Abstract
The allegory of the cave ends with a distinction, at Republic 518d-e, between moral and intellectual virtues; Socrates states that the virtue of wisdom (ἡ ἀρετή τοῦ φρονῆσαι) belongs to something more divine which never loses its power. However, it is not always or even necessarily aimed at what is good, but it can be directed to evil, as the so called bad-σοφοί do. I will argue that Plato is willing to grant that the training of the rational part by itself cannot be able to bring together philosophy and good political leadership (that is why he highlights the importance of having the spirited and the appetitive parts of the soul rightly educated). From this point of view, the picture of the soul that is drawn from the allegory of the cave should not be considered fully intellectualistic. After analyzing the allegory in search of traces of the tripartite psychic model, I will connect the allegory with Lesser Hippias 366a-b and Laws III 689a-b, where Plato tries to distinguish between intellectual ability and practical wisdom. The discussion of this distinction, I shall suggest, can be seen as the background to some remarks made by Aristotle in his own discussion of ἀκρασία in Nicomachean Ethics VII.
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As Adam (2009) points out, Ast and Stallbaum read φύσει as ‘really’ (revera). Shorey (1969) asserts that φύσις ‘in Plato often suggests reality and truth’ and he translates: ‘Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release … if in the course of nature something of this sort should happen to them’. Adam (2009, p. 91) claims that, as the prisoners in the cave are in an ‘unnatural’ condition (παρὰ φύσιν) in the Platonic sense, then this release means a retour to their true nature and so the liberation is described in terms of ‘naturality’. However, in my opinion, with this metaphor Plato is not expecting that we might see these prisoners as if their condition were unnatural; on the contrary, it has just been underlined that they are ‘like us’ (515b5).
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Adam, who prefers Burnet ’s reading, admits that εἰ does not occur in six manuscripts.
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Reeve (2004, p. 209) (italics mine).
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The prisoner, who went out of the cave and must now turn back, doesn’t share the values of the cave, but he must nonetheless work together with the other prisoners, by trying to persuade them. How should we understand the imperative that makes happiness complete only if it is brought to the cave? Or should we consider that there is no mandatory commitment and the philosopher can stay nonetheless in the Isle of the Blessed? Or does this compulsory commitment contradict what has previously been said? Mahoney (2005) responds to the dilemma: he claims that the philosopher who does not get involved in politics cannot be happy. Cf. Smith ’s view in his 2010, pp. 93–98.
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Cooper 1984, p. 9 and 20, n.13. Cf. also R. 561c-d.
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Cooper 1984, p. 10.
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According to Chantraine 1999, pp. 402–403, ‘living’ (zên, in the mere biological sense) is different from ‘way of living’ (bios, in the ‘cultural’ sense, i.e. a life going beyond the biological existence). The prisoner can deploy the latter way of living only outside the cave, while being educated and trying to grasp the Good (521a).
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Who could oblige the prisoner to take the way back down to the cave? The same educators who started this conversation: i.e., Socrates and his companions (Glaucon and Adeimantus), who have proclaimed themselves to be the founders of the city.
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Cf. Cooper 1984, p.16.
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Cf. Smith 2010, p.94: ‘The returners might well feel strongly a desire to remain rapt in contemplation of the Forms, but when the unjust effect of following this impulse is made clear to them, we can assume their spirited parts –thoroughly trained always to do what is best for the city and to desist from anything contrary to that aim– would resist the impulse to abdicate’. We should also remember that in the Phaedrus , Plato locates shame in the horse representing spirit; cf. Phdr. 253d-e and 256a.
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Smith 2010, p. 98.
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As Rowe (2007, p. 55) points out: ‘the focus is now not so much on the good itself as on ‘our nature in relation to education and lack of education’ (514a1–3).
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Cf. Reeve 2010, pp. 221–222.
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Reeve 2010, p. 220.
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Rosen 2005, p. 270.
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Cf. R. VI 493d.
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Cf. also Rowe 2007, p. 141. The same idea that the different parts of the soul, or at least the appetites, in fact collaborate with the imprisonment is clearly asserted in Phaedo 82d ff. (in which the tripartite psychology is, nonetheless, absent): ‘Lovers of knowledge recognize that when philosophy takes their soul in hand, it has been literally bound and glued to the body, and is forced to view the things that are as if through a prison, rather than alone by itself; and that it is wallowing in utter ignorance . Now philosophy discerns the cunning of the prison, sees how it is effected through desire (δι᾽ ἐπιθυμίας), so that the captive himself may co-operate most of all in his imprisonment ’ (transl. Gallop 1975). In this context, in Phaedo, the cure for such an imprisonment lies in philosophical education.
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Sedley (2013, p. 76): ‘No mention at all is made of lower soul-parts with their own distinct desires’. Concerning his remark that ‘[d]esires (called ἐπιθυμίαι at 485d6) are not subdivided between different soul-parts , but are treated as a single psychic force, one that can be channelled either into intellectual pursuits or into those of the body’ (Sedley 2013, p.79), it can be pointed out that the distinction between necessary ones and non-necessary ones among desires and pleasures of the three different parts of the soul will be made in Republic VIII and IX, respectively, and not at this point of the dialogue.
