PRESOCRATICS AND PLATO:
Festschrift at Delphi
in Honor of Charles Kahn
Papers presented at the
Festschrift Symposium in Honor of Charles Kahn
Organized by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies
European Cultural Center of Delphi
June 3rd–7th, 2009
Delphi, Greece
Edited by
RICHARD PATTERSON, VASSILIS KARASMANIS,
and ARNOLD HERMANN
Las Vegas | Zurich | Athens
Christopher J. Rowe
evoking and alluding to things that this Socrates has said in other
Platonic dialogues. This is a thesis that many modern readers of
the Laws are likely to find thoroughly congenial—but chiefly for a
reason diametrically opposed (as will become clear) to that behind
my own sponsorship of it: they think that, on some important
subjects, Plato actually used the Laws to announce his abandonment
of ideas he had proposed in earlier works, especially the Republic.
The Laws, according to a story widely promulgated and accepted in
the last century, marks the moment when the idealist of the Republic
became a realist, settled for the second-best, and stopped trying
to put philosophy at the center of the affairs of the polis. On this
account, then, Plato looks over his shoulder, in the Laws, in order
to repudiate his (“middle”) Socrates’ dreams.
Now, however, in large part thanks to the work of André Laks,
and of Trevor Saunders before him,4 this story tends to be received
more sceptically: either the supposedly greater realism of the Laws is
already present in the Republic itself (in which the Utopia represented
by Callipolis, the Beautiful City, is more projection or model than
blueprint), so allowing the later dialogue to be understood as a
kind of working-out of the real political program of the earlier
one; or else the Laws is to be read, perhaps more subtly, as a kind
of commentary on the Republic, adding detail but also qualifying,
modifying, clarifying.5 Either of these two perspectives will lead us
actually to expect references popping up everywhere and anywhere
to the kinds of things Socrates is to be found saying in earlier
dialogues. So, looked at in this way, the idea that Socrates is to be
discovered in the Laws will not actually be controversial at all, let
4
See, e.g., André Laks, “Legislation and Demiurgy. On the relationship
between Plato’s Republic and Laws,” Classical Antiquity 9 (1990), 209–229,
and “L’utopie législative de Platon,” Revue philosophique 181 (1991), 417–428;
Trevor Saunders, Plato: the Laws (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), and
Plato’s Penal Code: Tradition, Controversy, and Reform in Greek Penology (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1991).
5
For a subtle example of the latter kind of approach (Laws as commentary),
see Malcolm Schofield, “Religion and Philosophy in the Laws,” in Plato’s Laws:
from Theory to Practice, Proceedings of the VI Symposium Platonicum, eds. Samuel
Scolnicov and Luc Brisson (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2003), 1–13, and
especially the notion Schofield introduces there of Plato as writing, in the Laws,
for the “practised Platonic reader” (first at p. 3).
— 330 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws*
Christopher J. Rowe
The title of my paper is not intended to be (merely) provocative.
Socrates—notwithstanding a momentary lapse on Aristotle’s part1—
is not a speaker in the Laws, and is not mentioned by name anywhere
in the work. He is of course ruled out as a speaker, among other
things by Plato’s decision to locate the dialogue dramatically in Crete:
Socrates, notoriously, does not stray far outside the walls of Athens,
unless he is on military service; and both of the interlocutors chosen
to partner the anonymous Athenian main speaker are portrayed as
distinctly unphilosophical—not at all the types to have heard much
about Socrates, or to be much interested if they had.2 Nevertheless, it
will be my contention that Socrates is not only present in the Laws,
but in principle present in any and every part of it.3
This claim of mine will come in two parts, or two versions,
one weaker and less extreme than the other. Socrates is present in
the Laws first, I shall claim, insofar as the Athenian is continually
* I am delighted to have been invited to participate in the celebration, in
Delphi, of the work of a scholar who, as the following essay will make clear, has
had a major influence on the development of my own thinking on Plato. The
essay is a longer and more thought-out version of the original, oral presentation
at the Delphi meeting.
1
See Politics II.6.
2
The style of the Laws, of course, in parts hardly differing from a monologue, is
also not the style of the Socrates we know (so the visitor from Athens is not even
Socrates in disguise). But see further below.
3
That is, that Plato’s Socrates is continually present. Whether or not the real
Socrates is there too will depend on how much of him there is in Plato’s, which
is not one of the direct concerns of the present essay. As a matter of fact I see no
reason not to suppose that Plato’s Socrates is not at least closely related to the
flesh-and-blood Socrates. But even so, he surely remains Plato’s Socrates; and we
have a whole range of witnesses that no one else’s is quite the same.
