Philosophic Classics From Plato to Derrida

REPUBLIC(BOOKVI) 117

“I’m putting them,” he said.
“And would you also be willing to claim,” I said, “that it’s divided with respect to
truth and its lack, such that the copy is to the thing it’s copied from as a seeming is to
something known?”
“I would,” he said, “very much so.”
“Then consider next the way the division of the intelligible part needs to
be made.”
“What way is that?”
“Such that in one part of it [C] a soul takes as images the things that were imitated
before, and is forced to inquire based on presuppositions, proceeding not to a beginning
but to an end, while in the other part [D] it goes from a presupposition to a beginning
free of presuppositions, without the images involved in the other part, making its inves-
tigation into forms themselves and by means of them.”
“I didn’t sufficiently understand what you mean by these things,” he said.
“Once more, then,” I said; “since you’ll understand more easily after the fol-
lowing preface. [C] Now I imagine you know that people who concern themselves
with matters of geometry and calculation and such things presuppose in accord with
each investigation the odd and the even, the geometrical shapes, the three kinds of
angles, and other things related to these; treating these as known and making them
presuppositions, they don’t think it’s worth giving any further account of them
either to themselves or to anyone else, as though they were obvious to everyone, but
starting from these things and going through the subsequent things from that point,
they arrive at a conclusion in agreement with that from which they set their inquiry
in motion.”

b

c

d

Images,

Shadows,

Reflections

Imagination

〈eikasia〉

Opinion

〈doxa〉

A

Visible

Things

Belief / Trust

〈pistis〉

B

VISIBLEWORLD

Mathematical

Objects

Discursive

Thinking

〈dianoia〉

C

Forms Knowledge / Active Insight

〈episteme〉

D

INTELLIGIBLE

WORLD

OBJECTS STATES OF MIND