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Plato

Republic

Plato (428-348 B.C.) had a very different attitude towards representation than Aristotle (one of Plato's students). Plato's texts are written as dialogues, often between Socrates (Plato's teacher) and other characters. Plato's "Socrates" has some resemblances to the real Socrates (whom we know only through the writings of Plato and two other contemporaries), but he is most clearly a spokesperson for Plato's ideas, particularly in the Republic.

Plato's ideal person is the philosopher, like Socrates and himself, who is "capable of apprehending that which is eternal and unchanging" (720). The philosopher is "keen of sight," rather than "blind" (721), to knowledge of the eternal. He is thus the "most competent to guard the laws and pursuits of society." The philosopher is thus the ideal guardian or leader of Plato's ideal republic.

The philosopher's "sight" does not act through the senses, as it does in Aristotle and Descartes. It does not seek knowledge in the outside world as a painter or poet might perceive and represent the objects of their senses. Rather the philosopher's sight is "in-sight" into the eternal, unchangeable ideal that exists within each person's "soul." Plato uses the words "sight" and "blindness" figuratively, therefore, rather than literally. True sight characterize the mind's power to represent a knowledge that exists only within itself and that resides in memory.

Within the soul, the philosopher "sees" the ideal. As guardian of the republic, he uses the knowledge he finds in his soul either to "establish in this world . . . the laws of the beautiful, the just, and the good" or to preserve those laws when they are already established. The philosopher is thus the most just and gentle (723) leader, but only when he also has sufficient experience and virtue and when he has a "philosophical nature." A philosophical nature is "enamored of" knowledge of the eternal, seeks it in its entirety, loves the truth and hates falsehood, learns quickly, has a good memory (723), and is characterized by harmony, seemliness, measure, proportion, graciousness, bravery, sobriety. When such a philosophical nature is "perfected by education and maturity of age," the resulting philosopher achieves the knowledge of "all things human and divine" (722), knowledge of "the ideal reality in all things" (723). This knowledge makes him whole (722) and helps him make society whole.

Philosophers are thus lovers of knowledge which they can find only within themselves (722). Their desire for knowledge is so great that their physical desires for the external objects of their body's senses or their desire for the wealth that would enable them to satisfy their bodily desires are substantially diminished. As a result, they do not fear the death of the body. For them, external reality is mere "appearance," since internal "reality" resides wholly within.

Plato illustrates his theory of knowledge by means of a now-famous description of life in an imaginary cave (747). From its opening, the cave descends steeply. Part way down, there is a fire. Just below the fire, there is a road with a wall the height of a man. Even lower are men, their legs and necks shackled so that they cannot move at all and can look only towards the back of the cave. They cannot see entrance, fire, road, or wall. Other men, some silently, some speaking, walk on the road behind the wall carrying human images, shapes of animals, and implements. Since the shackled men are looking away from these things, all they can see are the shadows of the moving human images, animal shapes, and implements that are thrown onto the wall in front of them by the fire. They cannot even see each other.

If the shackled men spend their life this way, then, according to Socrates, they will assume that the shadows on the cave's wall are reality, since the shadows are all that they ever see. In naming the shadows, they would imagine that they are naming real things. If one of the shackled men should speak, the others would assume, because of the echo, that one of the shadows had spoken.

Life in this cave, for Socrates, represents figuratively the situation of human beings. All our physical eyes see are shadows of true reality, not reality itself. Most of us confuse these shadows with reality.

The inexperienced philosopher for Plato is like a prisoner who has been unshackled and allowed to look around (748). At first, the direct light of the fire and of the sun from the mouth of the cave would blind him. He would be so used to thinking that the shadows are reality that he would not believe someone who told him that the shadows were in fact "a cheat and an illusion."

If someone were to drag the unshackled prisoner up the difficult ascent from the bottom of the cave to its mouth and into the light of the sun, he would at first be blinded by the sun. When he began to see real objects, he would not believe that they are real. Eventually, however, he would get used to them. He would come to see the things themselves and realize that what he had once thought to be reality was a deception. He would then pity those who remain shackled to their error in the cave (749) and he would cease to respect the awards that they give each other for quickly and correctly identifying the shadows that they confuse with reality. The prisoners, on the other hand, would laugh at him when he tried to tell them the truth.

The unshackled prisoner's ascent out of the cave represents, in Plato's allegory, the ascent of the philosopher's soul out of the ignorance produced by his bodily sensations of the outer world, and into inner knowledge (749-51). The fire represents the sun, which allows persons to perceive the outer world. The shadows on the wall of the cave represent the objects that the sun enables the senses to perceive, which are in fact only appearances of the true reality. The sun outside the cave represents the light of the inner soul, the good, which gives access to reality and truth themselves. The philosopher's ultimate goal is not only to ascend to the world of his inner sun, but to teach others to throw off the shackles of the senses, and ascend to the knowledge of the eternal, of the essences, that they find within themselves. It is by going beyond knowledge to the act of teaching others that the philosopher becomes a leader.

Because knowledge for Socrates resides within each person, the philosopher/leader cannot simply give others knowledge. He must teach others to find knowledge within themselves. He is thus like a midwife. He helps others actively give birth to the truth. He helps others find the truth within themselves by means of the socratic method, "maieutics," the art of question and answer which characterizes Plato's dialogues.

By contrast with the philosopher, the poet (tragic playwright like Homer) and the painter try to "imitate" the outer world that their senses represent. The resulting imitations of reality deceive others, corrupt their minds, which is why they should be banned from the philosopher's republic (820).

Painters and poets in fact produce only "appearance," not reality and truth (821). Anyone can do the same by simply carrying a mirror around with him as he walks. The poet and painter are three times removed from the real. For example, if they imitate a couch, they imitate an object produced by a craftsman, who has imitated the couch that his eyes have seen. But the visible couch is itself only an imitation of the general form of the couch which was created by God. Poets and painters (and "mimetic" art in general) thus imitate (or "create") mere appearances ("shadows") of the real, manipulate and deceive.

Plato establishes a hierarchy of creators. Only the "user" of an implement (like a flute) can be said to know the truly real (826), since the user's experience teaches him about the reality of the implement. The user reports to the "maker" of the implement, who is further from the truth. The "imitator" (poet or painter) of the implement knows even less of its truth and reality. Their imitation is a mere game and is not to be taken seriously (827). They are entirely victims of sensory error: "And the same things appear bent and straight to those who view them in water and out, or concave and convex, owing to similar errors of vision about colors, and there is obviously every confusion of this sort in our souls."

As in Descartes, in Plato, only our reason enables us to distinguish between the errors of our senses and (general) reality. In Aristotle, by contrast, sensation is unmediated and reason need only distinguish between accurate sensory images and the ones produced by the imagination. Unlike both Descartes and Aristotle, however, reason for Plato does not seek reality in the outside world. It seeks reality wholly within the person.

Reason in Plato (which is "male") is threatened, not only by the senses, but by our emotions (which are "female"), since emotions can make us feel contradictory things. Poetry (tragic plays) which dramatize characters who abandon themselves to their feelings and which encourage the audience to react emotionally to the fallen hero's plight are thus irrational and can make us feel contrary things (828-31). The same is true for comic representation, which can make us laugh at both sides of an argument (as the narrator does in Roger and Me). It is because the mimetic arts play to our emotions and prevent our reason from distinguishing the true from the false that they must be excluded from the republic.

Philosophy, by contrast, seeks to "dry up" the emotions (832). It teaches members of the ideal republic to access the knowledge of reality within by means of a rational dialectic. Plato's Socrates teaches this dialectic by means of the "game...with words" of his dialogues.