Tuesday 10/15
Republic, Book X
Readings
Texts
Note that the fourth essay (really and truly) is due today. Here is the prompt from last week:
Fourth Essay Question (Due Tuesday 10/15)
In light of our discussion today, I've decided to pursue a different essay question than the one I assigned on Tuesday. This is derived from the third discussion question from today. Be sure to read this version of it carefully.
Plato briefly describes and justifies the method of dialectic thusly:
Then isn’t this at last, Glaucon, the song that dialectic sings? It is intelligible, [532] but it is imitated by the power of sight. We said that sight tries at last to look at the animals themselves, the stars themselves, and, in the end, at the sun itself. In the same way, whenever someone tries through argument and apart from all sense perceptions to find the being itself of each thing and doesn’t give up until he grasps the good itself with [b] understanding itself, he reaches the end of the intelligible, just as the other reached the end of the visible.
Absolutely.
And what about this journey? Don’t you call it dialectic?
I do.
Then the release from bonds and the turning around from shadows to statues and the light of the fire and, then, the way up out of the cave to the sunlight and, there, the continuing inability to look at the animals, the plants, and the light of the sun, but the newly acquired ability to look at [c] divine images in water and shadows of the things that are, rather than, as before, merely at shadows of statues thrown by another source of light that is itself a shadow in relation to the sun—all this business of the crafts we’ve mentioned has the power to awaken the best part of the soul and lead it upward to the study of the best among the things that are, just as, before, the clearest thing in the body was led to the brightest thing in the [d] bodily and visible realm.
I accept that this is so, even though it seems very hard to accept in one way and hard not to accept in another. All the same, since we’ll have to return to these things often in the future, rather than having to hear them just once now, let’s assume that what you’ve said is so and turn to the song itself, discussing it in the same way as we did the prelude. So tell us: what is the sort of power dialectic has, what forms is it divided into, and what paths does it follow? For these lead at last, it seems, towards [e] that place which is a rest from the road, so to speak, and an end of journeying for the one who reaches it.
[533] You won’t be able to follow me any longer, Glaucon, even though there is no lack of eagerness on my part to lead you, for you would no longer be seeing an image of what we’re describing, but the truth itself. At any rate, that’s how it seems to me. That it is really so is not worth insisting on any further. But that there is some such thing to be seen, that is something we must insist on. Isn’t that so?
Of course.
And mustn’t we also insist that the power of dialectic could reveal it only to someone experienced in the subjects we’ve described and that it cannot reveal it in any other way?
That too is worth insisting on.
[b] At any rate, no one will dispute it when we say that there is no other inquiry that systematically attempts to grasp with respect to each thing itself what the being of it is, for all the other crafts are concerned with human opinions and desires, with growing or construction, or with the care of growing or constructed things. And as for the rest, I mean geometry and the subjects that follow it, we described them as to some extent grasping what is, for we saw that, while they do dream about what is, they are unable to command a waking view of it as long as they make use of hypotheses that they leave untouched and that they cannot give any account [c] of. What mechanism could possibly turn any agreement into knowledge when it begins with something unknown and puts together the conclusion and the steps in between from what is unknown?
None.
Therefore, dialectic is the only inquiry that travels this road, doing away with hypotheses and proceeding to the first principle itself, so as to be [d] secure. And when the eye of the soul is really buried in a sort of barbaric bog, dialectic gently pulls it out and leads it upwards, using the crafts we described to help it and cooperate with it in turning the soul around. From force of habit, we’ve often called these crafts sciences or kinds of knowledge, but they need another name, clearer than opinion, darker than knowledge. We called them thought somewhere before.5 But I presume that we won’t dispute about a name when we have so many more important matters to investigate. [e]
Of course not.
It will therefore be enough to call the first section knowledge, the second thought, the third belief, and the fourth imaging, just as we did before. The last two together we call opinion, the other two, intellect. Opinion is [534] concerned with becoming, intellect with being. And as being is to becoming, so intellect is to opinion, and as intellect is to opinion, so knowledge is to belief and thought to imaging. But as for the ratios between the things these are set over and the division of either the opinable or the intelligible section into two, let’s pass them by, Glaucon, lest they involve us in arguments many times longer than the ones we’ve already gone through.
I agree with you about the others in any case, insofar as I’m able to follow. [b]
Then, do you call someone who is able to give an account of the being of each thing dialectical? But insofar as he’s unable to give an account of something, either to himself or to another, do you deny that he has any understanding of it?
How could I do anything else?
Then the same applies to the good. Unless someone can distinguish in an account the form of the good from everything else, can survive all refutation, as if in a battle, striving to judge things not in accordance with [c] opinion but in accordance with being, and can come through all this with his account still intact, you’ll say that he doesn’t know the good itself or any other good. And if he gets hold of some image of it, you’ll say that it’s through opinion, not knowledge, for he is dreaming and asleep throughout his present life, and, before he wakes up here, he will arrive in Hades and go to sleep forever. [d]
So we learn that apprehension of the forms is facilitated by (and perhaps only by) the dialectic method. In light of the distinction between opinion and knowledge, and contrasting it with such methods of inquiry as deduction and induction, what is the method of dialectic, and how does it permit us on Plato's view to achieve knowledge? That is, given what little Socrates asserts here, can you develop a theory of dialectic as distinct from deduction (logic) and induction (statistics), making sure to ground your discussion in specific examples of each? In particular, be sure to inform your answer by a well-chosen example of the method of dialectic as it is applied in the Republic (thus, quotes are permitted, but only when they are carefully explained in developing your answer.) In the end, is Plato correct in holding that dialectic is the best and only method to achieve genuine understanding (nous) and, thus, knowledge? Two pages is too short for this. Let us expand the limit a bit to four pages.
Discussion Questions
First Question on Book X: The Imitative Arts
Book X opens with an extensive critique of the so-called 'imitative' arts, including especially poetry in the homeric tradition, exposing a long-standing dispute between poetry and literature and philosophy. What is the dispute, and why are the imitative arts so harshly repudiated in this, the last of the books?
Second Question on Book X: Immortality of the Soul
At 608c the discussion stunningly pivots,
[c] And yet we haven’t discussed the greatest rewards and prizes that have been proposed for virtue.
They must be inconceivably great, if they’re greater than those you’ve already mentioned.
Could anything really great come to pass in a short time? And isn’t the time from childhood to old age short when compared to the whole of time?
It’s a mere nothing.
Well, do you think that an immortal thing should be seriously concerned [d] with that short period rather than with the whole of time?
I suppose not, but what exactly do you mean by this?
Haven’t you realized that our soul is immortal and never destroyed?
He looked at me with wonder and said: No, by god, I haven’t. Are you really in a position to assert that?
I’d be wrong not to, I said, and so would you, for it isn’t difficult.
Setting aside why he presents it, which should be clear just from the above, what is the argument he gives here for the immortality of the soul? Can it be set out in standard form, so that we can evaluate each of its premises?
Third Question on Book X: The Myth of Er
One might ask, huh?
This is not so much a question about the myth itself, but why it closes Republic, and how it is supposed, like the Allegory of the Cave, to help illuminate the epistemic and metaphysical theses of Republic.