Plato on the Good

Andre Pinero

Submitted to the Department of Philosophy

Spring 2020

1 For both philosophers and human beings more generally, the concept of goodness is one of paramount importance. The idea of goodness is considered to be fundamental to ethics, without any conception of it, we would be lost and unable to tell right action from wrong. This is generally where the importance of goodness stops in philosophy. We usually assume, particularly in the modern world, that the sphere of the good is one coterminous with judgment of human action, and that to expand our conception of goodness to our metaphysical or epistemological inquires is not only confused but ultimately somehow fallacious. In other words, if inquiry into the Good can lead to any knowledge at all, it will only be in the ethical sphere.

Such assumptions are not shared by one of the most important figures in our philosophical lineage, Plato. To be sure, Plato is quick to accept that the Good is an ethical concept, one that allows us to judge human agents and actions. However, not only did Plato believe that goodness and our desire for it structured human action, but he also upheld that goodness was fundamental to knowledge and even reality, a claim that rings bizarre to modern ears. As Matthew Evans puts it in his paper on

Plato’s Euthyphro, Plato puts “normative facts” at the “foundation” (Evans, 2012, p.

2) of his metaphysical system, rather than having his normative views be based on his metaphysics (as might seem far more intuitive to a modern mind).

Even more strikingly, Plato believed all things are good in the same way.

Goodness is for Plato univocal. As Peter Geach put it (when arguing against the univocal nature of goodness) “all things called good must satisfy some one condition” (Geach, 1956, p. 35). Though for Geach this view is “hopelessly ambiguous” (Geach, 1956, p. 35), Plato is adamant that even when we are talking

2 about things of wildly different sorts (from a human being to a plant to a celestial body), the quality that makes them good must be at base the same. As we shall see, not only does Plato believe that this one quality is what makes a thing a good instance of its kind, but he also upholds that this quality is present in all things to some degree in so far as they exist.

Indeed, the Good is for Plato not merely a fundamental idea, but the centerpiece of his entire philosophical system (in ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology). Ethically speaking, without knowing the Good we will be unable to understand what is “fine and good” (Republic, 505b2-3) in human affairs at all. With regard to epistemology, Plato claims that our knowledge is made possible by the

Good, as it gives “the power to know to the knower” (Republic, 508e2). Lastly, objects of knowledge, the forms or ideas, owe their “existence and being” (Republic,

509b7-8) to the Good, and thus for Plato the very order of reality would not exist without this univocal goodness.

It is in Book VI of the Republic that Plato explores this vital idea. Though discussion of the Good originates in an ethical and political context concerning the rulers of Socrates’ ideal city, Plato soon changes the scope of the discussion by placing goodness at the heart of his metaphysics and epistemology. Interestingly,

Plato does not explore this idea in the same way as other objects of knowledge.

Instead of providing us with even a working definition of Goodness that one could use to judge and apply to objects in the world, Plato relies upon an analogy in order to impart to his reader a general sense of the place of the Good in his system.

3 I hope to show that though Plato provides us no definition of goodness here, one does exist. For Plato, goodness is unity or oneness. Put simply, this means both that the idea of unity (as synonymous with goodness) is the most fundamental in the

Platonic universe, and that individual things in that universe (both ideas and material objects) exist insofar as they are unified. I argue that this conception of goodness makes sense both in the context of Plato’s analogy and helps flesh out his picture of ideas and particular objects. In sketching out this position, I attempt to show how both material things and ideal forms participate in the form of the Good and how goodness thus explains the reality of both of these categories of things.

Additionally, I will discuss how forms participate in the Good more directly than particular objects, and thus are both better and more real.

After introducing my interpretation of goodness as unity, I will then evaluate and ultimately reject an alternate interpretation of the Good. This reading deemphasizes the definitional content and seeks instead to center our understanding of it in on its role in Plato’s metaphysics; claiming either that reaching a definition is unimportant or in some sense impossible. In other words, what matters is that the Good is the ground of reality, not what the content of the

Good is. Though there is good reason to think this view is wrong, by exploring it and admitting its strengths in bringing our attention to crucial nature of the role of the

Good we will arrive at a better understanding of both Plato’s conception of the Good and why he chose not to directly present it in the Republic.

At issue here is whether unity as goodness is the ultimate aim of Plato’s thought in this regard, or whether we are better off minimizing the importance of a

4 definition in favor of the role the Good plays in Plato’s system as the fundamental explanatory principle of reality. We will reject the view that the role of the Good ought to be emphasized over its content, and conclude that the manner in which

Plato explores the role of the Good is actually important to and buttresses our view of unity as the Good. In doing so, we will show that the relations explored in the analogy of the sun serve to help us understand the Good as we have formulated it.

Essentially, one cannot have knowledge of the Good as unity without understanding that and how the Good allows for the reality of forms.

Introducing the Good and the Analogy of the Sun

Discussion of the idea of the Good in Plato’s Republic takes place in Book VI.

This book is largely dedicated to Plato’s conception of philosophers, who are designated as the rulers of the ideal, perfectly just city discussed in the Republic.

Plato here discusses the nature of philosophers, claiming that they must be “genuine lover(s) of learning” (Republic, 485d3), love the pleasures of the soul over those of the body (485d10-12) and not fear death (486a12) or be unjust (486b8).

Aside from these character traits of those who will be selected as philosophers there is the matter of what sort of things these prospective leaders must learn in order to rule. Prospective philosophers must be trained in a variety of subjects, including physical exercise, in order to be up to the task of leading the city and being true philosophers who can serve that end. This education has as its goal knowledge of the Good, which is called the “greatest and most appropriate subject”

5 (Republic, 504d2) and the “cause” (504d6) of the virtues discussed in Book IV of the dialogue.

From its very first mention we can see why knowledge of the Good would be so useful for philosophers, as Socrates calls it “the greatest thing to learn about”

(Republic, 505a2) and mentions that other things become “useful and beneficial”

(505a3) in light of it. Indeed, knowledge of all but the Good is deemed lacking and incomplete for a philosopher, since without knowledge of goodness we can know

“nothing fine or good” (Republic, 505b2-3). This is seemingly quite natural, since for

Plato the philosophers will also be guardians, or the political leaders of the city. It makes sense that these leaders would have to be well learned with regard to human goodness, as they would have to determine what is good for the citizens of their city.

So far then, we could safely assume that Plato is referencing a good that is much more familiar to us, one that pertains to human beings and affairs.

The Good’s supreme importance notwithstanding, the discussion initially seems to go on along the usual Platonic lines. In this vein, Socrates brings up two popular definitions for goodness: pleasure and knowledge. Socrates quickly shoots both of these possible definitions down.1 With this preliminary, eliminative round complete, it would seem natural for Socrates to pursue a more constructive path and direct his interlocutors toward some working definition of goodness. Plato has already done just that with justice in Book IV of the same dialogue (Republic, 443c8-

1 Pleasure, the candidate of “the masses” (Republic, 505b5), is shown to be clearly dissimilar to the Good, since pleasures can be bad, and something cannot both be good and bad. Knowledge, the candidate of the “refined” (Republic, 505b6), fares little better. The proponents of this view cannot say what sort of knowledge the Good would constitute, outside of claiming it is knowledge of the Good, which clearly still leaves us in the dark as to the Good’s actual content.

6 444a1), and though he is clear that this definition is not complete, he is still very open to providing one. Interestingly however, Socrates is highly resistant to any such conversation in this case. Socrates emphasizes his ignorance of the Good, and tries to dissuade his interlocutors from demanding of him any exploration of it

(Republic, 506d6-e2). Eventually though, at Glaucon’s urging (Republic, 506d3-4),

Socrates arrives at a compromise wherein he will explain the Good to his partners by way of an analogy. Thus we arrive at Socrates’ analogy of the sun.

Socrates proceeds by drawing a comparison between the visible world of material, particular things, and the intelligible, knowable world of ideas or forms.

