School of Philosophy

1
School of Philosophy BioethicsCCP The Centre
for Public Philosophy

• VAPS - Platos Republic
• Theory of knowledge
• Allegory of Sun, Line and Cave

2
The Republic context and background

• Explicit goal of dialogue to define justice
• Justice is a virtue, an excellence (others, for
  Plato, include wisdom, self-control or
  temperance, courage, and, perhaps piety.)
• Many different views of what justice amounts to.
  Is it performing certain actions, like returning
  what isnt yours, or is it a psychological state,
  a disposition?
• They are concerned with justice in the soul at
  the outset
• But Socrates shifts the focus to the city. Easier
  to see what justice is in a big thing, the
  city-state. Can then apply this to the soul.

3
The good life and virtue (excellence)

• One thing that everyone agrees on is that
  eudaimonia, wellbeing or flourishing, is a very
  valuable thing. The goal of life, the mark of the
  life well lived.
• As a virtue ethicist, Plato thinks being virtuous
  makes people flourish.
• The good life is attained by being virtuous or
  excellent. (What is this? Being the best you can
  be.)
• Being just is a case in point, so one key to the
  good life.
• If Plato can discover the definition of justice,
  and teach it to others,he will directly
  contribute to the well-being of the Athenians.
• Knowledge of justice is a valuable commodity, it
  makes life better.

4
Philosopher Rulers (Guardians)

• The ideal city a tripartite account
• Three parts of the city, all with their own job
  or function
• The rulers rule the armed forces police the city
  and defend it from outside attack the workers
  produce the goods and services required.
• The rulers are philosophers, both men and women.
• These are chosen early in life, each on the basis
  of his or her keen intellect, and moral and
  physical courage.
• The philosopher rulers undergo a very specific
  educational program. Afterwards they have
  knowledge, as opposed to belief.This qualifies
  them to rule!

5
Knowledge of what?!!?

• In the Republic, Plato is only interested in
  knowledge of Forms. So, what are Forms?
• Forms are what we discover when we discover or
  learn the definition of something.
• E.g. the Form of human or man is, lets
  suppose, being a rational animal.
• Plato thought that Forms were objects or real
  things, not just concepts in peoples heads.
• Imagine that the cure for cancer is discovered,
  and cancer ceases to exist entirely. Scientists
  get the cure by properly understanding what
  cancer is, by defining it. They have discovered
  something that is real, and this knowledge will
  continue to be valuable, even when there are no
  actual instances of it. Perhaps especially then!

6
Lovers of sights and sounds belief

• What is beauty?
• Lots of people are commonly impressed by the way
  things appear. They are taken by this brightly
  coloured object or that gorgeous sounding tune.
• They wrongly think that beauty is nothing more
  than these appearances.
• E.g. beautiful Picasso painting. Cannot be the
  bright colours shapes. I can think of many
  paintings with these features that arent
  beautiful. Derivative art.
• What do beautiful things have in common? If there
  is one thing, beauty cant just be the
  appearances. (Justice e.g.) Lovers have mere
  belief.

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What is behind the appearances?

• One thing, beauty itself.
• If there is one thing that the many beautifuls
  have in common, we might think it is this thing
  in virtue of which each is beautiful. I.e. we
  might think this one thing, present in each case,
  is what makes each beautiful.
• If you really want to know about beauty, then,
  Plato thinks you should investigate this one
  thing, that makes every other beautiful thing
  beautiful.

8
The actual argument in the text

• 476e-480a (the last part of book V), chapter 8 in
  your Waterfield translation.
• Knowledge is about what entirely is.
• Ignorance is of what in no way is.
• Belief is in between knowledge ignorance, so it
  must be of what is and is not.
• The many beautifuls that the sight lovers are
  taken with both are and are not.
• So, the sight lovers have only belief, not
  knowledge.
• At this point, a reader might be forgiven for
  thinking What the?

9
What the argument means

• There have been a number of radically different
  interpretations proposed by some of the leading
  philosophers of our time, working at Princeton,
  Oxford, Cornell and Monash.
• I think the interpretation offered by Vlastos
  (formerly at Princeton) is a good place to start,
  since it seems to make good sense of the text.
• If you know something, you cant be wrong about
  that thing you know.
• So, if I know what beauty is, the thing that I
  have knowledge about is, in fact, beauty.

10
Some examples

• Ignorance
• My dog, Hercules, is ironically enough a small
  dog. But he has big desires, mostly for food and
  playing fetch the tennis ball.
• If he could talk, he would doubtless say that
  beauty is a can of dog food, nothing else. Now,
  his answer shows that he has failed utterly to
  comprehend what an aesthetic quality is - not
  surprisingly, since he is a dog, and so has
  limited cognitive powers.
• He is completely wrong about what beauty is, and
  what is beautiful. He is ignorant.
• Socrates said at 477a that ignorance is about
  what is in no way. (See Waterfields notes on p.
  413.) I think this means that if you are ignorant
  about some topic, or thing, X, then the thing you
  are having ignorant thoughts about is in no way X
  (in no way beautiful).

