PLATO’S BOOK OF IMAGESof the power of knowledge does not produce in him (or presumably in
those who listen to him) the condition he would be willing to call “hav-
ing knowledge.” In this passage, then, we fi nd Socrates and Glaucon
acknowledging the limitations of their method of inquiry, while con-
tinuing to insist that it is not a method that leaves them simply blind, or
only lucky to happen upon the right path.
Plato as Image-Maker
By now, it will come as no surprise that I intend to claim that Plato’s own
use of images also reveals the same general method that he attributes
to the mathematicians and that he portrays Socrates as employing with
his interlocutors. Plato’s own use of images, however, begins even before
the use he gives to Socrates, for as I mentioned at the beginning of this
essay, from the opening pages of the Republic the reader is bombarded
with images. It is worth noticing that Plato’s fi rst images are not limited
to the heroic katabasis imagery I mentioned earlier, however. As soon as
the topic of justice is introduced, Plato offers a series of images of the
conception of justice he will have Socrates defend later in the Republic.
Plato fi rst has Cephalus characterize justice as consisting in tell-
ing the truth and paying back debts. Although this characterization is
plainly inadequate, as Socrates quickly shows, its likeness to the concep-
tion Plato later defends—according to which a kallipolis will be ruled
by truth-loving and lie-hating philosopher-rulers (see 382a4– c1) whose
psychic harmony would make them the least likely to fail to repay a debt
(4 4 2e 4 – 443a1)—is unmistakable. After Polemarchus “inherits” the dis-
cussion from his father, he attempts to characterize justice as helping
friends and harming enemies. Socrates soon reveals the inadequacies
of this account, though later we may recall how it resembles Socrates’
own conception, according to which everyone in the state is a friend to
everyone else, whose happiness is to be maximized without unfair or
special advantage to anyone (420b4– 8, 465e4– 466a6), and in which all
Greeks should regard one another as friends, reserving the most devas-
tating acts of war for use only against non-Greeks (469b5– 471c1)—the
barbarians who are “enemies by nature” to the Greeks (470c6). These
same later prescriptions allow us to recall their likeness in Polemarchus’
revision of his view, according to which we must help all good people
and harm only the bad ones. And when Thrasymachus comes in, we
are told that justice is the advantage of the stronger—a claim that re-
mains true in Socrates’ own account, for the reasons I have just stated,