” he said.
“Well then,” I said, “let these people have been persuaded of this. But is anyone going to argue over the following point, claiming there’d be no chance that offspring of kings or of those in power would be born philosophers in their natures?”
“Not a single person would,” he said.
“And if they were born that way, can anyone say there’s a great necessity for them to be corrupted? That it’s hard for them to be kept safe, even we admit, but is there anyone who’d argue that in the whole of time [502B] not even one could ever be kept safe?”
“How could he?”
“But surely,” I said, “if one is born and has a city obeying him, that’s sufficient to bring to fulfillment everything that’s now in doubt.”
“Quite sufficient,” he said.
“Since presumably,” I said, “once a ruler has set down the laws and practices we went over, it’s certainly not impossible for the citizens to be willing to follow them.”
“Not by any means.”
“But then is it anything wondrous or impossible for the very things that seem good to us to seem that way to others as well?”
[502C] “I can’t think why,” he said.
“And that they’re best, if they’re possible, I imagine we went over sufficiently in the earlier discussion.”
“Quite sufficiently.”
“So now, our conclusion about lawgiving appears to be that the things we’re saying are best if they could happen, and while it’s difficult for them to happen it’s certainly not impossible.”
“That’s the conclusion,” he said.
“Then since, by effort, that’s reached an end, don’t the things that remain after it need to be spoken about: in what manner, by what kinds of things learned [502D] and pursued, the saviors of the polity will be present among us, and at what ages each group of them will take up each activity?”
“That surely needs to be spoken about,” he said.
“It didn’t turn out to be a wise thing in the earlier discussion,” I said, “for me to have left out the objectionable matter of possessing women, the propagation of children, and the instituting of the rulers, even though I knew that the complete truth would be offensive and a hard thing [502E] to bring about, because as it is, the need to go through these things came along nonetheless. And while the particular things about women and children are finished, it’s necessary to go into the ones about the rulers as if from the beginning. And we were saying, if [503A] you recall, that they must be seen to be passionately devoted to the city, standing the test amid pleasures and pains, and being seen not to drop this conviction through drudgery or terrors or any other vicissitude, or else the person who’s incapable is to be rejected, while the one who comes through untarnished in every way, like gold tested in the fire, is to be established as a ruler and given honors and prizes both while living and at his death. Some such things as that were being said when the discussion slipped past them with its face covered, in fear of setting in motion what’s now at hand.”
[503B] “You’re telling the exact truth,” he said; “I do recall.”
“I was reluctant, dear friend,” I said, “to state what has now been daringly exposed, but now let it be boldly stated: it’s imperative to put philosophers in place as guardians in the most precise sense.”
“Let it be so stated,” he said.
“Then consider it likely that you’ll have few of them, since the nature we went through needs to belong to them, but its parts are rarely inclined to grow together in the same place, but in most cases grow as something severed.”
“How do you mean?” he said.
[503C] “With natures that are good learners, have memories, are intellectually flexible, are quick, and have everything else that goes with these things, and are youthfully spirited and lofty in their thinking as well, you know that they aren’t willing at the same time to grow up being the sort of natures that want to live with calmness and stability in an orderly way, but instead are the kind that are carried off wherever their quickness happens to take them, and everything stable goes right out of them.”
“You’re telling the truth,” he said.
“But with those natures with stable characters, on the other hand, that are not easily changeable, those one would treat as more trustworthy and that would be unmoved [503D] confronting terrors in war, wouldn’t they be the same way confronting things to be learned also? They’re hard to move and slow to learn as though they’d been numbed, and they’re full of sleepiness and yawning whenever anything of the sort needs to be worked at.”
“That’s how they are,” he said.
“But we claimed it was necessary to have a good-sized and high-quality share of both, or else not be allowed to take part in the most precise sort of education or in honor or in ruling.”
“Rightly,” he said.
“And don’t you imagine that will be rare?”
“How could it not be?”
“So not only does it need to be tested in the labors, terrors, and [503E] pleasures we spoke of then but also, something we passed over then and speak of now, one needs to give it exercise in many kinds of studies to examine whether it will be capable of holding up under the greatest studies, or whether it will [504A] shy away like people who show cowardice in other areas.”
“It’s certainly appropriate to examine it that way,” he said, “but what sort of studies in particular are you saying are the greatest?”