11
Examples (cont)

• Knowledge
• Assoc. Prof. John Armstrong works in the
  Philosophy department at the University of
  Melbourne, where he teaches Aesthetics.
• Lets say, for the sake of argument, that he has
  knowledge of beauty, he knows what it is. For
  Plato, he knows the definition. Compare
  cardio-vascular surgeon.
• The thing that he is thinking about, when he is
  thinking of beauty, is in fact beauty. It does
  not fail to be beauty, which is why he doesnt
  make mistakes.
• (477a) Knowledge is about what really is
  knowledge of some subject or topic, X, is about
  what is really X.

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Examples (cont)

• (mere) belief
• Lets say Im in between Assoc. Prof. Armstrong
  and Hercules If you ask me what beauty is, I say
  that you should look at the most beautiful things
  you can find. The paradigms of beauty exemplify
  beauty.
• So I say that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are
  the paradigms - thats what beauty is.
• Compare King Solon or Kofi Annan and justice.
• Im not completely utterly wrong, since these
  people are indeed beautiful.
• But Im not completely right either. No person or
  one instance can be the definition of some
  property or quality. Why not? Explanatory power.
  What an instance is of.

13
Can we know the many beautifuls?

• Socrates says that knowledge is of what entirely
  is, i.e., is entirely F.
• Distinction between intelligibles and sensibles.
• A definition is an intelligible thing, while an
  instance of beauty or an instance of justice, is
  a sensible thing. Beauty itself is intelligible,
  the many beautifuls are sensible.
• Can I have knowledge of Angelina Jolies beauty?
• For Plato, sort of, yes. But only once I properly
  understand what beauty itself is, once I know the
  definition. Beauty itself present in her. Compare
  Kofi knowing a just treaty when he sees one.
  Knowing and recognising.
• How else would the Guardians knowledge help them
  actually rule the ideal city?

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The analogy of the Sun (507b-509d)

• Just as the sun makes physical things visible, so
  too the Form of the Good makes Forms
  intelligible.
• This is deeply mysterious. Perhaps makes 2 points
• Knowledge and truth are not to be identified with
  goodness, any more than visible things are to be
  identified with the sun. Knowledge and truth are
  good things, because they are reliable, but they
  are only instances of good things, not goodness
  itself.
• The Form of the Good is then something we can
  have knowledge about, by learning the definition
  of goodness.

15
The analogy of the doubly-divided line

• Top 2 parts represent the intelligible, bottom 2
  parts represent the sensible
• Also quite mysterious (the cave is the good one!)
  
• At the bottom is picture-thinking above it is
  opinion or persuasion.
• At the very top is understanding (of the Forms)
  and below that is reasoning based on hypotheses.
• Connect back to knowledge and belief. How do you
  know you have the right definition?

16
The allegory of the cave

• The allegory can be thought to have two functions
• An aid in understanding the difficult argument
  about knowledge and belief
• Like many metaphors, it enables the reader to go
  beyond the strictly literal, expands the meaning
  or application of what was originally said. So,
  fleshes out the knowledge/ belief distinction.
• Re-cap of the allegory
• Cave set up prisoners, fire, shadows
• Escapee sun hurts eyes at first
• Return to the cave other prisoners think him
  quite mad

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What does the allegory mean?

• Sketch of the Guardians journey to knowledge
• Everyday life unreflective thinking, no proper
  knowledge or truth as such.
• First sees that shadows are mere shadows. Like
  discovering that your opinions are false.
• To discover the proper objects of knowledge, we
  have to look to not to the physical world around
  us, but elsewhere up out of the cave into the
  real world.
• But attaining real knowledge is hard. Ones head
  hurts, just as the escapees eyes hurt.
• Once we can see with our minds eye what the
  proper object of knowledge is, these objects
  explain the way the other objects are, the way
  the objects of belief are. E.g. a just person.

18
Fleshing out the kn/ belief distinction

• When the prisoner gets up into the real world and
  his sight adjusts, his view of the world, his
  entire perspective on everything is radically and
  irrevocably changed.
• Coming to knowledge is supposed to have an
  analogous transformative power.
• Epistemologically transformative Once I start
  learning what e.g., a mammal is, I can progress
  in my study of zoology. The knowledge is
  reliable, and I can build on it.
• Morally transformative if you know what justice
  is, your soul can come to be an instance of that.
  This will be a significant step in being
  excellent, the best person you can be. An
  important step in living the good life,
  flourishing.

19
Plato -vs- Kuhn and Popper

• Descriptive account, a meta-account
• A theory is descriptive in this way, if it
  describes what other theories are like. Kuhns
  and Poppers philosophy of science are in many
  respects like this.
• A descriptive account can be tested. You look at
  actual scientific theories to see if they are as
  Kuhn describes them.
• Normative account
• An account which says how things ought to be.
  Platos account says what ought to count as
  knowledge - i.e. what is about definitions or
  Forms, and what is reliable.
• Also, Plato less interested in facts (not
  transformative?)