What is the “Nature” of the Philosopher in the Republic?

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In Book VI of the Republic a grocery list of the desirable traits to be found in a philosopher are described by Socrates.  The list of virtues is long and encompassing: a love of learning of things that are (485b), no taste for falsehood (485c), a concern with the pleasures of the soul, not the body (485d), being moderate and not a lover of money (485e), not given to petty speech (smikrologia) (486a), believing that death is no great evil (486b), being “just and tame not hard to get along with and savage” (486b), learning easily (486c), has a good memory (486c), has measure and charm (486d).

Equally prominent in this discussion of what the virtues are is the continual emphasis that  Socrates places on nature.  We are left to puzzle about what the definition of “nature” is here, a term frequently and problematically employed in philosophical contexts.  The traits listed above are somehow desirable in the philosopher only if they are present by nature.  However, there is little discussion of what nature is, and what we are left with is a view of nature that consists in little more than whatever inborn proclivities one happens to have, as is exemplified in this statement about a man erotic by nature, “It’s not only likely, my friend, but also entirely necessary that a man who is by nature erotically disposed toward someone care for everything related and akin to his boy” (485c). 

This explanation of nature is further corroborated by the foreshadowing of the philosopher first seen in Book II.  There, Socrates and Glaucon agreed that they were looking for a chimerical kind of guardian, one who is, “at the same time gentle and great-spirited.  Surely a gentle nature is opposed to a spirited one”  (375c).  When they deliberate further upon this discovery, Socrates and Glaucon despair, since the combination of two opposed traits would appear to be a contradiction.  However, soon Socrates realizes that, “You know, of course, that by nature the disposition of noble dogs is to be as gentle as can be with their familiars and people they know and the opposite with those they don’t know”  (373d).  The explication of this “noble dog,” analogous to the philosopher, is telling, because it will inform us not only about Plato’s conception of nature here, but by extension the nature of the philosopher.  Socrates explanation of the dog’s behavior is not in terms of training, but something rather more inborn: “When it sees someone it doesn’t know, it’s angry, although it never had any bad experience with him.  And when it sees someone it knows, it greets him warmly, even if it never had a good experience with him”  (376a).  Thus it is not by training that the dog has learned to embody a composite of two opposed traits, for this would be impossible.  Furthermore, as Socrates analysis makes clear, the dog’s nature makes it immune to any training by experience which it could have undergone.  It is friendly to its owner by nature, and hateful to strangers by nature despite any exposure intentional or unintentional which could train the dog to behave in exactly the opposite way.  Thus when we are told that the philosopher is to hold certain traits by nature, this is to say that he should be possessed of these traits from birth, which manifest themselves in a disposition that easily expresses them.

Note: All translations from Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato.

If Images are Inferior, Why is the Allegory of the Cave an Image?

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The Platonic vocabulary is often skeptical and even antagonistic toward the uses of images.  This denigration is attributed to the mutability of images, so that we could really apply this criticism to anything that changes, which would apply to all of the visible world.  Among many other places in the Republic, Socrates makes the distinction clear by explaining how what we think about determines the very certainty of that thought:   

Well then, consider that the truth of the soul is thus: Whenever truth and what is shine upon something, the mind attaches to this, it intellects and knows and appears to have intelligence.  But whenever it attaches to that which is mixed with obscurity, that which comes to be and passes away, it has opinions and sees dimly, changing opinions here and there, and seems not to have intelligence (Republic 508d3-8). (1)

These two sides of opinion and knowledge, perishability and persistence, are, as Socrates will shortly explain, the sensible and intelligible realms.  Socrates says there are two kinds of objects of the sensible realm, shadows, appearances and reflections, but then also those things of which these are the shadows, appearances and reflections.  It is obvious that these mere reflections are inferior to the objects which they represent: animals, people, etc.  It goes without saying, moreover, that everything in the sensible realm is inferior to anything in the intelligible realm.

Now here is the part I take particular interest in.  Socrates says that all of the shadows, appearances and reflections in the sensible realm are images (τὰς εἰκόνας) of other things in the sensible realm.  Because of this, they obviously have the least substantive mode of existence, and along with this, the lowest level of cognitive certainty.  Yet image-language is precisely what Socrates employs, and is his own self-characterization of what he does, in the allegory of the cave.  He tells us at the beginning of Book VII, as he is about to explain the cave allegory, “make an image [ἀπείκασον] of our nature in such a condition concerning education and lack of education” (514a1-2). (2) (3)

The question arises then, why are we using an image to describe a program of education the goal of which is to lead one away from images?  This is especially curious because it comes right before Socrates exposition of philosophical education, beginning with arithmetic.  Perhaps the allegory of the cave is a necessary propaedeutic before one begins— not to undertake such an education— but to even understand its purport and goal.  Or perhaps because the uninitiated reader has not yet taken the first step to a philosophical education, he must be accommodated where he is at, in this case at the lowly level of understanding mere images, so that he can be taken where he needs to go.             