“No doubt you remember,” I said, “that we pieced together what justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom each would be by distinguishing three forms that belong to the soul.”
“If I didn’t remember that,” he said, “it would be just for me not to hear the rest.”
“And what about what was said by way of preface to that?”
“What was it?”
[504B] “We were saying something to the effect that getting the most beautiful possible look at these things would take another, longer way around, which would make them become evident to someone who traveled that road, though it would be possible to provide illustrations approximating to the things that had already been said earlier, and you folks declared that would be sufficient. And so the things said at that time, as far as precision goes, as it appeared to me, were deficient; as for whether they were satisfactory to you people, that’s something you could say.”
“To me? In a measured way,” he said; “and it looked like they were to the others as well.”
[504C] “My friend,” I said, “measuredness in such matters that stops short in any respect whatever of what is turns out not to measure anything at all, because nothing incomplete is a measure of anything. But sometimes it seems to some people that they’re well enough off already and don’t need to search any further.”
“A great many people feel that way a lot,” he said, “because of laziness.”
“That feeling, anyway,” I said, “is one there’s the least need for in a guardian of a city and its laws.”
“Likely so,” he said.
“So, my comrade,” I said, “it’s necessary for such a person to go around by the longer [504D] road, and he needs to work as a learner no less hard than at gymnastic training, or else, as we were just saying, he’ll never get to the end of the greatest and most relevant study.”
“So these aren’t the greatest ones,” he said, “but there’s something still greater than justice and the things we’ve gone over?”
“Not only is there something greater,” I said, “but even for those things themselves, it’s necessary not just to look at a sketch, the way we’ve been doing now, but not to stop short of working them out to their utmost completion. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to make a concentrated effort in every way over other things of little worth, to have them be as precise and pure [504E] as possible, while not considering the greatest things to be worthy of the greatest precision?”
“Very much so,” he said, “and a creditable thought it is, but what you mean by the greatest study, and what it’s about—do you imagine,” he said, “that anyone’s going to let you off without asking you what it is?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Just you ask. For all that, you’ve heard it no few times, but now you’re either not thinking of it or else, by latching onto me, [505A] you think you’ll cause me trouble. But I imagine it’s more the latter, since you’ve often heard that the greatest learnable thing is the look109 of the good, which just things and everything else need in addition in order to become useful and beneficial. So now you know pretty well that I’m going to say that, and in addition to it that we don’t know it well enough. But if we don’t know it, and we do know everything else as much as possible without it, you can be sure that nothing is any benefit to us, just as there would be none if [505B] we possessed something without the good. Or do you imagine it’s any use to acquire any possession that’s not good? Or to be intelligent about everything else without the good, and have no intelligence where anything beautiful and good is concerned?”
“By Zeus, I don’t!” he said.
“And surely you know this too, that to most people, the good seems to be pleasure, and to the more sophisticated ones, intelligence.”
“How could I not?”
“And, my friend, that the ones who believe the latter can’t specify what sort of intelligence, but are forced to end up claiming it’s about the good.”
“It’s very ridiculous,” he said.
[505C] “How could it be otherwise,” I said, “if after reproaching us because we don’t know what’s good they turn around and speak to us as though we do know? Because they claim that it’s intelligence about the good as though we for our part understand what they mean when they pronounce the name of the good.”
“That’s very true,” he said.
“And what about the people who define the good as pleasure? Are they any less full of inconsistency than the others? Aren’t they also forced to admit that there are bad pleasures?”
“Emphatically so.”
“So I guess they turn out to be conceding that the same things that are good are also bad. Isn’t that so?”
[505D] “Certainly.”
“Then isn’t it clear that the disagreements about it are vast and many?”
“How could it not be clear?”
“And what about this? Isn’t it clear that many people would choose the things that seem to be just and beautiful, and even when they aren’t, would still do them, possess them, and have the seeming, though no one is content to possess what seems good, but people seek the things that are good, and in that case everyone has contempt for the seeming?”
“Very much so,” he said.
[505E] “So this is exactly what every soul pursues, for the sake of which it does everything, having a sense that it’s something but at a loss and unable to get an adequate grasp of what it is, or even have the reliable sort of trust it has about other things; because of this it misses out even on any benefit there may have been in the other things. On such a matter, of such great importance, [506A] are we claiming that even the best people in the city, the ones in whose hands we’re going to put everything, have to be in the dark in this way?”