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Sedley , 2013, p. 80 (my italics).
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Adam 2009, vol.2, p. 98: ‘The Platonic περιαγωγή, although, or rather, perhaps, because, it applies primarily and immediately to the intellect, effects a moral no less than an intellectual revolution. The moral discipline of Books II-IV, so far from being overthrown, is strengthened and consolidated by being intellectualized’.
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Adam 2009, p. 99.
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Cf. ἔθεσι καὶ ἀσκήσεσιν (R. 518e) and also Phaedo 82a-b, where temperance and justice, demotic and political virtues , are said to have risen from ‘habit and training, but devoid of philosophy and intellect (ἐξ ἔθους τε καὶ μελέτης γεγονυῖαν ἄνευ φιλοσοφίας τε καὶ νοῦ)’.
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On the sense of the aporia here displayed and the avoidance of the vocabulary of prâxis in this particular argument, cf. Erler, 1991 pp. 230–243 and 234–235, respectively.
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Socrates says in 519a5 that the soul of these bad-σοφοί is ‘forced to serve vice’ (κακίᾳ δ᾽ἠναγκασμένον ὑπηρετεῖν). If force, coercion and violence mean education, then what he says is that the soul of these bad-σοφοί is educated in such a way as to make them serve vice and accomplish bad things.
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I am making here a brief and schematic abstract of the position displayed in Sedley (2013, p. 81 and 86).
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Cf. also the reference to ‘practices going counter to these, which have pleasures attached to them and which flatter and solicit our souls’ at 538d.
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Here at 526e (as in the rest of the simile) force (ἀναγκάζει), i.e. education, is employed to produce the conversion of the soul towards a goal defined in practical terms as ‘the happiest of what exists’.
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The philosopher must ‘descend’ not only for his ethical and political duties in the cave, but also for his epistemic commitment, ‘as it were in battle, running the gauntlet of all tests’ (R. 534c) to obtain genuine philosophical knowledge . Cf. Reeve (2010, pp.221–222): ‘When the philosophers finally see the good itself, they have the infallible, un-hypothetical cognitive grasp of it that is a paradigm of knowledge . But they have no knowledge of anything else until they take the road back down from it, gaining additional infallible, un-hypothetical cognition in the process.’
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Cf. EN 1144a26 and 1152a11–14.
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‘If the purpose is noble, then it is an ability that might be praised; but if the purpose is wicked it is just trick (πανουργία)’. Cf. EN VI 1144a30; EN III 1114b7 and VI 1143b14.
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The expression ‘eye of the soul’, as Snell (1946) has shown, is Homeric in inspiration and often employed by Plato: twice in Republic VII 518c and 533d; cf. also Smp. 219a; Tht. 164a; Sph. 254a.
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On the importance of Laws III in the Nicomachean Ethics, cf. Frede (2006, pp. 256–257).
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Strauss (1975, pp. 45–46).
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Strauss (1975, pp. 45–46). We might be able to discuss what kind of lack of control Plato is thinking of in Lg. III: for incontinence (ἀκρασία) always involves for Aristotle the feeling of utter remorse, while the self-indulgent (ἀκολαστής), not the incontinent (ἀκρατής), acts without any form of regret. But a subtle detail of the state of affections of the ‘ignorant ’ is not displayed in these Platonic lines.
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Zingano (2006, pp. 170–172).
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EN 1149a25: ἔοικε γὰρ ὁ θυμὸς ἀκούειν μέν τι τοῦ λόγου. See also EN 1149b1: ὁ μὲν θυμὸς ἀκολουθεῖ τῷ λόγῳ πως, ἡ δ᾽ ἐπιθυμία οὔ. Concerning the way in which, for Plato, θυμός might be an ally of reason, cf. Boeri (2010, pp. 303–306).
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Aristotle does not accept that the φρόνιμος can be acratic; he denies this possibility twice (see EN VII 1146a7–9 and 1152a6–8). Cf. Zingano (2006, p. 176), whose analysis, nonetheless, avoids any recognition of Platonic inheritance. That Aristotle borrows some of his remarks from the tripartite soul schema of Republic IV has been widely accepted (cf. for example Burnyeat, 1980, pp. 82–84, 90–91) and Broadie , 1991, p. 285), but the Aristotelian acknowledgment of the difference, suggested in Republic VII 518d-519a, between pure intellectual ability and practical wisdom as goodness is generally overlooked.
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Cf. the analysis provided by Zingano (2006, p. 175).
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Cf. Destrée (2007, p. 145): ‘The verb συμφυῆναι in 1147a22 is understood by non-intellectualist interpreters in the sense that Aristotle is taken as referring to a kind of knowledge which is not yet incorporated or mixed in with the desire to act’.
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Costa, I. (2018). Platonic Souls in the Cave: Are They Only Rational?. In: Boeri, M.D., Kanayama, Y.Y., Mittelmann, J. (eds) Soul and Mind in Greek Thought. Psychological Issues in Plato and Aristotle. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78547-9_7
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