— 329 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
alone provocative. He will be there to be welcomed, honored, but
essentially to have his ideas scrutinized.
But equally, from these same two perspectives, there will not be
much to be gained from insisting that it is Socrates who is present.
After all, if the Laws and the Republic are really part of one and
the same project, then so is the Statesman, in which Socrates barely
contributes anything at all to the conversation; in which case
what the Laws will be responding to, when and insofar as it looks
backwards, is a set of ideas that is not peculiar to (Plato’s) Socrates.
Plato uses Socrates as his champion in the Republic (and elsewhere),
but he is evidently just as happy to use others in the same role. Thus
if my title, “Socrates in the Laws” referred to nothing more than the
fact that the Laws looks backwards, it would not only not provoke,
or even be in any way controversial; it would probably announce
a topic that was for all practical purposes empty of interest and
probably of substance.
So for this essay to go anywhere at all, it requires my central
claim, about Socrates’ presence in the Laws, to be true in some
stronger sense. Here is my stronger version: Socrates is also present
in the Laws6 insofar as the Laws frequently presupposes and/or refers
to ideas that Plato typically associates with his Socrates rather than
with anyone else, and especially by treating them as things that either
only he, or he and his close associates, currently believe.7 What I
have in mind here in particular is a set of ideas about the nature of
human beings in the world, and about the sources of human action,
that seem to be summed up in the so-called “Socratic paradoxes”
(“no one goes wrong willingly,” “virtue is knowledge,” “all virtue is
one”), together with the requirement for a practically all-consuming
commitment to philosophical inquiry; in other words, more or less
those features that we moderns have come to associate, and with
good reason, especially with that group of Platonic works themselves
often labelled as “Socratic.” I propose, in short, that rather than
6
I say “also” because, of course, the weaker version of my claim—very weak, as
it has just turned out to be—will be true in any case.
7
They will, then, be part of that strangeness that characters in the dialogues tend
to associate with the man: see, e.g., what Alcibiades says of him at Symposium
215aff.
— 331 —
 Christopher J. Rowe
being displaced, in the post-“Socratic” dialogues, that is, the so-called
“middle” and “late” ones, these features live on—and even drive
Plato’s final legacy to the world, the Laws itself.
In one way this proposal is likely to look bizarre and preposter-
ous, but actually, to some degree, it is irresistible: after all, does the
Athenian not envisage the Nocturnal Council itself as partaking in
a discussion, more Socratico, on the unity of virtue; 8 and does he not,
in his discussion of the laws for Magnesia, reassert that the unjust
and bad are involuntarily bad?9 So Socrates, in my newly-defined
and stricter sense, does at least have a toehold there in the Laws. But
my own thesis has rather greater ambitions than this. I see Socrates
as not merely clinging on in the dialogue, but as central (“driving”
the argument, as I have put it), and to make that even begin to stick
will evidently require a lot of work—which I can do no more than
begin in this short essay.10
The chief reason why my proposal might appear unlikely, if it
does, is that Plato’s intellectual history has so often been written,
in the past hundred years or so, as the history of his emancipation
from the influence of Socrates and his development of a mature
philosophy which, for all that it had its roots in Socratic thinking,
took him much further—in metaphysics, in politics, in cosmol-
ogy—than the Socrates of the Apology, or of the aporetic dialogues
(Charmides, Euthyphro, Laches and so on), could ever have dreamed
of.11 Thus, barring some unexpected and unannounced return to
his roots, Plato’s final work might be expected to show him at his
8
See Laws XII, 963d–964a.
9
Laws IX, 860d; see also V, 731c and 734b. We should note that in the lat-
ter passage the Athenian identifies akrateia—which he has earlier labelled “the
greatest ignorance,” amathia: III, 688e–689a—as one of the causes of our lack of
sôphrosunê; and moreover that he talks openly of bad desires (see, e.g., IX, 854a,
or III, 688b–c). Granted, this is not the language of the Socrates of the Lysis or
the Charmides; but I shall shortly argue against supposing that it signals an aban-
donment on Plato’s part of the position worked out in those earlier dialogues.
10
See Christopher Rowe, “The relationship of the Laws to other Platonic
dialogues: a proposal,” in Plato’s Laws: A Critical Guide, ed. C. Bobonich (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 29–50.
11
For a recent and extended example of this approach, see David Sedley, The
Midwife of Platonism: Text and Subtext in Plato’s Theaetetus (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2004).
