Please read from Key Lessons from Plato’s Republic — Book I, as this story is part of a broader series on Plato’s Republic.
The City is Family
In most cities the citizens’ loyalty is divided. They care about the good of the whole, but they care even more about their own family. In the just city, everyone is considered as family and treated as such. There are no divided loyalties. As Socrates puts it, everyone in the city says “mine” about the same things. The city is unified because it shares all its aims and concerns.
But the producers have little to do with the political life of the city — they do not have to make any decisions pertaining to the city, or to fight on behalf of the city — their patriotism does not matter. Just as we saw that a courageous farmer does no good for the city as a whole, a patriotic craftsman or doctor is irrelevant from the standpoint of the society’s good. The producers’ only political task is to obey.
The Final Character in the Republic
The first step in introducing the true philosopher is to distinguish these special people from a brand of psuedo-intellectuals whom Socrates refers to as the “lovers of sights and sounds” AKA Sophists. The lovers of sights and sounds are people who claim expertise in the particular subject of beauty.
In the distinction of the philosopher from the lover of sights and sounds the theory of Forms first enters The Republic. Forms, we learn in other Platonic dialogues, are eternal, unchanging, universal absolute ideas, such as the Good, the Beautiful, and the Equal. Though Forms cannot be seen — but only grasped with the mind — they are responsible for making the things we sense around us into the sorts of things they are. Anything red we see, for instance, is only red because it participates in the Form of the Red; anything square is only square because it participates in the Form of the Square; anything beautiful is only beautiful because it participates in the Form of Beauty, and so on.
What makes philosophers different from lovers of sights and sounds is that they apprehend these Forms. The lovers of sights and sounds claim to know all about beautiful things but cannot claim to have any knowledge of the Form of the Beautiful — nor do they even recognize that there is such a thing. Because the lovers of sights and sounds do not deal with Forms, Socrates claims, but only with sensible particulars — that is, the particular things we sense around us — they can have opinions but never knowledge. Only philosophers can have knowledge, the objects of which are the Forms.
Key Observations : Only “what is completely” is completely knowable. Only the Forms count as “what is completely.” Only philosophers have access to the Forms. Only the philosophers have knowledge.
Can a beautiful woman be completely beautiful? Is it not the case that she is only beautiful according to some standards, and not according to others? Compared to a goddess, for instance, she would probably appear plain. So the beautiful woman is not completely beautiful. No sensible particular can be completely anything — judged by some standards, or viewed in some way, it will lack that quality. It will certainly lose the quality over time. Nothing is sweet forever; fruit eventually withers, rots, desiccates. Nothing is beautiful forever; objects eventually corrode, age, or perish. The Form of Beauty is nothing but pure beauty that lasts without alteration forever. In Plato’s conception, all Forms possess their singular qualities completely, eternally, and without change.
That only “what is completely” is completely knowable is a difficult idea to accept, even when we understand what Plato means to indicate by speaking of the Forms. Plato is adamant that knowledge does not change. Knowledge for Plato, as for Aristotle and many thinkers since, consists in eternal, unchanging, absolute truths, the kind that he would count as scientific. Since knowledge is limited to eternal, unchanging, absolute truths, it cannot apply to the ever changing details of the sensible world. It can only apply to what is completely — to what is stable and eternally unchanging.