Key to the analogy is the means by which we see or know the relevant world; in both cases we have a faculty (eyes for the visible and the mind for the intelligible) that acquaints us with the objects of the world (visible things or ideas). However, in both worlds “unless a third kind of thing is present”(Republic, 507d12-e1), neither sight nor knowledge will occur. This third element is the sun with its light, in the case of the visible world, and the idea of the Good and truth in the case of the intelligible. So, as the sun allows for the possibility of sight, the Good opens up the very possibility of human knowledge.

So far this seems a predominately epistemological story, as Socrates is claiming that it is by virtue of the form of the Good that we can know and understand the objects of knowledge, the forms. However, Socrates goes on to make an explicitly metaphysical point, likening the sun to the Good not only in that it allows us to see or know, but also in that it allows for the objects of our sight or knowledge to exist in the first place. In the case of the sun, it allows for the “coming-

7 to-be” (509b3) of the visible things2, although the sun itself is unchanging. In the case of the Good, it allows for the unchanging being of the forms, but the Good itself is “not being, but something yet beyond being, superior to it in rank and power”

(509b8-9). Thus, it seems that the qualitative metaphysical gap between what comes to be and what is is just as great as between that which is and that which is beyond being. This claim of the Good’s surpassing of being is at least seemingly uniquely obscure and difficult, and requires other resources to truly make sense of.

Before pivoting to explaining this claim though, we ought to note how striking Plato’s conception of goodness truly is. Not only is the relationship between being and goodness itself tantalizingly obscure, but also the mere fact that such a concept as the Good is for Plato so epistemologically and metaphysically fundamental is truly fascinating. In offering this analogy, as well as in his rejection of knowledge and pleasure as definitions for goodness, Plato is redefining the traditional notion of goodness in dramatic fashion, shifting its basic character from a label for human actions and affairs to a metaphysical concept that serves to explain not only the moral but also the natural order.

Plato’s Ideas

Though the Good is set apart from other ideas in a still mysterious way, Plato is nonetheless clear that goodness is an idea, as we can clearly have knowledge of it

(indeed such knowledge is of paramount importance for the rulers of Socrates’ city).

2 Properly speaking, of course, the sun does not allow for all changing things to exist. This is something of an imperfection in the analogy, though it can be mostly glossed over if we view the sun as a source of life and admit that many of the visible things are living and thus owe their existence to the sun.

8 Thus in order to have any real understanding of the Good, we must come to understand what forms are and what sets them apart from other metaphysical categories. Beyond this, we must understand forms in order to understand Plato claim that the Good explains their existence. Hence, it key that we should take a step back for a moment and get clearer on what an idea is and how it is distinguished from the other major category of Plato’s metaphysics, the particulars.3

In essence, Plato’s forms are an attempt explain how, in a world of constantly changing things, we can identify the same qualities and types of things regularly despite their going in and out of existence, or being expressed imperfectly or relatively. Forms are universals, that which is in common among things of a certain kind. As Irwin put it, forms are the “one in many” (Irwin, 1995, p. 149), they are that because of which all particular things that have a certain property have that property. Plato believes we can come to gain knowledge of these universals discovering a definition that captures all the instantiations of the relevant property.

Thus, Plato introduces a new category, the forms, which unify a certain quality expressed by many particular things into one distinct object of a fundamentally different nature. It is through investigation into these forms and their definitions that we come to have knowledge.

3 Though forms and material particulars are undoubtedly the most important categories of Plato’s ontology, they are not necessarily the only categories. As Burnyeat notes, Socrates mentions the objects of mathematical enquiry in the Republic but declines to further pursue the topic (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 33). Burnyeat calls these objects “plural, idealized entities” (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 34), meaning that they are not material like sensible things but are also not unique in their genus as forms are (i.e. there is only one form of beauty). Burnyeat also suggested that Plato might think these entities ultimately might merely represent an “indirect” (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 34) method of thinking about forms, but they nonetheless represent an unclear ontological category. For the purposes of this paper, we will consider only forms and particulars as the categories of Platonic metaphysics when considering our view of unity as goodness.

9 Thus, forms represent one quality that can be instantiated in many places and serve to explain why things in the world are the way they are. Forms are succinctly defined as “explanatory universals”, things explaining the same qualities in multiple things while being distinct from any one of those things. As Irwin put it, they are those things “that because of which” (Irwin, 1995, p.155) all things of a certain type are that type. Plato is thus interested in showing that a certain relationship holds between them, namely that the forms are the cause of both the existence of particulars and their intelligibility. This relationship is known as participation, and Plato explores it in the Phaedo. Starting in section 100, Socrates gives an explanation of things “sharing in” (Phaedo, 100d) the forms, and thus having the qualities that they do, as he mentions here that all beautiful things are made beautiful by beauty itself.

Participation is meant to show how the forms cause certain particular objects to have the qualities they do. In the Phaedo, Socrates discusses the heights of his interlocutors and himself to make this point, arguing that a person is tall in virtue of participating in a certain form (Phaedo, 100e-103a) in this case the form of tallness.

Crucially here, different material objects can share in the same form to different degrees and thus display more of that quality. This will likewise apply to the Good and the manner in which both forms and particular things “participate” in it.

Perhaps we ought to give an example of a form in order to show their explanatory nature. For this purpose we can look toward an important Platonic form, indeed one key to the Republic, namely justice. The first thing we will notice about justice is that we see it around us in a variety of examples, whether that be

10 just people, just polities or otherwise. But none of these just things are perfectly just; they are all merely just to some degree or another. Plato claims there is a distinct thing, justice (or the just), which explains what it is for any particular thing to be just. The just is thus of a fundamentally different nature than particular things due to its explanatory nature, as it has no features or qualities outside of this explanatory function.

If this is the case, in what sense are these explanatory forms of a different fundamental nature? There are three metaphysical features of forms that distinguish them from particulars: stability, immateriality, and simplicity. It will serve us well to describe each of these features at least briefly and see how they follow from what we have already established, even if we will come to see that not all are equally important for our own purposes.

Stability arises from the nature of forms given their status as explanatory universals. Forms, since they must explain a feature that is present in all many and highly variegated, need to be reliable as objects of knowledge. Notice that since there is only one universal and thus one object of knowledge for each property, it will exist regardless of whether our definition matches it or not. For Plato if a particular with some property contradicts the definition we have for that idea it is the definition that must be reformulated, and not the idea that has changed. For example, if we wrongly define justice to mean a particular just thing, then just things of other kinds will be excluded and our definition must be reworked. The forms are unchanging in the sense that they explain the host of different changing particulars that are reliant on them without exception.

11 Plato contends that immateriality follows from this, since material things are inherently susceptible to change over time. If material things change in quality and character, they are ruled out from being forms, since as we have discussed the explanatory nature of forms requires true stability. Importantly, Plato thinks that material things change because they are made of parts that can be rearranged, lost, or replaced (Phaedo, 78c). Indeed, forms must only not be material; they must be simple, not having any separable parts (Phaedo, 78d). This simplicity of forms itself reinforces Plato’s claim that forms must be immaterial, since material things are by nature “composite” (Phaedo, 78c).

This last feature of forms is of special importance for our purposes. Notice that simplicity is not necessarily implied by immateriality. After all, we can easily imagine an object that is immaterial but can nonetheless be divided amongst its parts; take the example of a given triangle with certain dimensions as a geometer might study.4 Though the triangle is not instantiated materially anywhere in the world, it nonetheless has three sides that are separable, at least in the mind of the geometer, since he can consider them and their length, say, in isolation from the triangle. The form of the triangle meanwhile, that which causes this given triangle to be the thing it is, cannot be so broken apart. This is because it expresses only one quality perfectly and does not have such aspects as dimensions that would make it separable even in thought.5 We will come to see that this inherent simplicity will

4 See footnote 2. 5 Any given triangle has three sides, but the quality of being triangular does not.

12 form the basis for the forms superior status compared to particular things, both in terms of goodness and reality. 6

With all this we have something of an account of the relationship between particulars and ideas. Particulars depend on forms for their existence and intelligibility through sharing in different forms to different degrees. Despite this though, particulars can never reach the level of reality that forms possess, since they are composite things that admit of change, holding various and even contradictory properties in different times and contexts. Forms, on the other hand, simply are that one quality eternally and without contradiction, being able to explain any instance of that quality in the world.

