MEDICINE, PHILOSOPHY, AND SOCRATES’ PROPOSALS
TO GLAUCON ABOUT Gumnastikhv IN REPUBLIC 403C–412Brelease and to properly guide the erotic urge. Socrates calls attention to
this urge when in the Symposium he narrates the account of the ascent
of e[rw~ to the vision of Beauty itself. He alludes to it when he speaks of
a power of learning present in everyone that is like an eye that does not
work properly until the whole soul is turned in the right direction (in
the story of the Cave at Republic 518c). He thinks the urge can go awry
when internal or external conditions are unsuitable for its proper func-
tioning. For example, in his account of the false philosophers at Republic
491a– 493d, he suggests that the more vigorous the nature the more cor-
rupt it can become when it lives badly or lives in a bad society.
Socrates in various contexts also suggests that the state of health
at which this urge aims makes possible a certain insight into or vision
of an absolute beauty and goodness.^20 We can count this as an eighth
implication of the model. At Symposium 210e– 212a, for example, he de-
scribes the experience of the initiate who completes the healing “ascent
of Eros.” The initiate “catches sight of something wonderfully beautiful
in its nature” (210e) and thereupon becomes able “to give birth not to
images of virtue but to true virtue, because he is in touch with true
beauty” (212a). And at Republic 475d– 480a, Socrates contrasts the “lover
of sights and sounds” with the philosopher who “sees both the beauti-
ful itself and the things that participate in it and doesn’t believe that
the participants are it or that it itself is the participants.” Socrates is
showing Glaucon that virtue is the kind of good that Glaucon himself
characterized at 357b– c as “good for its own sake and also for the sake
of what comes from it, such as knowing [fronein], for example, and seeing [oJran] and being healthy [uJgiaivnein].” The interchangeability of
health, knowledge, and vision suggested by these passages is convergent
with what scholars have noted about the relationship between knowl-
edge and vision in the Platonic dialogues.^21 It also dovetails with the
medieval Scholastic commonplace that intellectual vision (intellectus) is
a higher and healthier activity than that of abstracting forms and mak-
ing laborious inferences (ratio),^22 and that love gives one the means of
seeing.^23 A host of Socratic utterances testify to his visionary model of
knowledge and health.^24
The connections drawn by Socrates among health and knowledge
and vision suggest a ninth implication of the model. No formal rule-
governed method by itself will be suffi cient for imparting right vision to
those who lack it. A Socratic guide will have to exhibit the convergence
of many different sorts of consideration into a coherent pattern in a way
that makes sense for his interlocutor. Lovgoi of many and various kinds
will be instrumental to this exhibition. The Socratic guide will have to
take into account fi ne differences among persons and situations that