Lost Souls: The Philosophic Origins of a Cultural Dilemma

Chapter One Plato’s Divided Line

Chapter One Plato’s Divided Line 1. The Line Plato’sallegory of the cave distinguishes three orders of intelligibility: there are shadows on the cave’s rear wall, cast by statues carried between a fire and the wall, and the things outside the cave imitated by the statues.1 His divided line is a more complex and abstract expression of these differences: Conceive . . . that there are these two powers I speak of, the Good reigning over the domain of all that is intelligible, the Sun over the visible world. . . . [Y]ou have these two orders of things clearly before your mind: the visible and the intelligible? . . . Now take a line divided into two unequal parts, one to represent the visible order, the other the intelligible; and divide each part again in the same proportion, symbolizing degrees of comparative clearness or obscurity. Then one of the two sections in the visible world will stand for images. By images I mean first shadows, and then reflections in water or in close-grained, polished surfaces, and everything of that kind, if you understand. . . . Let the second section stand for the actual things of which the first are likeness, the living creatures about us and all the works of nature or of human hands. . . . Will you also take the proportion in which the visible world has been divided as corresponding to degrees of reality and truth, so that the likeness shall stand to the original in the same ratio as the sphere of appearances and belief to the sphere of knowledge? . . . Now consider how we are to divide the part which stands for the intelligible world. There are two sections . In the first the mind uses as images those actual things which themselves had images in the visible world; and it is compelled to pursue its inquiry by starting from assumptions and 5 6 LOST SOULS travelling, not up to a principle, but down to a conclusion. In the second the mind moves in the other direction, from an assumption up towards a principle which is not hypothetical; and it makes no use of the images employed in the other section, but only of Forms, and conducts its inquiry solely by their means.2 And: [T]he Sun is not vision, but it is the cause of vision and also is seen by the vision it causes. . . . It was the Sun, then, that I meant when I spoke of that offspring which the Good has created in the visible world, to stand there in the same relation to vision and visible things as that which the Good itself bears in the intelligible world to intelligence and to intelligible objects. . . . Apply this comparison, then, to the soul. When its gaze is fixed upon an object irradiated by truth and reality, the soul gains understanding and knowledge and is manifestly in possession of intelligence. But when it looks towards that twilight world of things that come into existence and pass away, its sight is dim and it has only opinions and beliefs which shift to and fro, and now it seems like a thing that has no intelligence.3 An example focuses these claims. Imagine a life-preserver hanging from a yardarm and reflected in a pond: Figure 1.1. The Lower Part of the Divided Line: Physical Objects and Their Appearances. The life-preserver and its reflection are the two levels below the divided line. They exhaust materiality, and provide all the content for perception. Aristotle described such things as primary substances and their perceptual effects. They are the only realities he acknowledged.4 We move beyond the divided line when the form of things perceived is abstracted from their instantiations: PLATO’S DIVIDED LINE 7 Figure 1.2. Geometricals. Abstraction also facilitates the fourth and last step. We simplify the concentric circles, reducing them to one: Figure 1.3. A Form. These figures, representing its four sections, confirm that the line is more than allusive. Figure 1.4 supplies other details:5 subject matters states of mind method value Figure 1.4. The Divided Line. . ______________________________________________________________ . Forms: Knowledge: . i. the Good . i. Intuitive . i. Rational intuition . . ii. Others . ii. Discursive . ii. Dialectic . . ______________________________________________________________ . Mathematicals . Mathematical . Deduction . knowledge . ______________________________________________________________ . Physical . True opinion . Perception . objects . or belief . . . ______________________________________________________________ . Images . Opinion or . Imagination . . belief . . The arrows representing value indicate that all activity intends the Good (the upward-pointing arrow), and that lower orders derive their...