Santas and the Role of the Good

Now that we have given some background on forms and their basic relationship to particular, material objects, we can again turn to the problem of the

Good and attempt to fit this mysterious concept into this world of forms and particulars. This brings us to Gerasimos Santas’ paper The Form of the Good in

Plato’s Republic (1977). The central claim of Santas’ paper is that the Good is the cause of the “being and essence (reality)” (Santas, 1977, p.5) of the forms. 7 Santas wants us to hear the “cause” here in the same way we do when we think of the relation between forms and sensible things, as the Good explaining the being of the

6 To summarize: For Plato there are two key metaphysical categories: the forms (or ideas) and the particulars (or material things). In broad strokes, a few qualities separate them; the forms are unchanging, simple, and immaterial and admitting of true, impartial knowledge, while the particulars are always changing, made up of parts, sensible, and are shrouded in some measure of obscurity due to their ever-shifting nature. 7 More properly, the main claim of the metaphysical side of the paper. We will focus on this portion, though Santas also discusses ethics and epistemology.

13 forms. The relation is doubly analogous to the form-particular relation in that it is by a form’s participation in the Good that it is a form (in the same way it is by participation in the form of the circle that something is circular).

Santas makes an important move in drawing a distinction between the ideal and proper attributes of forms. Put simply, a form has its ideal attributes by virtue of its being a form, these attributes include the classic characteristics of forms including their eternal, unchanging nature and their immateriality. Proper attributes, on the other hand, are attributes held by forms by virtue of the specific form they are, as the form of the circle is circular. 8 So, for Santas, forms are formlike insofar as they participate in the form of the Good, they owe their status as forms to the Good in the same way a beautiful materiel object owes its beauty to that particular form.

So far, this picture seems rather straightforward even if we are not entirely clear about why the form of the Good bestows on forms their ideal qualities.

However, things quickly become stranger and more confusing once we consider the relationship between the form of the Good and particular things. Though forms obviously participate in the Good in the way outlined by Santas in accordance with

Socrates’ analogy of the sun, it is only natural that particular things participate

8 This assumes what we might call the “exemplar” view of forms, which states that forms are “the best objects of their kind” (Santas, 1977, p. 14) rather than “transcendent properties” (Santas, 1977, p. 11. In our earlier discussion of the forms we largely assume the veracity of this second interpretation). Santas is explicit in his belief that 1) the distinction between ideal and proper attributes assumes the exemplar view, and 2) the exemplar view is “essential” (Santas, 1977, p.13) for Plato’s theory of the Good as elaborated upon by Santas. This exemplar view has, to put it mildly, a few important problems. Most importantly, it often seems to contradict a form’s immaterial nature; Santas gives the example of the form of a shield, which, being the best of its kind would imply that the best shield is an immaterial shield (Santas, 1977, p.16, i.e. with parts to fulfill its particular function). That Plato’s theory of goodness evidently implies such a stance is one reason why we are attempting to explore and not advocate for it.

14 directly in the Good too. After all, we regularly judge sensible things to be good and refer to them as such, and since Plato’s theory of forms is meant to explain this very sort of intelligibility, material things must participate directly in the Good just as forms do.

To this we must add that forms and the particulars that share in them participate in the Good in the very same way. As Santas notes, it is “by virtue of its ideal attributes that each form is the best object of its kind” (Santas, 1977, p. 7).

Santas gives the example of a circle, and makes the observation that the ideal attributes allow the form to be the exemplar of its kind, being circular perfectly and eternally, in a way that sensible circles hopelessly strive to emulate (Santas, 1977, p.

7). All the same, the sensible circle is good in the same way as the form of the circle, the more circular it is, the better it is (having more of a share in the Good) as a circle.

Thus, it seems that this view shrinks the chasm between sensible things and forms, as it seems that forms merely excel more by the same metric rather being a fundamentally different sort of thing.

Santas rightfully claims here that Plato makes a kind of “conflation” (Santas,

1977, p. 9) between reality and goodness. This does not merely amount to a claim that goodness and reality are one and the same though, and certainly not a claim that reality is the basis of goodness. Instead, the claim is that goodness is the basis of reality. This takes us directly back to the puzzling quote at the end of Socrates’ analogy of the sun concerning goodness being “beyond it (being) and superior to it in rank and power” (Republic, 509b8-9). We can now see that what Socrates is claiming here is that, in typical Platonic fashion, goodness precedes reality by virtue

15 of it explaining reality. Thus, the better a thing is, the more it is the kind of thing that it is.

This may all seem quite tidy and our question concerning Plato’s curious claim seems to have been answered. Despite the promising coherence of Santas’ view, though, it still lacks a crucial aspect that would allow us to truly make sense of the form of the Good (as well as some of the more interesting effects goodness has on Plato’s system according to Santas). Namely, we must address the actual content of the Good. After all, as we previously noted, Socrates usually gives definition to ideas that allow us to have knowledge of them and distinguish them from other ideas. Without something comparable for goodness, we are unable to say what exactly makes something good. Thus, despite all the grand claims Santas makes for goodness, his conception of it lacks the sort of explanatory power that Plato affords to any other form. As things stand, we are left with an impressive system with its central tenets missing.

A Word on Platonic Definitions

What would fill this important hole in Santas’ account is a definition, the sort that Socrates searches for throughout the dialogues. Previously we have discussed how Plato searches for “definitions” when discussing objects of knowledge (forms), and that he has actually provided such definitions. Perhaps, then, looking at one such definition offered in the Republic would allow us to see exactly what sort of answer we should seek out when discussing the Good.

16 We can see just that in Book IV of the Republic, in Socrates’ discussion of justice and virtue. Arising from a discussion of what constitutes justice in a city and in a person, Socrates reaches working definitions for both of these ideas. Justice is defined as a state in which each constitute part of a city or individual fulfills its proper role, in the case of a man the parts of the soul, and in the case of the city the different classes or individuals doing that job which most befits them. Justice is then a kind of “harmony” (Republic, 443e6) that accords between parts of a whole. The idea of virtue is seemingly dependent on this idea, as it is defined as a “sort of health” (Republic, 444d12) that arises in a soul (or any analogous thing) in which justice is realized.

There are a few elements of this definition to pay attention to. Firstly, it applies analogously in different situations. We can see marks of justice not only in a political context, but also in a personal and ethical one, since a person’s soul can just as easily be justly organized as a city, and in the very same sense. Goodness can likewise apply analogously to a wide array of things, but interestingly to a far wide set than justice, as justice applies only to human affairs (though both to human individuals and organizations as previously mentioned). Thus, a definition for either of these ideas must be applicable across all contexts in which the quality may be present.

Finally, this sort of definition can be used to judge particular things on the basis of how more or less just they are9, which will also be useful in a prospective definition for the Good, since we will want to know how more or less good certain

9 For example we can judge a man to be just on the same basis as we can call a city unjust, in that the parts that make each one up are more or less harmonized.

17 things are and the criteria by which to make that judgment. As Irwin put it, there must exist a “pattern or standard” (Irwin, 1995, p. 152) in a formal definition that allows us to judge particular things in light of specific ideas. This is an important point, since having a metric by which to judge goodness is crucial if we want to be able to truly understand it and judge the world according to this most crucial of standards.

A Candidate: Unity

Following the disappointment we ultimately found in Santas’ paper, we will turn to the work of Konrad Gaiser and Miles Burnyeat, who boldly offer a real content for the Good, namely unity or oneness. Though they approach the question of the Good from very different starting places, Burnyeat in a discussion of Plato’s view of mathematics and its inherently beneficial character, and Gaiser in a more historical perspective on a lecture Plato gave on the topic, they both end up attributing the same content to goodness, namely that to call something Good is to call it unified or one, and that this concept holds the fundamental place in Plato’s metaphysics. With all this being said, we ought to consider our favored definition of the Good to see if it provides the sort of explanatory power we look for in a formal definition while specifically shining light on the relations between the Good and forms and particulars as elaborated on by Santas.