REFERENCES: 

(1) οὕτω τοίνυν καὶ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ὧδε νόει· ὅταν μὲν οὗ καταλάμπει ἀλήθειά τε καὶ τὸ ὄν, εἰς τοῦτο ἀπερείσηται, ἐνόησέν τε καὶ ἔγνω αὐτὸ καὶ νοῦν ἔχειν φαίνεται· ὅταν δὲ εἰς τὸ τῷ σκότῳ κεκραμένον, τὸ γιγνόμενόν τε καὶ ἀπολλύμενον, δοξάζει τε καὶ ἀμβλυώττει ἄνω καὶ κάτω τὰς δόξας μεταβάλλον, καὶ ἔοικεν αὖ νοῦν οὐκ ἔχοντι.

(2) ἀπείκασον τοιούτῳ πάθει τὴν ἡμετέραν φύσιν παιδείας τε πέρι καὶ ἀπαιδευσίας.

(3) Similarly in Book VI Socrates explicitly states that the ship of state metaphor, wherein the pilot is the true philosopher, gazing outside of the ship to guide the craft, is an image [εἰκών] (487e5).

Are Philosophers and Philosophy Useful to a City?

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Several hundred years before the birth of Socrates, Thales the philosopher was said to have fallen into a well while observing the heavens.  Thus the impractical and detached reputation of philosophers was born.  In Books 6 and 7 of the Republic the issue of the usefulness of either the philosopher or philosophy is brought up several times.  What is this uselessness, and how does the philosopher become useful?  In that earlier book Socrates admits that philosophy is indeed useless, but blames this “uselessness on those who don’t use [philosophers], not on decent men” (489b).  Later, in Book 7, we return to the usefulness of philosophy.  Socrates, although himself noting that the study of geometry has as its ‘“useful byproduct” war, chastises Glaucon for wishing to highlight the practical benefits of astronomy (527c-d).  Socrates insists that the real significance of these studies is the cultivation of the eye of the mind. 

What this points to is that if there is going to be a conversion from “uselessness to usefulness” by the study of philosophy, this change cannot come about by pandering to the currently perceived needs of the city.  Rather the city must come to see its need for something beyond the daily worries attendant on activities like farming and warfare.  And we must additionally keep in mind that Socrates is proposing a city that has the general welfare in mind, not the concerns of any individual or one group.  Yet it is precisely at this point that this concern for the welfare of the city makes it most shocking demand, according the allegory of the cave. 

In the cave, the cave-dweller, let us remember, was not liberated by his own devices, but Socrates tells us that he was released and “compelled to stand up,” “compelled to answer [what the shadows] are,” “compelled…to look at the light itself” (515c-e).  On the other hand, the philosopher, himself a liberated cave-dweller, must not live the care-free life of contemplation, he too has to return to the cave to liberate and educate the remaining captives (520b).  So for the betterment of the city, both the philosopher and “cave-dweller” must, in some sense, submit to a course of life other than what they would have normally chosen, had they not been looking to the betterment of the city.  What informs this decision and what is the guiding principle of their lives if it is not the oracle of mere personal preference? 

The answer, as it turns out, is a paradox.  Normally we expect that if we are to attend to the betterment of say, our garden, we put on our overalls in order to focus on the garden.  This is not so with the case of the polis.  In the case of the city we must fix our attention outside of the city, to things seen only by the inner eye, intellection.  Recall that in Book VI Socrates’ initial response to the charge of uselesness is to give us an image of men on a ship. He tells us that when the true pilot navigates, he looks to, “year, seasons, heaven, stars, winds, and everything that is proper to the art” (488d).  But he does not look at the ship. Nor does the philosopher in the cave look at the cave, but he attempts to focus the attention of the cave-dwellers to eventually look at the sun.  Thus it turns out that the philosopher and philosophy are extremely useful; without him and it, the entire city is unable to see or even to learn to see what they should really be fixing their gaze upon, the Form of the Good.