IN PLATO’S IMAGEWritings, Platonic Readings, ed. Charles L. Griswold Jr. (University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 2002), 66– 83; and Gerald Press, “K nowledge as Vi-
sion in Plato’s Dialogues,” Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 3 (1995): 61– 89, present
views consistent with those I present here. See also my “Eros and Philosophical
Seduction in Alcibiades I,” Ancient Philosophy 23 (2003): 11– 30.
- Gordon, Turning Toward Philosophy.
- See Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.9.12: “To say that the Forms are patterns,
and that other things participate in them, is to use empty phrases and po-
etical metaphors [to; de; levgein paradeivgmata aujta; ei\nai kai; metevcein aujtwn ta\lla kenologein ejsti; kai; metafora;~ levgein poihtikav~].” I agree with Aris-
totle wholeheartedly that these are poetical metaphors, but not that they are
empty phrases. - H. Liddell and R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Ox ford: Clarendon,
1985). Thanks again to Gary Alan Scott for putting the fi ne point on this. - I have been asked on several occasions whether I am making Plato out
to be a postmodern fi gure. Such a conjecture seems off the mark. To say that
humans must always deal with images is not to say that there are nothing but
images, i.e., that there is no truth or reality. The purpose of images is to help us
to ascend toward some higher realit y or truth. There is some realit y to which we
aspire and of which we can fall short. Indeed, it is embedded in what it means
to be an image that it is an image of something.