“Not in the least,” he said.
“I imagine anyway,” I said, “that when there’s ignorance of the way in which just and beautiful things are good, they won’t have gotten a guardian for themselves who’s worth much of anything, in someone who’s ignorant of that, and I have a premonition that no one’s going to discern them adequately before that.”
“You’re very good at premonitions,” he said.
“Then won’t our polity be perfectly ordered if [506B] that sort of guardian does watch over it, one who knows these things?”
“Necessarily,” he said. “But you in particular, Socrates, do you claim the good is knowledge or pleasure or some other thing besides these?”
“That’s a man for you,” I said; “you’ve done a beautiful job of making it plain all along that the way things seem to others about these things won’t be good enough for you.”
“But it doesn’t seem just to me either, Socrates,” he said, “to be able to state the opinions of others but not one’s own, when one [506C] has been concerned about these things for such a long time.”
“Well does it seem to you to be just,” I said, “to talk about things one doesn’t know as though one knew them?”
“Not by any means as though one knew them,” he said, “but certainly it’s just to be willing to say what one thinks as something one thinks.”
“What?” I said, “Haven’t you noticed about opinions without knowledge that they’re all ugly? The best of them are blind. Or do people who hold any true opinion without insight seem to you to be any different from blind people who travel along the right road?”
“No different,” he said.
“Then do you want to gaze on ugly things, blind and crooked, when you’ll be able to hear bright and beautiful ones from others?”
[506D] “Before Zeus, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “you’re not going to stand down as if you were at the end. It’ll be good enough for us if, the same way you went over what has to do with justice and moderation and the other things, you also go over what has to do with the good.”
“For me too, comrade,” I said, “and more than good enough. But I’m afraid I won’t be capable of it, but I’ll make a fool of myself in my eagerness and pay for it in ridicule. But, you blessed fellows, let’s leave aside for the time being what the good itself is, since it appears to me to be beyond [506E] the trajectory of the impulse we’ve got at present to reach the things that now seem to me to be the case. But I’m willing to speak about what appears to be an offspring of the good and most like it, if that’s also congenial to you folks, or if not, to let it go.”
“Just speak,” he said, “and some other time you’ll pay off the balance with a description of the father.”
[507A] “I’d like to have the power to pay it in full and for you folks to receive it, and not just the interest on it as you will now. Give a reception, then, to this dividend110 and offspring of the good itself. Be on your guard, though, in case I unintentionally deceive you by paying my account with counterfeit interest.”
“We’ll be on guard according to our power,” he said, “so just speak.”
“After I’ve gotten your agreement,” I said, “and reminded you of things mentioned in the previous discussion and often spoken of before now elsewhere.”
“What sort of things?” he said.
[507B] “We claim that there are many beautiful things,” I said, “and many good things, and the same way for each kind, and we distinguish them in speech.”
“We do.”
“But also a beautiful itself, and a good itself, and the same way with everything we were then taking as many, we go back the other way and take according to a single look of each kind, as though there is only one, and we refer to it as what each kind is.”
“That’s it.”
“And we claim that the former are seen but not thought, while the ‘looks’ in turn are thought but not seen.”
“Completely and totally so.”
[507C] “And by which of the things within ourselves do we see the ones that are seen?”
“By sight,” he said.
“And perceive the things heard by hearing, and all the perceptible things by the other senses?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Well,” I said, “have you reflected about the craftsman of the senses, how he was by far the most bountiful in crafting the power of seeing and being seen?”
“Not at all,” he said.
“Then look at it this way: for one thing to hear and another to be heard, is there any need for another kind of thing in addition to the sense of hearing and a sound, such that, if [507D] that third thing isn’t present, the first won’t hear and the second won’t be heard?”
“There’s nothing like that,” he said.
“And I don’t imagine,” I said, “that there are many others either, not to say none, that have any additional need for such a thing, or can you name any?”
“Not for my part,” he said.
“But don’t you realize that the power of sight and being seen does have an additional need?”
“How’s that?”
“Presumably you’re aware that when sight is present in eyes and the one who has it attempts to use it, and color is present there in things, unless there’s also a third kind of thing present, of a nature specifically for this very purpose, [507E] sight will see nothing and colors will be invisible.”