The first question here is obvious: why believe that the Good is defined as unity? After all, Plato never outright mentions this; so on what grounds can we make such a conclusion? In an attempt to provide such grounds, Konrad Gaiser turns to an

18 account by a contemporary of Plato and a fellow Athenian, Aristonexus. According to Aristonexus, Plato gave a public lecture on the nature of the Good that proved to be controversial, as Plato argued that goodness was not any of the “things which are generally considered good for men”, but rather that the Good is “One” (Gaiser, 1980, p. 5, quoting Aristonexus). Gaiser maintains that Plato was all too aware of the controversial nature of his position, as he was certain that those not trained in philosophy would be “confused and misled” (Gaiser, 1980, p. 14) by such an unconventional view. According to Gaiser, Plato only felt pressured to give a lecture he knew would be highly controversial for two reasons: rumors were already spreading of Plato’s view, and the secrecy of his Academy invited scorn and suspicion from many citizens of democratic Athens (Gaiser, 1980, p. 20).

Though this sort of account may well be persuasive it will be largely bracketed for the purposes of this paper. Gaiser’s account is scholarly in the sense that it examines primary sources close to Plato to seek to establish his actual beliefs and actions. 10 This sort of account, though undeniably valuable, is foreign to our current goal, which is a purely philosophical account of unity as the Good and its place in Plato’s system. Indeed, such a historical view, while establishing the fact’s about Plato and his life, will still not be able to explain to us the consequences and reasoning behind seeing the Good as unity. Instead we are looking for a more extensive and explicitly philosophical account that relies on Plato’s works and the system and logic presented in them, in order to find a specifically philosophical

10 Though Gaiser’s account is largely historical in its aim, it has a philosophical element, as Gaiser briefly seeks to answer the “philosophical question” (Gaiser, p. 6) as to the actual content of Plato’s lecture. Though this view largely aligns with the view upheld here, Gaiser does not seek to justify it and expand on its explanatory power in a way that is ultimately satisfying.

19 reason why Plato felt that the analogy would serve to introduce us to the Good and why he saw fit not to include a dialectic discussion of goodness. Our goal then, is to think through Platonic metaphysics and find a definition befitting goodness in that context.

Miles Burnyeat gives us the explicitly philosophical reasons for believing that unity is goodness that Gaiser did not. Burnyeat goes about this through his reading of Plato’s view of mathematics, a subject that he argues can teach us about the content of the Good itself. Mathematics is key for Plato in that it prepares the future guardians of his ideal city to study their final and most important subject (Republic,

5317). This area of learning, called dialectic by Plato, will give them true knowledge, including of the Good (Republic, 526d8). According to Burnyeat, mathematics prepares students to learn something about the content, more than just the method of dialectic, specifically with regard to its final object, goodness. It does this through imparting to its students an appreciation for and knowledge of “concord, attunement, and proportion” (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 74).

Before pivoting back to unity, it would be worthwhile to examine these values and consider why they are important for Plato. Concord and attunement (and proportion, by which concord is “explained” (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 52), far from being merely mathematical ideas that reflect relations between numbers, also have deep importance in the ethical sphere. The virtue of temperance, for example, reflects a concord between the naturally ruling and ruled elements in human beings or human communities (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 54). Attunement, meanwhile, also finds reflection in the soul, as it is present when the parts of the soul are aligned such that they are

20 like the “highest, lowest, and middle notes of a scale” (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 54, from

Republic 443d-e). It must be remembered that such values would thus be of paramount importance for the potential rulers of a city, since they would need to possess a thorough knowledge of human relations. This knowledge of human relations would be guided by knowledge of what is good in it, and that brings us to unity.

Burnyeat argues that concord, attunement, and proportion are important because they reflect a more fundamental value, namely unity. We can see their basis in unity in how they highlight the good relations between parts in the context of a wider whole; through the presence of concord, attunement, and proportion, there is some measure of unity reflected. As Burnyeat discusses, when parts of a whole, whether in a human soul or in a city, are harmonized in a certain way, the whole which they make up is more unified and is more truly the kind of thing it is

(Burnyeat, 2000, p. 74) Burnyeat quotes the Timaeus, where Plato claims that proportion is “of all bonds the best” in that it creates unity (Burnyeat, 2000, p.74-

75). Here we begin to see the links between reality and unity, as we see that the

Good as unity is “what binds things together” (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 75).

Now that we have introduced unity as the fundamental object of Platonic thought in the form of goodness, we must seek to show how this definition makes sense of the Good and its relations to forms and particulars. By doing so we will not only better understand those relations, but strengthen unity’s candidacy as the content of Platonic goodness. As we already discussed, in being “higher” than being, goodness has to have some sort of explanatory priority over it. This ultimately

21 means that goodness must explain being in some sense. Goodness as unity does just that. To understand this in more concrete terms, we can say that the more unified something is, the more real it is. Phrased differently, the more a thing functions as one thing, the better and more real it is as the sort of thing that it is. This, for Plato, is simply what it means for something to be better; a more fully realized thing of a certain kind is superior to a less realized example.

This is all still very abstract and requires some examples to make sense of.

For a more concrete application of this view, we can look to Burnyeat, when he offers the Platonic example of a city (Burnyeat, 2000, p. 74). A city is a political entity composed of various parts, in this case, classes of people. Each of these classes are distinct for Plato, and fulfill different roles but they nevertheless make up the whole of the city and must cohere to a certain order in order to do so. The more harmoniously these classes work together, the more unified they make the city, and the better the city is. Importantly, though, the city not only becomes better from class unity, but also becomes more of a city.

To see why this is the case, imagine a city that is very chaotic and poorly ordered. Each class acts on the basis of its own agenda and desires, and no order coheres throughout the city. At some point, the classes will cease to be parts of the unified whole of the city, and will break apart and become completely separate political entities. This is because the classes will be more recognizable in themselves as entities, since they will have much more internal order and coherence then the city will, which is no longer fulfilling its function. When we reach this stage, the city is not merely not functioning well, it does not exist at all, it has been dissolved into

22 its parts. It is in this sense that reality depends upon goodness or unity, since only by functioning as one (with its parts unified) can a thing be said to exist as the sort of thing that it is.

We can expand this lesson more widely to all sensible, particular things.

Sensible particulars, due to their material nature, are made up of parts that must be ordered and brought together in a certain way for the particular to be the sort of thing that it is. Plato expounds on this important feature of particulars in the

Gorgias. As Socrates states in that dialogue, it is by “each thing’s own order”

(Gorgias, 506e) that a thing is good. This tells us a couple things about goodness in the context of material things. The important claim here is each particular thing is good by the same criteria, namely order.

This may give us pause, since we stipulated that unity is goodness. However, this notion of order should be thought of as a measure of unity applied to composite, material things. This is because a thing’s goodness is determined by “permanence, beauty and form” (Gaiser, 1980, p. 12), which are expressions of order. In this context, order is not merely each part working together with the others, but each part functioning as “parts within a whole” (Gaiser, 1980, p. 12), that is in as much as they can act as one thing. This order is expressed in different ways with reference to the sort of parts each particular thing has (a city and a spoon both flourish by the order of their parts in a greater whole but the form this takes is clearly different).

This tells us that particular things express whatever unity or goodness they have in their own unique way.

23 This second point is especially important in revealing why Plato held the forms to be both superior and more real than particulars. Forms, unlike particulars, do not depend on an internal order for their goodness. Their goodness is more perfect, since they participate directly in the form of the Good (or unity). Not only are forms immaterial, intellectual objects and thus do not change, but forms are inherently simple; they are not made up of parts like particular things. Thus, they are fundamentally unified, being one thing simply and without any qualification.

Thinking back to Santas, forms are more real than particulars because they are better, not better because they are more real.

With this we have an answer to the problem we found latent in Santas’ view.

