Republic

”And in a word, you make all excuses and utter all voices, so as to reject no one of those in the bloom of youth.” “If you wish,” he said, “to speak of amorous men, using me as an example, that they act in this way, I grant it for the sake of the argument.” “What about this?” I said. “Do you not see the lovers of wine doing these very same things? Welcoming every wine on every pretext?” “Very much so.” “And indeed, I think you observe of the lovers of honor that, if they cannot be generals, they serve as captains, and if they cannot be honored by greater and more dignified people, they are satisfied with being honored by smaller and meaner ones, as being overall desirers of honor.” “By all means.” “Now say this or not: when we say someone is a desirer of something, shall we say he desires the whole of this class, or one part of it and not another?” “The whole,” he said. “Then shall we not also say that the philosopher is a desirer of wisdom, not of one part and not of another, but of all of it?” “True.” “Then the one who is squeamish about learning, especially when he is young and does not yet have an account of what is useful and what is not, we shall not say is a lover of learning or a philosopher, just as we say that one who is squeamish about food is neither hungry nor desires food, and is not a lover of food but a bad eater.” “And we shall say so correctly.” “But the one who is willingly ready to taste of every learning and goes gladly to learning and is insatiable, this one we shall justly say is a philosopher; isn’t that so?” And Glaucon said, “Then many and strange people will be of this kind for you. For all the lovers of sights seem to me to be such because they rejoice in learning, and the lovers of hearing are some of the strangest to place among philosophers, who would not willingly go to arguments and such pastimes, but as if having hired out their ears, run around to all choruses at the Dionysia, missing neither those in the cities nor those in the villages. Shall we then say that all these, and others who are learners of some such things and those who love petty arts, are philosophers?” “By no means,” I said, “but they are similar to philosophers.” “But the true ones,” he said, “who do you say they are?” “The lovers of the sight of truth,” I said. “That indeed is correct,” he said, “but how do you mean it?” “By no means easily to another,” I said, “but you, I think, will agree with me on this sort of thing.” “What sort of thing?” “Since beautiful is opposite to ugly, they are two.”

”How could it not be so?” “Then since they are two, is each also one?” “That too.” “And indeed about just and unjust, good and bad, and of all the forms, the same account holds: each itself is one, but by the association with actions, bodies, and one another, appearing everywhere, each appears to be many.” “You speak correctly,” he said. “In this way, then, I divide them,” I said, “apart on one side are those you just now called lovers of sights, lovers of arts, and practical men, ” “and apart on the other are those about whom the argument is, whom alone one could correctly call philosophers.” “How do you mean?” he said. “The lovers of hearing and lovers of sights, I suppose,” I said, “welcome beautiful voices, colors, shapes, and all things fashioned from such things, but their intellect is unable to see and welcome the nature of the beautiful itself.” “For indeed, it is so,” he said. “But those who are able to go to the beautiful itself and see it by itself, would they not be rare?” ”Very much so.” “The one who believes in beautiful things, but does not believe in the beautiful itself, nor is able to follow if someone leads him to the knowledge of it, does he seem to you to live in a dream or awake? Look at it. Is dreaming not this: whether one is asleep or awake, to think that what is similar to something is not similar, but is the very thing itself which it resembles?” “I at least,” he said, “would say that such a person is dreaming.” “What about the one who holds the opposite of these, who thinks there is a beautiful itself, and is able to see both it and the things that participate in it, and does not think the participating things are it, nor that it is the participating things—does he seem to you to live awake or in a dream?” “Very much awake,” he said. “Then would we not correctly say that the intellect of this one, as knowing, is knowledge, but that of the other, as opining, is opinion?” “Entirely so.” “What then if this person, whom we say opines but does not know, gets angry with us and disputes that we do not speak the truth? Will we have some way to soothe him and gently persuade him, while concealing that he is not in a healthy state?” “It is indeed necessary,” he said. “Come then, consider what we shall say to him. Or do you wish that we inquire of him in this way, saying that if he knows something, there is no grudge against him, but we would gladly see him knowing something. But tell us this: does the one who knows know something or nothing? You, then, answer me on his behalf.” “I will answer,” he said, “that he knows something.” “Is it what is, or what is not?”