“What’s this thing you’re speaking of?” he said.
“The one you call light,” I said.
“It’s true, as you say,” he said.
“Then the sense of sight and the power of being seen have been bound together [508A] by a bond more precious, by no small look, than that uniting other pairs, unless light is something to be despised.”
“Surely it’s far from being despised,” he said.
“And which of the divine beings in the heavens can you point out as the ruling power responsible for this, whose light makes our sight see and visible things be seen as beautifully as possible?”
“The same one you and everyone else would,” he said, “since it’s obvious you’re asking about the sun.”
“And is it this way that sight is by its nature related to this god?”
“How?”
“The sun is not sight itself, nor is it that in which sight is present, what [508B] we call an eye.”
“No indeed.”
“But I imagine that’s the most sunlike of the sense organs.”
“By far.”
“And doesn’t it acquire the power that it has as an overflow from that which is bestowed by the sun?”
“Very much so.”
“So while the sun isn’t sight, but is the thing responsible for it, isn’t it seen by that very thing?”
“That’s how it is,” he said.
“Now then,” I said, “say that this is what I’m calling the offspring of the good, which the good generated as something analogous to itself; the very thing the good itself [508C] is in the intelligible realm in relation to insight and the intelligible things, this is in the visible realm in relation to sight and the visible things.”
“How so?” he said. “Go into it more for me.”
“With eyes,” I said, “do you know that when one no longer turns them on those things to whose colors the light of day extends, but on those on which nocturnal lights fall, they grow dim, and appear nearly blind, just as though no pure sight was present in them?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“But I imagine that whenever one turns them to the things the sun illumines, they see them clearly, [508D] and pure sight is manifestly present in these very same eyes.”
“Certainly.”
“In this manner, think of the power of the soul too as being the same way. Whenever it becomes fixed on that which truth and being illumine, it has insight, discerns, and shows itself to have an intellect, but whenever it becomes fixed on something mixed with darkness, something that comes into and passes out of being, it deals in seeming and grows dim, changing its opinions up and down, and is like something that has no intellect.”
“It does seem like that.”
“Then say that what endows the things known with truth, [508E] and gives that which knows them its power, is the look of the good. Since it’s the cause of knowledge and truth, think of it as something known, but though both of these, knowing and truth, are so beautiful, by regarding it as something else, still more beautiful than they are, you’ll regard it rightly. And as far as knowledge [509A] and truth are concerned, just as it’s right over there to consider light and sight sunlike, but isn’t right to consider them to be the sun, so too here it’s right to consider both of these as like the good, but not right to regard either of them as being the good; the condition of the good requires that it be held in still greater honor.”
“You’re talking about a beauty hard to conceive,” he said, “if it endows things with knowledge and truth but is itself beyond these in beauty, because it’s sure not pleasure you mean.”
“Watch your mouth,” I said; “but look into the image of it still more closely.”
“In what way?”
[509B] “I imagine you’d claim that the sun not only endows the visible things with their power of being seen, but also with their coming into being, their growth, and their nurture, though it’s not itself coming-into-being.”
“How could it be?”
“Then claim as well that the things that are known not only get their being-known furnished by the good, but they’re also endowed by that source with their very being and their being what they are, even though the good is not being, but something over and above being, beyond it in seniority and surpassing it in power.”
[509C] And Glaucon, in a very comical manner, said “By Apollo, that’s a stupendous stretcher.”111
“You’re to blame for it,” I said, “for forcing me to tell the way things seem to me about it.”
“And don’t by any means stop,” he said, “not if there are any other things for you to go over in the likeness to the sun, in case you’re leaving something out anywhere.”
“That’s for sure,” I said; “I’m leaving out scads of things.”
“Well don’t skip over any little bit,” he said.
“I suspect I’ll skip over a lot,” I said, “but be that as it may, as far as it’s possible at present, I won’t willingly leave anything out.”
“See that you don’t,” he said.
[509D] “Well then, as we’re saying,” I said, “think of them as being a pair, one ruling as king over the intelligible race and realm, and the other, for its part, over the visible—note that I’m not saying ‘over the heavens,’ so I won’t seem to you to be playing verbal tricks with the name.112 But do you grasp these two forms, visible, intelligible?”
