Exactly.
Then do you agree to this or not? When we say that someone desires something, do we mean that he desires everything of that kind or that he desires one part of it but not another?
We mean he desires everything.
Then won’t we also say that the philosopher doesn’t desire one part of wisdom rather than another, but desires the whole thing?
Yes, that’s true.
And as for the one who’s choosy about what he learns, especially if he’s young and can’t yet give an account of what is useful and what [c] isn’t, we won’t say that he is a lover of learning or a philosopher, for we wouldn’t say that someone who’s choosy about his food is hungry or has an appetite for food or is a lover of food—instead, we’d say that he is a bad eater.
And we’d be right to say it.
But the one who readily and willingly tries all kinds of learning, who turns gladly to learning and is insatiable for it, is rightly called a philosopher, isn’t he?
[d] Then many strange people will be philosophers, for the lovers of sights seem to be included, since they take pleasure in learning things. And the lovers of sounds are very strange people to include as philosophers, for they would never willingly attend a serious discussion or spend their time that way, yet they run around to all the Dionysiac festivals, omitting none, whether in cities or villages, as if their ears were under contract to listen to every chorus. Are we to say that these people—and those who learn [e] similar things or petty crafts—are philosophers?
No, but they are like philosophers.
And who are the true philosophers?
Those who love the sight of truth.
That’s right, but what exactly do you mean by it?
It would not be easy to explain to someone else, but I think that you will agree to this.
To what?
Since the beautiful is the opposite of the ugly, they are two.
[476] Of course.
And since they are two, each is one?
I grant that also.
And the same account is true of the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the forms. Each of them is itself one, but because they manifest themselves everywhere in association with actions, bodies, and one another, each of them appears to be many.
That’s right.
So, I draw this distinction: On one side are those you just now called lovers of sights, lovers of crafts, and practical people; on the other side are [b] those we are arguing about and whom one would alone call philosophers.
How do you mean?
The lovers of sights and sounds like beautiful sounds, colors, shapes, and everything fashioned out of them, but their thought is unable to see and embrace the nature of the beautiful itself.
That’s for sure.
In fact, there are very few people who would be able to reach the beautiful itself and see it by itself. Isn’t that so?
Certainly. [c]
What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn’t believe in the beautiful itself and isn’t able to follow anyone who could lead him to the knowledge of it? Don’t you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state? Isn’t this dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?
I certainly think that someone who does that is dreaming.
But someone who, to take the opposite case, believes in the beautiful itself, can see both it and the things that participate in it and doesn’t believe that the participants are it or that it itself is the participants—is he living [d] in a dream or is he awake?
He’s very much awake.
So we’d be right to call his thought knowledge, since he knows, but we should call the other person’s thought opinion, since he opines?
Right.
What if the person who has opinion but not knowledge is angry with us and disputes the truth of what we are saying? Is there some way to console him and persuade him gently, while hiding from him that he isn’t [e] in his right mind?
There must be.
Consider, then, what we’ll say to him. Won’t we question him like this? First, we’ll tell him that nobody begrudges him any knowledge he may have and that we’d be delighted to discover that he knows something. Then we’ll say: “Tell us, does the person who knows know something or nothing?” You answer for him.
He knows something.
Something that is or something that is not?17
Something that is, for how could something that is not be known? [477]
Then we have an adequate grasp of this: No matter how many ways we examine it, what is completely is completely knowable and what is in no way is in every way unknowable?
A most adequate one.
Good. Now, if anything is such as to be and also not to be, won’t it be intermediate between what purely is and what in no way is?
Yes, it’s intermediate.
Then, as knowledge is set over what is, while ignorance is of necessity set over what is not, mustn’t we find an intermediate between knowledge and ignorance to be set over what is intermediate between what is and [b] what is not, if there is such a thing?
Certainly.
Do we say that opinion is something?
Of course.
A different power from knowledge or the same?
A different one.
Opinion, then, is set over one thing, and knowledge over another, according to the power of each.
Right.
Now, isn’t knowledge by its nature set over what is, to know it as it is? But first maybe we’d better be a bit more explicit.
How so?
[c] Powers are a class of the things that are that enable us—or anything else for that matter—to do whatever we are capable of doing. Sight, for example, and hearing are among the powers, if you understand the kind of thing I’m referring to.
I do.
Here’s what I think about them. A power has neither color nor shape nor any feature of the sort that many other things have and that I use to distinguish those things from one another. In the case of a power, I use [d] only what it is set over and what it does, and by reference to these I call each the power it is: What is set over the same things and does the same I call the same power; what is set over something different and does something different I call a different one. Do you agree? I do.