There it seemed that little separated forms and particulars once reality and goodness began to blend together, and that it was merely a matter of degree that distinguished the goodness and reality of forms from that of material things. Now we can see that there is an important qualitative distinction baked into the very nature of forms and particulars and how their goodness is thus expressed. Here, particular things are more or less ordered (and more or less unified) depending on the relationship between their parts, but they will never reach the simplicity of forms due to their material and composite nature. This also explains how forms can get their unique ideal attributes from participation in the Good whereas particulars can participate in the Good but do not have ideal attributes, since their participation in the Good is of a fundamentally different and more removed character (they must be unified by being ordered, they cannot simply be unified). We still have at base one metric that determines something’s reality (goodness/unity) but this idea’s

24 presence is exhibited in qualitatively different ways due to the fundamental difference in nature between particulars and forms.

Perhaps it may be useful to take a step back here and reflect on Plato’s entire worldview and the effects that holding goodness to be unity has on it. There are, as we have mentioned, effectively two spheres in the Platonic universe: that of being

(the forms) and that of becoming (the particulars), with the world of being having ontological and explanatory priority. Meanwhile the Good, as beyond being, determines the character of the world of forms, meaning that its occupants will be ideal and thus inherently unified. The world of being, meanwhile, determines that of becoming, making particulars the sorts of things they are, and imparts an order to them that allows them to mimic the unity of the forms they depend on.

Against the Unity View

Now that we have sketched out a general, though by no means complete, picture of the view that the Good is unity, we must address one fact in particular that the unity view seemingly has no very appealing answer to. Namely, we must ask why Plato did not simply lay out this view in the Republic to begin with. Even one who upholds that unity is the Good must be puzzled by this aspect of the work, since even though we can convincingly present unity as the Good’s definition and have reason to believe Plato himself thought so, it is difficult to address the very unusual way in which Plato lays out the discussion of the Good in the Republic.

After all, Plato could have easily proceeded with the discussion of goodness along the usual Socratic lines, and reached a provisional definition of goodness as

25 unity. Especially interesting is the fact that the Good is introduced in the course of discussion and is initially discussed in the usual manner befitting a Platonic idea, but at the point that any positive project of uncovering the nature of the Good might begin, Plato halts the conversation and instead transitions into the analogy of the sun.

This moment in particular deserves special attention. After Socrates dismisses knowledge and pleasure as definitions for goodness, Adeimantus asks

Socrates for his view of the Good. Socrates is quick to point out that he does not have knowledge of the Good, and that any belief he might have about it would be

“shameful and ugly” (Republic, 506c7) to share, as are all “beliefs without knowledge” (Republic, 506c6). After this, Adeimantus appears to give up on any definition from Socrates, but the more philosophically curious Glaucon is not so easily satisfied. He presses Socrates, demanding that he “discuss the good the way you discussed justice, temperance, and the rest” (Republic, 506d4-5). Socrates claims he would like to pursue such a conversation, but fears that he will

“disgrace”(Republic, 506d7) himself in doing so, and thus offers instead to provide an analogy.

Here, Socrates is steadfast in maintaining that it is merely his ignorance that prevents him from answering the question of the Good. Yet we must question this rationale, since Socrates does not claim to have true knowledge of other ideas either and he was open to discussing them (Republic, 336e9). Interestingly, Glaucon’s interruption mirrors another scene in the Republic preceding the discussion of the virtues in Book IV, where Glaucon urges Socrates to get back on course and examine

26 the idea of justice (427d7-9). In that case though, Socrates is so not resistant, merely urging his interlocutors to participate in a discussion if he is to have one. This suggests that Plato wants us to notice the differences and similarities between these instances, and thus for us to realize the strange and special status of the Good.

There are a few responses to this problem a proponent of the unity view may seek to give. To harken back to a distinction we made earlier in this paper, one might give either a historical or a philosophical response. A historical answer to the question would examine primary sources and seek to establish through an understanding and gathering of such evidence the reasons why Plato himself actually held the view he did. Though we will not end up fully pursuing such an account, a brief turn back to Gaiser may be worthwhile in order to glimpse what sort of form it might take.

As we have discussed, Gaiser uses primary sources like the writing of

Aristonexus in order to support the fact that Plato believed goodness to be unity.

But the question remains: for what reason did Plato not directly discuss this key doctrine? For Gaiser, Plato’s doctrine of the Good as unity is simply not meant to be proselytized to the common people. Instead, discussion and eventual knowledge of it is supposed to arise only in certain academically intensive contexts, namely among philosophers like Plato and his students. As evidence Gaiser points to Plato’s

Seventh Letter11 where Plato upholds that it would be a fool’s errand to write a book on “first principles” and that knowledge of such things could only be cultivated after an “extended period of guided training” (Gaiser, 1980, p. 14). Thus, for Gaiser, Plato

11 The authenticity of which has been questioned.

27 does not give a real account of the Good not because it is not possible or not important to do so, but because his doctrine would be quickly misunderstood by common people, especially if presented in such a quick and relatively shallow way.12

This explains why we would be justified in believing that Plato did in fact hold unity to be goodness, but that he had good reason to not include this crucial fact in his written works.

On its face, Gaiser’s argument is quite plausible. Assuming we accept that his reading of primary sources can be relied upon13, Gaiser provides reasons that seem they could in fact motivate Plato to hide the true character of the Good, especially in that the Good as unity would be very difficult to understand for the general populace. Yet Gaiser’s claims seem to clash with many elements of Plato’s philosophy and writings. Though unity as goodness would no doubt be a difficult and strange concept for most who encountered it, one would not naturally assume that Plato would be so eager to cater to the sensibilities of the average Athenian.

One need only think of Plato’s entire theory of forms and the many discussions based on it; these are surely quite obscure to the untrained14. Additionally, Plato was by no means averse to subverting traditional notions, even of cherished ideals; in the Republic itself he endorses a relative equality of sexes (Republic, 451c- 457c) to an audience of patriarchal Athenians.

12 Such individuals might assume that Plato is referring to the human good, and thus assume that his contention that unity is goodness is incoherent. Arisotnexus notes that people expected Plato to discuss “the things which are generally considered good for men” (Gaiser, 1980, p. 5, quoting Aristonexus). 13 A question that we are in no position to pass judgment on 14 One need only consult the Parmenides for evidence of this.

28 All this should push us toward an account that draws on Plato’s committed ideas, rather than trying to uncover his motivations in making a particular choice. As a start we ought to focus on the method that Plato actually does utilize in order to impart to us some understanding of the Good. Thus, a philosophical discussion of

Platonic analogy would be a helpful course to take. In doing so, we will seek to show how providing an analogy might bring light to the subject of the Good in a way that might bring to light more than what a standard Platonic discussion (including those concerning the virtue) could. 15

So what is so distinctive about the form of analogy, and how can it communicate to us philosophical ideas that could not easily be more straightforwardly described by Plato? One could straightforwardly claim that analogy is valuable because it can shine light on something totally different by appealing to our understanding of what we already know. French philosopher Paul

Grenet makes an interesting point here, claiming, “Plato recognized in the first place that… analogy is an admirable instrument in the identification of the diverse”

(Anderson, 1950, quoting Grenet, p. 120). What Grenet is basically getting at here is that, through analogy, Plato is able to show the contrast between different orders of reality, in our case between the visible and the intelligible order. This is especially

15 For resources to help explain this, one can turn to James F. Anderson’s Analogy in Plato (1950). In this paper, Anderson reviews a book by the Catholic French philosopher Paul Grenet concerning the use of analogy in Plato. Analogy for Grenet has two components: “resemblance mingled with difference” and “a proportional structure, namely likeness of relations and not mere relation of likeness” (Anderson, 1950, p. 112). We can see that the analogy of the sun matches with both of these criteria. The visible world and the intelligible world are alike in many ways (especially in how we interact with them), but are fundamentally different given that the visible world is one of becoming and the intelligible world is one of being. The second criterion is also satisfied in that this likeness arises from the structural similarities between the two world, it is in the relations of dependence that the visible and intelligible worlds are the same, rather than in the content of their occupants (sensible things are vastly different to forms but both depend upon the sun or the Good respectively in the same manner).