— 332 —
Christopher J. Rowe
the dialogues in order to expound positions he has already reached,
revealing to us just as much as he needs for his immediate—literary
and expository—purposes. This single move is sufficient to move us
directly toward, or rather back to,16 a more “unitarian” interpretation
of Plato; and indeed it was reading Plato and the Socratic Dialogue
that confirmed my own rejection of what we may call (and others
have called) the “developmentalist” reading of the Platonic corpus.
If Plato is not always telling us everything he is thinking, then the
most apparently disparate works may evidently be mutually compat-
ible, just so long as they do not contradict each other significantly
and directly.
The chief target of Kahn’s argument is a version of develop-
mentalism that sees the early Plato as reproducing, more or less
faithfully, the thinking of the historical Socrates. His own next two
moves are, firstly, to argue that the ideas of this original Socrates
were relatively unformed and unarticulated; most of what is of
philosophical and/or literary interest in the (so-called) “Socratic”
dialogues really derives from Plato—even including, according to
Kahn, the three things that Aristotle explicitly and unambiguously
ascribes to Socrates, namely the definition of virtue as knowledge,
the denial of “weakness of will”17 and the pursuit of universal
definitions, all of which (so Kahn claims), as we encounter them
in Plato, are fleshed-out Platonic versions of more shadowy Socratic
originals. Secondly, Kahn argues that these supposedly Socratic
elements are in any case reconcilable with the Republic and other
supposedly post-Socratic dialogues. The “Socratic” dialogues are
never contradicted by what follows them; they rather anticipate it.
The purpose of this briefest of descriptions of the strategy of
Plato and the Socratic Dialogue is not to confuse genres, and write
another review of the book.18 Rather it is to provide a context for
16
“Back to,” because of course preceding centuries of Platonists, especially
Neoplatonists, will have shared the same general view of the dialogues as cumu-
lative expositions of ground already won, rather than as open-ended explorations.
17
I.e., akrasia or akrateia.
18
For which see Christopher Rowe, “Just how Socratic are Plato’s ‘Socratic’
dialogues,” in Plato (internet journal of the International Plato Society) 2
(2002)—immediately followed by a response from Charles Kahn.
— 334 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
furthest remove from his teacher; an expectation that might well
seem to receive immediate confirmation not only from the style of
that last work but from the apparent absence, from most of its books,
of anything approaching philosophical argument. However, this
way of understanding Plato’s thought, in terms of a trajectory away
from Socrates is, as everybody knows, not only relatively recent but
far from universally accepted: it is far more likely to be taught, or
even taken for granted, in universities in English-speaking countries
than it is in universities in France, say, or Germany, or Italy.12 And,
as Charles Kahn beautifully demonstrated for the Anglo-Saxon
world, first in a series of articles and then in his big book on Plato
in 1996,13 it is far from inevitable that we should read Plato that
way. Kahn rejected completely the notion of a “Socratic” period
in Plato’s writing: those works that others regarded as Socratic, he
saw rather as partial expressions of the perspectives more amply and
comprehensively described by the “middle” dialogues, and especially
by the master-work, the Republic.14
One of the most crucial of Kahn’s insights in the 1996 book,
in my view, is that the dialogues need to be treated as literary
constructs.15 In them, Plato is not to be found actually doing philos-
ophy as he writes, in the sense of wrestling with philosophical
problems and writing as he puzzles things through. Rather, he uses
12
A greater openness to, or awareness of, Anglo-Saxon attitudes on the part of
continental European philosophers and historians of philosophy in recent de-
cades may have changed the situation a little, but not so much.
13
I.e., in Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: the Philosophical Use of a Literary Form
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), itself building on numerous
articles published in the preceding years.
14
Plato and the Socratic Dialogue deliberately restricts itself to the first two
periods of Plato’s work, which Kahn re-labels “Group I” and “Group II”; the
membership of each is significantly different from that of the “early” and “mid-
dle” groups as normally understood, with Cratylus, Phaedo and Symposium mi-
grating, as it were, to Group I. The grounds for Kahn’s reassignment of these
three dialogues is provided by the cumulative results of the nineteenth-century
stylometrists; it has no immediate consequences, in itself, for our interpretation
of the corpus.
15
Others have shared the same insight, but put it to different use: see, e.g.,
T. A. Szlezák, Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie. Interpretationen zu
den früheren und mittleren Dialogen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985), and Das
Bild des Dialektikers in Platons späten Dialogen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004).
— 333 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
my own strategy, insofar as this has been in part shaped, historically
and otherwise, by Charles Kahn’s19 —or, more specifically, by the
stiff and refreshing opposition it offered to Gregory Vlastos, the
main representative of the “developmentalist” interpretation Kahn
sought to supersede.