Then let’s back up. Is knowledge a power, or what class would you put it in?
It’s a power, the strongest of them all.
[e] And what about opinion, is it a power or some other kind of thing?
It’s a power as well, for it is what enables us to opine.
A moment ago you agreed that knowledge and opinion aren’t the same.
How could a person with any understanding think that a fallible power is the same as an infallible one?
[478] Right. Then we agree that opinion is clearly different from knowledge.
It is different.
Hence each of them is by nature set over something different and does something different?
Necessarily.
Knowledge is set over what is, to know it as it is?
Yes.
And opinion opines?
Yes.
Does it opine the very thing that knowledge knows, so that the knowable and the opinable are the same, or is this impossible?
It’s impossible, given what we agreed, for if a different power is set over something different, and opinion and knowledge are different powers, then the knowable and the opinable cannot be the same. [b]
Then, if what is is knowable, the opinable must be something other than what is?
It must.
Do we, then, opine what is not? Or is it impossible to opine what is not? Think about this. Doesn’t someone who opines set his opinion over something? Or is it possible to opine, yet to opine nothing?
It’s impossible.
But someone who opines opines some one thing?
; Yes.
Surely the most accurate word for that which is not isn’t “one thing” but “nothing”? [c]
Certainly.
But we had to set ignorance over what is not and knowledge over what is?
That’s right.
So someone opines neither what is nor what is not?
How could it be otherwise?
Then opinion is neither ignorance nor knowledge?
So it seems.
Then does it go beyond either of these? Is it clearer than knowledge or darker than ignorance?
No, neither.
Is opinion, then, darker than knowledge but clearer than ignorance?
It is.
Then it lies between them? [d]
Yes.
So opinion is intermediate between those two?
Absolutely.
Now, we said that, if something could be shown, as it were, to be and not to be at the same time, it would be intermediate between what purely is and what in every way is not, and that neither knowledge nor ignorance would be set over it, but something intermediate between ignorance and knowledge?
Correct.
And now the thing we call opinion has emerged as being intermediate between them?
It has.
Apparently, then, it only remains for us to find what participates in both being and not being and cannot correctly be called purely one or the other, [e] in order that, if there is such a thing, we can rightly call it the opinable, thereby setting the extremes over the extremes and the intermediate over the intermediate. Isn’t that so?
It is.
Now that these points have been established, I want to address a question [479] to our friend who doesn’t believe in the beautiful itself or any form of the beautiful itself that remains always the same in all respects but who does believe in the many beautiful things—the lover of sights who wouldn’t allow anyone to say that the beautiful itself is one or that the just is one or any of the rest: “My dear fellow,” we’ll say, “of all the many beautiful things, is there one that will not also appear ugly? Or is there one of those just things that will not also appear unjust? Or one of those pious things that will not also appear impious?”
There isn’t one, for it is necessary that they appear to be beautiful in a [b] way and also to be ugly in a way, and the same with the other things you asked about.
What about the many doubles? Do they appear any the less halves than doubles?
Not one.
So, with the many bigs and smalls and lights and heavies, is any one of them any more what we say it is than its opposite?
No, each of them always participates in both opposites.
Is any one of the manys what we say it is, then, any more than it is not what he says it is?
No, they are like the ambiguities one is entertained with at dinner parties or like the children’s riddle about the eunuch who threw something at a [c] bat—the one about what he threw at it and what it was in,18 for they are ambiguous, and one cannot understand them as fixedly being or fixedly not being or as both or as neither.
Then do you know how to deal with them? Or can you find a more appropriate place to put them than intermediate between being and not being? Surely, they can’t be more than what is or not be more than what is not, for apparently nothing is darker than what is not or clearer than [d] what is.
Very true.
We’ve now discovered, it seems, that the many conventions of the majority of people about beauty and the others are rolling around as intermediates between what is not and what purely is.
We have.
And we agreed earlier that anything of that kind would have to be called the opinable, not the knowable—the wandering intermediate grasped by the intermediate power.
We did.
As for those who study the many beautiful things but do not see the [e] beautiful itself and are incapable of following another who leads them to it, who see many just things but not the just itself, and so with everything—these people, we shall say, opine everything but have no knowledge of anything they opine.
Necessarily.
What about the ones who in each case study the things themselves that are always the same in every respect? Won’t we say that they know and don’t opine?
That’s necessary too.
Shall we say, then, that these people love and embrace the things that knowledge is set over, as the others do the things that opinion is set over? [480] Remember we said that the latter saw and loved beautiful sounds and colors and the like but wouldn’t allow the beautiful itself to be anything?