29 important when we consider exactly what is going on in the case of the Good. Here,

Plato wants to show, above all else, that the place of the Good is fundamentally different in his worldview than that of any object of knowledge heretofore discussed. It is this difference between the Good and every other object of knowledge that Socrates wants to highlight for his interlocutors, 16 rather than commence with a less fruitful discussion that would not reveal what the analogy of the sun could and would likely confuse his interlocutors on top of it.

What is revealed by analogy is the way in which goodness can be understood as the cause of the world of ideas. Socrates appeals to his interlocutors’ knowledge that the sun causes the existence of the visible things around them, and substitutes the related objects while keeping the relation. Through specifically analogical demonstration, Socrates makes use of two things we already know of (ideas and the relation between the sun and visible things) to reveal to us something about an object that was completely mysterious to us, the Good. In this way, Socrates shows that goodness is in an explanatory position with regard to being.

One might reply that, while this is all well and good, why does Plato rely on analogy specifically in order to convey these points? One point in favor of analogy might lie in the strong probability that a straightforward discussion of goodness would contain too many junctures in which the highly unintuitive and foreign nature of goodness would cause confusion, given that Plato’s conception of the Good is not rooted in human affairs, as are more conventional views of the topic. By way

16 It is nonetheless important to point out though, as Anderson does, that this “diversity” in Plato is not absolute and should rather be seen as a more relative “difference” (Anderson, 1950, p. 120). This is important to note since for Plato all things still fit within a philosophical system and exist in the same sense (through the Good).

30 of exploring the Good through a full scale, internally coherent analogy, Plato is able to move our frame of reference away from this point of confusion. Additionally, the power of an analogy as an image serves to drive home a rather complex point in a simple way, while allowing one to consider the image and thus the philosophical point in different ways. True, these points do not mean that Plato was forced to use analogy in order to explore this topic, only that he was very well served by doing so.

Even if one accepts the importance of analogy though, they can still rightfully point out that Plato could have well supplemented the analogy of the sun with a philosophical discussion of the Good’s content. Though we can now understand why

Plato would be so eager to employ an analogy here, it seems natural that, given the express importance he places on knowledge of the Good, he would be interested in at least supplementing the analogy of the sun with a discussion of the nature of the

Good itself. Thus Plato could clear up both the place of the Good and its meaning in his system.

Ultimately, one arguing against the unity view as we have presented it can choose to move forward in two directions. The first would seek to emphasize Plato’s decision in forgoing such a discussion as the fact remains that Plato saw fit to include an analogy where he had otherwise included discussion; emphasizing the role of the Good in a system over its content. Though this view would not outright deny that the Good is unity, it would claim that exploring such a claim is missing

Plato’s real point, and that Plato’s decision to explore the role of the Good through an analogy shows this. Perhaps, such a critic may say, the difference between the

Good and the ideas whose existence depends on it is what Plato really wants us to

31 see, and any exploration of goodness as unity is of secondary importance. We will grapple with this sort of critic later in this paper.

Another sort of critic may choose to go farther than even this. They too would point to Plato’s use of analogy in emphasizing the role of the Good, but they would outright deny that unity is the content of the Good. To such a critic Plato’s unorthodox exploration of the Good shows that, unlike any other form, we ought not to search for some coherent definition in order to make sense of it. Knowledge of the

Good, then, would lie not in a definition, but in some other form of understanding.

An Alternative to Unity

This is something like the position taken by one of the major philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger. In his book, The Essence of Truth, Heidegger seeks to give a reading of Plato’s Republic that will make sense of the place of the

Good in this text.17 The central claim that we want to zero in on regarding

Heidegger’s conception of the Good is the following: “the good… is therefore the enablement of being as such” (Heidegger, 2013, p. 79). In order to understand such a claim, we ought to first back up and understand the place from which Heidegger is starting in his analysis of the Good. Heidegger is not, as we have mentioned, searching for a propositional account of the Good. For our purposes, this means he is

17 In addition to exploring the Platonic notion of goodness, Heidegger also seeks (more importantly for his purposes, less so for ours) to give credence to a more primordial doctrine of truth (which he calls by the Greek word aletheia) over the more modern propositional account of truth. Given that Heidegger’s account of the Good is already rather complex we will bracket this project. Nonetheless, it is important to note that it is very much operative in the background of this entire account. As such we will not fully explore his analysis of the analogy of the cave or of his concept of “unhiddenness” in connection to it.

32 not searching for a definition, like the one we gave the Good as unity, or like the one

Plato gives justice. Instead, Heidegger wants to show the Good as the ground of the possibility of being itself, and of course as the cause of the being of the objects of knowledge. To do so he examines the Good as it appears in the text of the Republic, particularly through the analogy of the sun.

Heidegger begins his analysis by turning to the analogy of sight specifically.

As we know, Plato analogizes our mind’s knowledge of the forms to our eyes’ seeing of sensible things, and in both cases the relationship between the two objects is not complete without reference to a third. This third thing is light in the case of the visible world and truth with respect to the intelligible world, which both allow for us to “see” the object and for the object to be “unhidden” for us, to use the

Heideggerian terminology. Thus Heidegger likens the light of the sun to a “yoke”

(Heidegger, 2013, p. 73), which links together the act of seeing and the object seen.

This “yoke” that connects the knower to the object of knowledge is the direct product of the sun and the Good in the visible and intelligible worlds respectively.

Though this is an epistemological point that is of interest to Heidegger in elaborating upon his account of truth, it also has a clear metaphysical parallel, as was explicitly stated by Socrates in the analogy of the sun itself. In addition to being the ground of truth and Heideggerian “unhiddenness”, the Good is also the ground of being, and opens up the space for both minds and objects of knowledge to exist. The

Good is thus an “empowerment” (Heidegger, 2013, p.75) of beings to be. We can hear echoes of Santas when Heidegger says that “it is thus clearly stated that the ideas are what they are, namely the most beingful beings…only by virtue of an

33 empowerment which exceeds them” (Heidegger, 2013, p.75). Like Santas, Heidegger here upholds that it is by the form of the Good that the forms have their “ideal” (to use Santas’ language) qualities by way of the form of the Good. It also shows a parallel between forms and the form of the Good, as forms make particulars the sort of things that they are, and the form of the Good make the forms formlike.

The striking aspect of this account, like the Santas account, lies in the absence of any account of the content of the Good. Unlike Santas though, Heidegger does not do so because he does not believe that such an account can be given at all. Heidegger freely admits that in investigating the Good we find nothing of “substantive content” and only find that it is the “enablement of being and truth” (Heidegger, 2013, p. 76).

Heidegger wants to set up the Good as simply and truly distinct from the other forms and the sensible world while showing the intelligibility and reality of that world to be based on the “empowerment” or “enablement” that constitutes the

Good.

Importantly, even with all the grand pronouncements Heidegger makes about the Good, his account is very much grounded in the Republic, specifically in the analogy of the sun. Even something as grand as the Good being the origin of being and truth follows from the relations explored in the analogy, specifically from claim that the Good causes knower and known in the same sense as it causes seer and sighted. This sort of thought is uniquely and succinctly expressed by analogy.

For Heidegger, Plato chose to give an analogy to explore the Good in place of a discussion because outside thinking about the relations explored in the analogy of the sun, there is no way to investigate the Good.

34 There is one immediate problem we might have with this view. Plato assumes that the Good, as a form, is something we must be able to have knowledge of. After all, the Good was called “the greatest thing to learn about” (Republic,

505a2), and knowledge of it is necessary to the rulers of Plato’s ideal city. We might worry that Heidegger conceives of the Good as some transcendent, mystical category that is not accessible to the human intellect and thus made it into something fundamentally anti-Platonic.

Heidegger himself is very aware of this element of Platonic thought and is adamant that his account is not in any way mystical. Though Heidegger upholds there is no simple answer to the question “what is the Good?” as there is to the question “what is the shortest route to the marketplace” (Heidegger, 2013, p. 70), he maintains that we can have knowledge of the Good and that it is not by some

“enigmatic faculty of intuition” (Heidegger, 2013, p. 70) that we can understand it, but by the same rational, dialectical methods Plato defends. Heidegger maintains that it is through dialectic that we reach an understanding of the Good, even if there is no definition of the Good out there as some sort of final goal for dialectic.

