Philosophy in Dialogue : Plato's Many Devices

PLATO’S BOOK OF IMAGES

opposites, while those that do not do this do not tend to awaken the

intellect [ejgertika; th`~ nohvsew~]. (524d2– 5; see also 523e1)

Plato’s gripe with the imitators is not simply that they make im-
ages, then, for the geometers also do this, and Plato regards the latter’s
uses of images as extremely important in the process of education. The
problem with the imitators is that their images are not intellectually pro-
vocative; instead, Plato complains, they do nothing good themselves, for
they neither know the Good nor even have correct belief, and thus do
not create images that are conducive to truth:

[The poets and other such] are imitators of images of virtue and of the

other things they make and do not grasp the truth.... The creator of

the phantom [eijdwJlon], the imitator, we say, knows nothing of what is,

but only the appearance. (600e4– 6, 601b9– 10)

But why does the same argument not also apply to the geometers, who,
we may suppose, because of the defects of their methods relative to that
of the dialectician, also do not know what they imitate when they shape
their images? More importantly, since Plato puts all of these words into
the mouth of Socrates, who repeats his well-known disclaimer of knowl-
edge in several places in the dialogue (see, for example, at 368b4– 8,
506c203), why does the same criticism not also apply to Socrates
himself?
It might be tempting to answer these questions by talking about
the different motivations of the geometers and Socrates, on the one
hand, and the poets or visual artists whose work Plato deplores. The for-
mer, it might be insisted, are at least seekers after truth, whereas the lat-
ter seek only to fl atter and to gratify their audience. Plato certainly has
Socrates make this claim (“his appeal is to the inferior part of the soul”
[605a10 – b1]), but it is not one of Plato’s most impressive arguments.
After all, as defenders of literature and the arts always insist when they
read this critique, why must we suppose that one simply cannot create
visual or literary art that aims at revealing (however imagistically) some
semblance of the truth?
Happily, however, the motivational argument does not provide
Plato’s only grounds for distinguishing the imitators he deplores from
the image-makers he praises—including especially the one whose im-
age he creates as the main speaker in the Republic itself. But to see this
more clearly, we must look more closely at the epistemic condition Plato
assigns to the mathematicians.