Here is an uncompromising statement by Vlastos of his own
position:
I have been speaking of a Socrates in Plato. There
are two of them. In different segments of Plato’s
corpus two philosophers bear that name. The
individual remains the same. But in different
dialogues he pursues philosophies so different that
they could not have been depicted as cohabiting the
same brain throughout unless it had been the brain
of a schizophrenic. They are so diverse in content
and method that they contrast as sharply with one
another as with any third philosophy you care to
mention, beginning with Aristotle’s.20
In time, I believe that Kahn’s rejection of Vlastos’s approach will
be recognized for what it was—a turning point in modern Platonic
studies.21 I also believe, with Kahn, that the evidence for Vlastos’s
identification of two quite different Socrateses in Plato is consid-
erably thinner than it needs to be: for one thing, as I have argued
19
See Christopher Rowe, Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), which was the subject of an “Author
Meets Critics” session at the meeting of the Pacific Division of The American
Philosophical Association held in Vancouver in April 2009, with Charles Kahn
leading the Critics.
20
Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991), 46. Kahn describes Vlastos’s position thus: “Ac-
cording to Vlastos, in [some ten or twelve Platonic] dialogues Plato is still under
the spell of his master, whose philosophy is not only distinct from but antitheti-
cal to Plato’s own mature thought. When Plato becomes an original philosopher,
he departs from, and reacts against, his original Socratic position” (Plato and the
Socratic Dialogue, 39).
21
That is, to the extent that Vlastos’s views had come to dominate Platonic
scholarship in large parts of the world.
— 335 —
 Christopher J. Rowe
elsewhere,22 Plato seems to go out of his way to have the Socrates of
the Republic emphasize the continuity between what he will go on
to say about the Good and what he and others have been saying in
conversations on the subject before—all the while describing these
earlier conversations in ways that remind us irresistibly (I claim)
of what was actually said in a number of Platonic dialogues that
Vlastos characterized as “Socratic.”
But here I begin to diverge from Charles Kahn. To put it in the
crudest terms, Kahn makes Vlastos’s two Socrateses compatible by
assimilating the Socrates of the “Socratic” dialogues to the Socrates
(Plato) of the Republic; my own preference, by contrast, is to start
from these dialogues and interpret the Republic—and, indeed, in
principle, all other dialogues—in terms of what we find in those
very “Socratic” dialogues. That is to say, I take it that these dialogues
already contain a distinctive combination of ideas of sufficient weight
and coherence to provide the basis, and to determine the essential
shape, of all the dialogues that follow, and therefore of the essence
of Platonic thought as a whole. This, in effect, turns Kahn’s picture
upside down: while for Kahn Plato is “middle” Plato, my Plato is,
and remains, in essence, the early Platonic Socrates—but actually
also the “middle” and “later” ones, because (on my view) “Socrates”
never changes.23
Now there is of course no possibility, in a short essay, even of
making this proposal of mine look plausible, let alone of defending
it adequately; that would take a book, or probably several books.24
What I shall do instead is to give some small but significant examples
of the way in which, even in the Laws, Plato seems to presuppose an
22
See “The Form of the Good and the Good in Plato’s Republic,” in Pursu-
ing the Good: Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s Republic, eds. Douglas Cairns,
Fritz-Gregor Hermann and Terry Penner (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh
Press, 2007), 124–153.
23
Or at any rate never changes much. It would be absurd, and in any case
unnecessary, to insist that Plato’s thinking (as represented by his Socrates) never
changed—grew, even “developed”—at all.
24
See Rowe, Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing—the thesis of which a
number of critics have justly said needs to be worked out in rather greater detail,
particularly in relation to the later dialogues: e.g., Ruby Blondell, American Jour-
nal of Philology 130 (2009), 465–468, and Michel Narcy, Revue philosophique de
Louvain 108 (2010), 146–149.
— 336 —
Christopher J. Rowe
desire the good, there will be no danger—once we know what it
is—of our not doing it (virtue really is knowledge).26 These ideas, I
believe, remain in play throughout the whole Platonic corpus,27 up
to and, as I shall shortly hope to demonstrate, including the Laws.
But so too, of course, quite uncontroversially, does that idea first
introduced in the Apology, that the good and the wise will always
come off best in the end; the cosmos and/or the gods have their
way of looking after their own.
Now it would be plainly false to suggest that this whole complex
of ideas is present on the actual surface of the text of the Laws. The
Athenian in fact both directly and indirectly rejects central elements
of the whole, for example allowing the possibility of “weakness of
will” and talking, as most people do, about “bad” desire.28 It is
evidently agreed between the Athenian and his two interlocutors,
Clinias and Megillus, both that we can desire what is not in fact
good for us,29 and that when we go wrong it is not only our beliefs
that cause us to do so—it can also be a matter of loss of control
(akrateia: i.e., a failure to control our desires as at least a part of us
wants to). I claim, however, that there are passages in the Laws which
26
It goes without saying that Charles Kahn’s reconstruction of the thought
of the “Socratic” dialogues is quite different from this. But so too is Vlastos’s.