Dialectic and Defending the Definitional Good

What is most at stake here in understanding and countering Heidegger’s account is the notion of dialectic, as both Heidegger and Plato uphold it to be necessary for knowledge of the Good. Plato discusses the subject in the latter part of

Book VII, following Socrates’ presentation of the allegory of the cave. This section concerns the education of the guardian class (philosophers) of Socrates’ ideal city,

35 and lays out the topics that Socrates believes the prospective guardians must learn in order to rule well, culminating in dialectic.

Socrates explicitly claims that the Good is the final aim of all education early in this section, describing the process of educating as turning the soul from changing things (particulars), to things that are (forms), and finally to the Good itself

(Republic, 519c). Dialectic is by no means coterminous with education; it is the end goal of a process of educating. The subject of dialectic is that which physical education and study in mathematics are meant to prepare one for; a student must be familiarized with the various mathematical sciences before they can dive into dialectic (the process described by Burnyeat). 18

Socrates tells us that dialectic “does away with” (533c7) hypotheses and instead “journeys to the first principle itself” (533d) in order to surpass mere thought and achieve knowledge. Socrates’ notion of first principles is even less clear than the talk about hypotheses, but the language concerning the “first principle itself” (emphasis mine) should make us think make to the Good and its explanatory and epistemic primacy. After all, through knowledge of the Good we can better understand the ideal quality of the forms, which are after all the objects of knowledge dialectic, investigates. Thus, we come to see that knowledge of the Good

18 These sciences are distinguished from dialectic by Socrates’ noting that they follow from hypotheses, while dialectic works forward from first principles (Republic, 533d). This distinction between dialectic and mathematics might seem somewhat vague, as Plato does not provide us with any in depth account of the nature of either hypotheses or first principles. We do get some description of the practice of mathematicians concerning hypothesis though, as Socrates claims that practitioners of mathematics merely “treat as hypotheses” their objects of study (whether numbers or geometrical figures) and do not seek to give an “account” (Republic, 510c) of them. Mathematics seems to assume the objects it studies and then seeks to learn various facts about it; their goal is to understand the properties of a geometric figure, not ask what makes something that particular figure.

36 is the ultimate and constitutive aim of dialectic (dialectic exists to understand the

Good).

Dialectic aims at knowledge (which must be of ideas) and so to be a dialectician one must be able to “grasp the being of each thing” (Republic, 534b2).

This is seemingly a straightforward reference to forms and the knowledge of them that dialectic provides, since forms are the truly existent beings that explain the phenomena of the sensible world. Most importantly though, Socrates claims that should one not be able to grasp an account in such a way, one would not

“understand” that specific object of knowledge (534b5).

Socrates immediately turns to the how dialectic applies to the form of the

Good. For him, the Good is no exception to the general scheme he has laid out for dialectic and how it acquires knowledge. Socrates’ claims that in order for one to truly possess an “account” of the Good, one must be able to “distinguish it from everything else” (Republic, 534b8) and be able to “survive all examination as if in a battle” (Republic, 534c) in defending one’s notion of goodness. If these conditions are not met, one has mere belief concerning the nature of the Good, not true knowledge (Republic, 534c6). The truly telling line comes when Socrates directly states that “the same applies to the Good” (Republic, 534b8) as applies to knowledge of any other form, meaning that the same method that applies to attaining the knowledge of any given form will obtain in attaining knowledge of Good as well.

Does this contradict the Heideggerian account? Heidegger does not believe that one can have a propositional answer to the question of the Good’s content, though he still maintains that we can develop an understanding of the Good through

37 the practice of dialectic. Even if Heidegger can envision a nonpropositional account of the Good here his view still seems weak, as Socrates claims that knowledge of the

Good is acquired in the same manner as that of other forms. Heidegger surely cannot claim that a general understanding of dialectic constitutes knowledge of any given form, as we have already seen attempts by Plato to develop accounts of other objects of knowledge.

Finally it is worthwhile to point out that, in an important sense, Heidegger’s account is fundamentally anti-Platonic in spirit. Though Heidegger maintains

(rightfully) that his account is not mystical and emphasizes the role of the rational, dialectical method Plato advocates, it nonetheless ignores a key aspect of Platonic thought: its explanatory goal. As we discussed when introducing forms, Plato invoked forms in the first place to explain the sort of qualities and types of things we see in the material world around us; anchoring these qualities in an unchanging world that could explain them and give us true, stable knowledge of them. But for

Heidegger in the case of the Good, there is nothing inherent to the Good conceptually that explains the beings “under” it; the farthest we can understand of this relation is that it does happen to allow for the existence of these beings. What we are after in the unity view is explaining why it is that this relation holds, and it is in this way that the unity keeps the very same explanatory spirit Plato exhibits when considering the relation between forms and sensible things to the realm of the Good and the forms it allows to exist.

Assessing and Contextualizing the Good

38 So far in discussing the Good we have encountered generally two strands of thought: one that, with Burnyeat and Gaiser, upholds unity as the content of the

Good, and one that, with Santas and Heidegger, views the place of the Good in Plato’s system as being of the utmost importance. Seemingly, we have sided more with the former; we have upheld that unity is the content of the Good and that this is the key to understanding Plato’s system. However, we have undoubtedly relied on the other strand of thought as well. Indeed, in order to explain the extremely important relation between goodness and the forms on one hand and goodness and the particulars on the other we have drawn quite significantly from Santas’ construction of Plato’s metaphysical system with the Good at the center giving forms their ideal attributes.

This leaves us in an interesting place as to where to conclude. We seem to have established that the Good is unity and that, crucially, understanding this fact is tantamount to having knowledge of the Good. We have established that knowledge of the Good is the final end of dialectic for Plato, so surely knowing that the Good is unity is the ultimate goal of dialectic and the truly important fact about the Good.

But there is still a nagging problem with this stance, namely that Plato chose not to discuss unity at all in the Republic, but instead provides an analogy that shows the place of the Good in his system, while not revealing its content. This should give us serious pause about siding with the strong unity view in this scenario.

Perhaps there then exists a very much softened unity view in this case. We may be able to concede that, yes, unity does define the Good, but that Plato ultimately is not so much interested in that fact as he is in what the Good does in

39 explaining the ideal nature of the forms. This would certainly explain why Plato chose to give us an analogy that explains the role of the Good, but shied away from formulating any sort of real definition. In this view, Plato is just much more interested in showing us the Good as an essential principle of his thought than he is in thoroughly exploring its contents. After all, the form of the Good as presented in the analogy of the sun already does much work for Plato. It can explain not only the metaphysical story of giving rise to the forms and their ideality, but also explains how knowledge is possible, a key point for any thinker which Heidegger among others found very useful for their own philosophical projects. A proponent of this view might contend that Plato already has what he needs from the Good, its explanatory power, and does not need to bother hashing out its precise definition to get what he wants from it. The Good is a bit like a deistic God; it gets everything moving, but we need not inquire to deeply into its nature for its explanatory purpose to be filled. We can call this view the “emphasis” view since it claims Plato emphasizes the role of the Good over its content.

Thus, Plato offers an analogy doing just this, while notably not touching upon the good’s content or making much out of what it might mean that goodness specifically is the ground of being. From the perspective of the emphasis view, Plato is here making a comment more on the nature of reality, that it is fundamentally ideal and requires a notion of idealness (what it is to be ideal) for individual ideas to exist, than he is discussing the meaning of goodness. In other words, Plato is not so interested in exploring goodness itself, as he is in showing that there is a ground for the forms upon which his metaphysics hinge.

40 The emphasis view, though appealing in that it leaves unity while answering the question as to Plato’s preference for analogy, also has real problems. Though upholding the strict unity stance seems to be at odds in important ways with the text, we cannot simply go along with the emphasis view and denigrate the important of unity as the content of the Good for three main reasons. One, Plato upholds the importance of knowledge of the Good and explicitly states that one must strive to gain knowledge of the Good as one would with any other form (Republic, 534b8), thus ruling out knowledge of the Good lying in its allowing other forms to be.

