IN PLATO’S IMAGEcompanionship disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth
and wisdom? Is not this the man, Simmias, if anyone, to attain to the
knowledge of reality? (66a)At this point in the dialogue Socrates has thus established the threefold
dichotomy: body and soul; senses and reason; objects of human experi-
ence and things-in-themselves. As the traditional view of “Platonic meta-
physics” would have it, these pairs are wholly disjunctive, but when the
story of recollection is introduced, the dichotomies demand a closer
look. The story of recollection reveals remarkable means of connecting
the elements in each pair, ontologically and epistemically. It therefore
contains important clues about the role that images play in linking the
two realms.
The story of recollection tells us that before the soul’s embodi-
ment or birth, it knew the realities. Upon birth it forgets these truths,
and if we are to learn them at all, we must recollect them. Socrates tells
us that various things in our experience can remind us of other things.
For example, seeing the lyre can remind us of the one who plays it; see-
ing the cloak worn by a lover can remind us of our lover; seeing a picture
of Simmias can remind us of Simmias. When we perceive one thing,
it calls to our minds some other thing. The item recalled can be like
and/or unlike the item which stimulated its recall. We are then induced
to analyze the recollection to see what relationship obtains between the
thing recalled and the item that brought it to mind, and we evaluate the
likeness or difference between the two (72e– 74a).
“Now see,” said [Socrates], “if this is true. We say there is such a thing
as equality. I do not mean one piece of wood equal to another, or
one stone to another, or anything of that sort, but something beyond
that—equality itself [aujto; to; i[son].^5 Shall we say there is such a thing,
or not?”
“We shall say that there is,” said Simmias, “most decidedly.”
“And do we know what it is?”
“Certainly,” said he.
“Whence did we derive the knowledge of it? Is it not from the things
we were just speaking of? Did we not, by seeing equal pieces of wood
or stones or other things, derive from them a knowledge of equality
itself, which is another thing?... Then,” said he, “those equals are not
the same as equality itself.”
“Not at all, I should say, Socrates.”
“But from those equals,” said he, “which are not the same as equality
itself, you have nevertheless conceived and acquired knowledge of it?”