“I’ve got them.”
“Then take them as being like a line divided into two unequal segments, one for the visible class and the other for the intelligible, and cut each segment again in the same ratio, and you’ll get the parts to one another in their relation of clarity and obscurity;113 in the visible section, one segment will be for images, and by images I mean [510A] first of all shadows, then semblances formed in water and on all dense, smooth, bright surfaces, and everything of that sort, if you get the idea.”
“I get it.”
“Then in the other part, put what this one is likened to, the animals around us, and every plant, and the whole class of artificial things.”
“I’m putting them,” he said.
“And would you also be willing to claim,” I said, “that it’s divided with respect to truth and its lack, such that the copy is to the thing it’s copied from as a seeming is to something known?”
[510B] “I would,” he said, “very much so.”
“Then consider next the way the division of the intelligible part needs to be made.”
“What way is that?”
“Such that in one part of it a soul takes as images the things that were imitated before, and is forced to inquire based on presuppositions, proceeding not to a beginning but to an end, while in the other part it goes from a presupposition to a beginning free of presuppositions, without the images involved in the other part, making its investigation into forms themselves and by means of them.”
“I didn’t sufficiently understand what you mean by these things,” he said.
“Once more, then,” [510C] I said; “since you’ll understand more easily after the following preface. Now I imagine you know that people who concern themselves with matters of geometry and calculation and such things presuppose in accord with each investigation the odd and the even, the geometrical shapes, the three kinds of angles, and other things related to these; treating these as known and making them presuppositions, they don’t think it’s worth giving any further account of them either to themselves or to anyone else, as though [510D] they were obvious to everyone, but starting from these things and going through the subsequent things from that point, they arrive at a conclusion in agreement with that from which they set their inquiry in motion.”
“I do know that very well,” he said.
“Then you also know that they make additional use of visible forms, and make their arguments about them, even though they’re thinking not about these but about those things these are images of, since it’s in regard to the square itself, and its diagonal itself, that they’re making those arguments, [510E] and not in regard to the one that they draw, and likewise in the other cases; these very things that they model and draw, which also have their own shadows and images in water, they are now using as images in their turn, [511A] in an attempt to see those things themselves that one could not see114 in any other way than by the power of thinking.”
“What you’re saying is true,” he said.
“The latter, then, is what I meant by the intelligible form, and it’s for the inquiry about it that the soul is forced to make use of presuppositions, not going to the source, because it doesn’t have the power to step off above its presuppositions, but using as images those things that are themselves imaged down below, in comparison with which these images are reputed to be of preeminent clarity and are treated with honor.”115
“I understand,” he said; “you’re talking about the things dealt with by geometrical studies [511B] and the arts akin to that.”
“Then understand me to mean the following by the other segment of the intelligible part: what rational speech itself gets hold of by its power of dialectical motion, making its presuppositions not sources but genuinely standing places, like steppingstones and springboards, in order that, by going up to what is presuppositionless at the source of everything and coming into contact with this, by following back again the things that follow from it, rational speech may descend in that way to a conclusion, [511C] making no more use in any way whatever of anything perceptible, but dealing with forms themselves, arriving at them by going through them, it ends at forms as well.”
“I understand,” he said, “though not sufficiently, because you seem to me to be talking about a tremendous amount of work; however, I understand that you want to mark off that part of what is and is intelligible that’s contemplated by the knowledge that comes from dialectical thinking as being clearer than what’s contemplated by what are called arts, which have presuppositions as their starting points. Those who contemplate things by means of the arts are forced to contemplate them by thinking and not by sense perception, but since they [511D] examine things not by going up to the source but on the basis of presuppositions, they seem to you to have no insight into them, even though, by means of their starting point, they’re dealing with things that are intelligible. And you seem to me to be calling the activity of geometers and such people thinking but not insight, on the grounds that thinking is something in between opinion and insight.”
“You took it in utterly sufficiently,” I said. “Along with me, take it too that for the four segments of the line there are these four kinds of experiences that arise in the soul, active insight for the highest and thinking for the [511E] second, and assign the names trust to the third and imagination to the last, drawing them up as a proportion116 and holding that, in the same manner these experiences have their shares of clarity, the things they’re directed to have corresponding shares of truth.”
“I understand,” he said, “and I go along with it and rank them as you say.”