Indeed, knowledge of the Good in precisely this sense is the most important form of knowledge for Plato (Republic, 504d2).

Additionally, we have seen that unity has real explanatory power when applied to the relationship between it and the forms and particulars, showing clearly why the forms are both more real and better than particular things. Surely, if

Plato wants to show us the role the Good plays, he is missing something very important if he does not introduce unity to show us why that role works the way it does. Thirdly, it is important that goodness is the underlying principle of Plato’s system, as he is at great pains to show that this particular idea is of great practical and metaphysical significance (without the Good we do not know what is “fine and good”, Republic, 505b2-3), and thus there is real import in the good fulfilling both roles.

Perhaps the problem, then, lies not in Plato’s thought, but in the opposition we have set up between the Good’s role in Plato’s system and the content of the

Good, between what the Good does and what the Good is. It seems quite certain from

41 our previous considerations both that Plato gave serious weight and importance to the place of the Good in his system, and that there is a genuine content to the Good in the form of unity. Ultimately what is at stake here is what is necessary to have knowledge of the Good, which is of course held by Socrates to be the “greatest and most appropriate subject” (Republic, 504d2).

Though we hold that having knowledge of the Good consists of knowing that goodness is unity, it will be important to step back and contextualize what we really mean by knowledge of unity. In understanding that unity is goodness, one cannot merely know this as some sort of isolated fact or truism. Instead, one must understand, at least on some level, what the form of the Good does and how these facts make sense of the goodness being equated to unity. Perhaps an analogous example is in order. In order to understand the idea of justice, one must know that justice is the state in which a part of a (human) whole fulfills its appropriate role.

But one must understand more than just this. One must, of course, understand that justice is an idea, that it does not change, that it has no parts, that it is never directly instantiated in the world, that certain particular things participate in it to greater or lesser degrees, and that it applies to all particulars of a certain kind. In other words, one must know what an idea is in order to understand and have knowledge of the idea of justice.

The same of course goes for the Good; no one who understands the good thinks it is a material thing of course. But this alone is not enough to understand the

Good, since the Good is not just a form. The Good is “beyond being”, (Republic,

509b9) it allows for the ideality of the forms themselves. Thus, in order to truly

42 understand the Good, one must understand exactly this about it and its relation to the forms. More specifically, one must understand the whole of what Plato imparts to us in his analogy and what follows from it19, such is the highly specific and exalted nature of the Good. Otherwise, one with a less developed understanding might think that goodness is just another form, even if they “knew” that unity was goodness. It appears, then, that Plato’s analogy is not hinting that the form of the Good is the sort of thing that cannot be known in the same sense as every other form, but rather that a certain step is necessary before we can understand the Good’s content, namely understanding its explanatory role in relation to other forms. We might call this stance the holistic unity view since it claims we must understand the whole of the

Good, its role and content, in order to truly know it.

This dissolves the strict distinction between the Good’s role (allowing for the existence and ideal nature of the forms and the Good’s content (unity). Knowledge of one is intimately tied to knowledge of the other. We can see this going in both

“directions” as it were. On one hand, we cannot know the Good by only knowing its role, since the reason behind the Good being the ground of ideality remains obscure and the Good itself seems opaque. On the other hand, we cannot simply know the

Good is unity, since to explicate what this means, we must refer to what goodness being unity amounts to, in other words being the ground of the ideas and thus of being and intelligibility in general. The Good’s role without its content is baseless; the Good’s content without its role is trivial. The view considered this way

19 Such as the Good allowing for the ideality and reality of the form, opening up the space for knowledge, the way in which forms directly participate in the Good while particulars must be ordered to do so, etc.

43 undermines the significance of the emphasis view, since it shows that disentangling what its proponents want to emphasize from what they want to diminish is highly problematic.

This brings us back to the Republic itself, and should remind us of the uniquely philosophical way in which Plato utilizes analogy. Plato’s analogy is philosophically rich; it shows us what the Good does in his system in a clear yet expansive way. The analogy of the sun does not merely serve to give context to the

Good; it is the first step in developing a true understanding of it. We must understand what the Good does in order to understand what it is. Thus, in providing this analogy in place of discussion, Plato gives us the first step to developing our own knowledge of goodness.

A Coda: Unity and Epistemic Humility

Though we have now seemingly reached a final, considered view of the Good and reconciled its role and nature into one holistic package, one question still remains before us. Namely, why does Plato not fill out the rest of the picture? After all, in the holistic unity view we need both elements to understand the Good, yet

Plato only reveals one side to us explicitly.

To be quite candid, there is perhaps no knockout answer to this objection. It may in fact be the case that, though the holistic unity view we have come to favor has the least problems among the selection of responses we have considered, it nonetheless has this one serious flaw. It seems fair to say that there is no one element of Plato’s thought as presented in the Republic or in general that can quickly

44 and easily answer the question of why Plato did not fill out the picture of the Good should one accept that goodness is unity.

That is not to say there is nothing in Plato’s thought, or more specifically in

Plato’s writings that can soften this blow. This promise lies in what we might call the

“epistemic humility” that is inherent to Plato’s thought, especially as embodied in the figure of Socrates. Socrates’ humility lies in possessing an account of a topic, but nonetheless being radically open to the possible falsity of the account. As we saw both when Socrates discussed the Good (Republic, 506c-d) and when he discussed justice (427d7-9), Socrates is always wary about jumping into philosophical discussion; he is not entirely sure of his positions and is quite clear that he cannot uncover the truth on his own (as when in requests the help of his interlocutors when discussing justice, 427e4). Interestingly, though Socrates agrees to a discussion in one instance and not in the other, his apprehension is present in both.

Given that Socrates is so ambivalent about his own ability to secure the truth

(Republic, 336e9) and the premier importance Plato places on knowledge of any idea (as with justice, 354b-c), this sort of epistemic humility makes sense from a

Platonic perspective. Applied to the Good, then we can see that this tendency would be even more amplified than usual. The Good, after all, is of a fundamentally different sort than any one other idea, as it explains not only what holds together a certain kind of particular, but explains ideality itself. Thus, it makes sense that the humility inherent to Plato’s thought would encourage him to mark this fact by leaving the ultimate meaning of goodness open for his reader. As we have seen

45 though, Plato did give us some initiation into understanding the Good20; he simply saw fit not to give a complete account. 21

This fact reflects not merely some personal preference of Plato, but rather a considered attitude towards thinking itself. We can read Plato here as commenting on the intrinsically vulnerable nature of thought, in that though we can have fully worked out accounts, we must be always open to the possibility that these accounts ultimately fail to reflect the ideas. This vulnerability itself opens up the possibility of a more rigorous philosophy, as it encourages us to seek out challenges to our own accounts in order to strengthen them, just as Socrates does across Plato’s dialogues.

This attitude makes possible Plato’s non-answer to the question of the Good’s content, and equips us with the mindset necessary for us to pursue this subject ourselves. Thus, we can both say that Plato did have a real, developed and coherent view of goodness, and that his view towards philosophizing itself meant that he chose to never fully spelt it out for us.

20 Since according to the holistic unity view understanding that the Good allows for the existence of the ideas amounts to partial knowledge of the Good. 21 Plato’s apprehension about giving full accounts can be seen not only in the Republic, but also in other dialogues like the Euthyphro. In this dialogue, Socrates does a great deal of work discussing piety and arguing for its independent existence, yet in the end no answer is provided. Indeed, despite Socrates claiming that he “shall never be weary” (Five Dialogues, 15d-16) of discussing piety, Plato abruptly ends the dialogue by having Socrates interlocutor leave. Obviously, Plato holds piety to be a rather important topic, and yet the meaning of piety itself is never reached in the dialogue. The Euthyphro is not alone in this regard, as the Meno similarly never resolves its central question as to the meaning of virtue (Five Dialogues, 100b). However, we should be wary about drawing too many comparisons to the Republic and the question of the Good, since the fact remains that in this dialogue Plato is more willing to discuss the definitions of ideas.

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