We remember, all right.
We won’t be in error, then, if we call such people lovers of opinion rather than philosophers or lovers of wisdom and knowledge? Will they be angry with us if we call them that?
Not if they take my advice, for it isn’t right to be angry with those who speak the truth.
As for those who in each case embrace the thing itself, we must call them philosophers, not lovers of opinion?
Most definitely.
1. This task is taken up in Book VIII.
2. See 423e–424a.
3. A proverbial expression applied to those who neglect the task at hand for some more fascinating but less profitable pursuit.
4. Adrastea was a kind of Nemesis, a punisher of pride. The “bow to Adrastea” is a kind of apology for the sort of behavior that might otherwise spur her to take action.
5. See Herodotus, Histories 1.23–24 for the story of Arion’s rescue by the dolphin.
6. Plato is here adapting a phrase of Pindar, “plucking the unripe fruit of wisdom,” frg. 209 (Snell).
7. See 382c ff. and 414b ff.
8. The priestess of Apollo at Delphi.
9. See 416d ff.
10. See 419a ff.
11. Works and Days 40.
12. The last two quotations are from Iliad vii.321 and viii.162, respectively.
13. Works and Days 122.
14. Apollo. See 427b.
15. See 369a–c.
16. See 438a–b.
17. Because of the ambiguity of the verb einai (“to be”), Socrates could be asking any or all of the following questions: (1) “Something that exists or something that does not exist?” (existential “is”); (2) “Something that is beautiful (say) or something that is not beautiful?” (predicative “is”); (3) “Something that is true or something that is not true?” (veridical “is”).
18. The riddle seems to have been: A man who is not a man saw and did not see a bird that was not a bird in a tree (lit., a piece of wood) that was not a tree; he hit (lit., threw at) and did not hit it with a stone that was not a stone. The answer is that a eunuch with bad eyesight saw a bat on a rafter, threw a pumice stone at it, and missed.
Book VI
And so, Glaucon, I said, after a somewhat lengthy and difficult discussion, [484] both the philosophers and the nonphilosophers came to light as who they are.
It probably wouldn’t have been easy, he said, to have them do it in a shorter one.
Apparently not. But for my part, I think that the matter would have been better illuminated if we had only it to discuss and not all the other things that remain to be treated in order to discover the difference between the just life and the unjust one. [b]
What’s our next topic?
What else but the one that’s next in order? Since those who are able to grasp what is always the same in all respects are philosophers, while those who are not able to do so and who wander among the many things that vary in every sort of way are not philosophers, which of the two should be the leaders in a city?
What would be a sensible answer to that?
We should establish as guardians those who are clearly capable of guarding the laws and the ways of life of the city. [c]
That’s right.
And isn’t it clear that a guardian who is to keep watch over anything should be keen-sighted rather than blind?
Of course it’s clear.
/> Do you think, then, that there’s any difference between the blind and those who are really deprived of the knowledge of each thing that is? The latter have no clear model in their souls, and so they cannot—in the manner of painters—look to what is most true, make constant reference to it, and [d] study it as exactly as possible. Hence they cannot establish here on earth conventions about what is fine or just or good, when they need to be established, or guard and preserve them, once they have been established.
No, by god, there isn’t much difference between them.
Should we, then, make these blind people our guardians or rather those who know each thing that is and who are not inferior to the others, either in experience or in any other part of virtue?
It would be absurd to choose anyone but the ones who have knowledge, if indeed they’re not inferior in these ways, for the respect in which they are superior is pretty well the most important one.
[485] Then shouldn’t we explain how it is possible for people to come to have both these sorts of qualities?
Certainly.
Then, as we said at the beginning of this discussion, it is necessary to understand first the nature of the ones who are going to come to have both sorts,1 for I think that, if we can reach adequate agreement about that, we’ll also agree that the same people can have both qualities and that no one but they should be leaders in cities.
How so?
Let’s agree that philosophic natures always love the sort of learning that makes clear to them some feature of the being that always is and does not [b] wander around between coming to be and decaying.
And further, let’s agree that, like the honor-lovers and erotically inclined men we described before,2 they love all such learning and are not willing to give up any part of it, whether large or small, more valuable or less so.
That’s right.
Consider next whether the people we’re describing must also have this [c] in their nature.
What?
They must be without falsehood—they must refuse to accept what is false, hate it, and have a love for the truth.
That’s a reasonable addition, at any rate.
It’s not only reasonable, it’s entirely necessary, for it’s necessary for a man who is erotically inclined by nature to love everything akin to or belonging to the boy he loves.
Complete Works Page 168
