In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

85 Chapter Two With Good Reason Or, How the Idea of the Good Both Distinguishes Being from Appearance and Provides a Bridge between Them The First Sailing The Republic stands out among all of Plato’s dialogues, not merely because it seems to be the apex and flower of his mature period, not merely because it gathers together into a single dialogue many of the issues that appear separately in other works,1 but also because it sets for itself the most ambitious epistemological project in the Platonic corpus: namely, to find an adequate way of distinguishing being from appearance. If we see the connection between this distinction and the corresponding distinctions between forms and images, knowledge and opinion, we will not have any trouble claiming that this distinction is the foundation upon which Plato’s philosophy stands. In most dialogues, however, Plato makes use of the distinction without explaining how it is possible to make the distinction in the first place.2 Indeed , apart from the Timaeus, where he concedes understanding to a “small group,”3 he generally gives the impression that making such a distinction lies beyond human capacity. In the Cratylus, the reality of the forms is something 1. “The chief witness to the unity of Plato’s thought is the Republic, the great work of his maturity and the most complete synthesis of his teaching,” Paul Shorey, The Unity of Plato’s Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903), 78. Cf. Natorp, Platos Ideenlehre, 179–80. 2. See, for example, Ti., 27d–28a, where the distinction between “being” and “becoming,” and its corresponding distinction between “knowledge” and “opinion,” is asserted as a basic premise for argument, rather than as something to be argued for itself. Cf. Harold F. Cherniss, “The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Ideas,” in Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Gregory Vlastos (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1971), 16–27. 3. Ti., 51d. 86 with good reason Socrates says he often “dreams about.”4 The Meno ends with the suggestion that the best we can generally hope for in matters of virtue is true opinion;5 the Theaetetus likewise brings the attempt to discern what knowledge really is to a fruitless close.6 Famously, in the Phaedo, Socrates alludes to the reality of the forms as too bright to be stared at directly, and simply “hypothesizes ” the existence of these realities, rather than bringing that existence itself to evidence.7 He calls this approach a “second sailing” (δεύτερος πλοῦ͂ς, 99d), referring to sailors’ recourse to the use of oars if a strong wind is not available to propel a ship.8 The Republic is the only place in this great ocean where Plato seems to have caught the desired breeze.9 And as Socrates says, “wherever the argument, like a wind, tends, thither must we go” (394d). This claim hangs on the idea of the good, the central point around which the Republic turns. Over the course of the digression that occupies the dialogue ’s middle books,10 Plato makes a series of basic statements regarding the nature of the good: it is not only the foundation of truth (508e), but it is also the cause of the existence of all things (509b) and the goal of all human action (505d–e). Two factors, however, threaten to obstruct whatever wind Plato claims to discover, and these have generated enough controversy to forestall any facile assumptions that the Republic simply resolves the epistemological problem. On the one hand, while Plato does state that nothing can be sufficiently known unless we first know the good, he resists, even here, speaking about the good directly but resorts to indirect images and thus seems to take up the same oars he did in the Phaedo.11 Is he confessing, once again, that there is no accessible foundation for distinguishing knowledge and opinion?12 On the other hand, though Plato affirms the good as fi4 . Cra., 439c–d. 5. Meno, 99aff. 6. Tht., 210aff. 7. Phd., 100a–b. 8. David Gallop, Phaedo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 176. Cf. Giovanni Reale, Toward a New Interpretation of Plato (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 1997), 95–101. Reale cites a classical reference for this metaphor. Eustachius, In Odyss., 1453.20. 9. Utermöhlen, Die Bedeutung der Ideenlehre, 53, says that the Republic is the only dialogue to elaborate the method of the forms. 10. According to Robert Brumbaugh, “Digression and Dialogue,” 84–92, here 85...

Share