Vlastos’s reconstruction makes of it something he thinks Plato, or anyone, bet-
ter off without; no doubt many, including Kahn, would think the same of the
reconstruction I have just sketched in the text above (for a much more extended
account, and one rather less inclined to write off the thinking it reconstructs,
see Terry Penner and Christopher Rowe, Plato’s Lysis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
27
Surviving, somehow, even the division of soul into “parts,” in Republic IV,
Phaedrus and Timaeus. For a proposal as to how they survive that, see Plato and
the Art of Philosophical Writing, ch. 5. I also suppose the “Socratic” dialogues to
be much less metaphysically innocent than is usually supposed (even, perhaps,
by Charles Kahn), while also taking a somewhat deflationary approach to the
metaphysics, and the Forms, of the “middle” dialogues—commonly put together
as a group precisely because of the role played by Forms in them.
28
See note 9 above.
29
According the Socrates of a dialogue like the Gorgias, we—or dictators, or
orators—may appear to desire things that are actually bad for us. But if we only
ever desire our real good, then appearances must mislead, and mislead even us
(and dictators and orators). We may say we are driven by desire to do something;
what in fact drives us is our desire for the good, which unfortunately in some
cases is simply misdirected.
— 338 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
understanding of fundamental “Socratic” ideas—“Socratic,” again,
in the sense defined25 —on the part of the reader, if not on the part
of the unphilosophical Clinias and Megillus. By using the Laws as
the quarry from which to mine my examples, I mean of course to
imply a weak variety of an a fortiori argument: if the Laws, Plato’s
last work, is like this, then there will be so much less reason to deny
that other works may not be structured in a similar fashion. But
I shall also make some preliminary suggestions, arising out of my
discussions of individual passages, about the style of Plato’s writing
in the Laws, and the frequently-repeated allegation that the work
as a whole is “unphilosophical.” (I shall claim that the allegation is
misguided and false.)
First, however, I need to give the briefest of sketches of the core
“Socratic” ideas in question. I earlier associated these particularly
with the paradoxes, namely “no one goes wrong willingly,” “virtue
is knowledge,” “all virtue is one”—to which I would add one more,
which actually underlies the other three: “all desires are for the
good.” All these, I take it, are claims that Plato and his Socrates
intend with complete seriousness, and indeed au pied de la lettre.
Everything starts from the claim that we all, always, desire the
good, that is, the good for us, and the good alone. It follows from
this, given whatever else that needs to be given, that any mis-steps
in our pursuit of (our) good derive exclusively from our beliefs, and
only our beliefs—never from our desires. So, despite all appearances,
no one in fact wants to go wrong, if that causes us, as it will, not to
have what is (really) good for us, and so to be unhappy (no one goes
wrong “willingly”). Hence the importance of philosophy: we need
to know what our good really is. But our good includes behaving
in the ways specified by the traditional virtues: “moderation” or
“sound-mindedness” (i.e., sôphrosunê, of which more anon), justice,
courage, piety, and so on; and this—given other parts of the web of
ideas that I am summarizing here—will reduce all the virtues to a
matter of knowledge, that is, knowledge of what is really good and
really bad (“all the virtues are one”). And again, given that we all
25
I.e.,: ideas that are associated peculiarly with Socrates, being of the sort that
no one else (no sensible person?) would entertain.
— 337 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
demonstrate, and are intended to demonstrate, the Athenian’s—and
Plato’s—continuing adherence to the original Socratic position:30 all
our desires are, still, properly speaking, for the good, and ignorance
still is the sole cause, properly speaking, when we go wrong. My
argument is that, in the Laws, Plato deliberately writes on two
levels at once. That is: on the one hand, he writes at the level of the
ordinary, unphilosophical reader, whose likely or anticipated state
of mind is mirrored in the dialogue by the well-meaning Clinias
and Megillus; on the other, and simultaneously, Plato writes for
the “practised Platonic reader.” I here adapt a phrase from Malcolm
Schofield,31 using it to refer especially to a reader who is well-versed
in Plato’s own work, able to pick up allusions to other parts of the
corpus, and so in a position both to place what is being said in its
proper context (i.e., as a conversation between three people only
one of whom is either a philosopher, or familiar with Socratic/
Platonic ideas), and to supply the arguments that so often seem to
be missing from the Athenian’s discourse, to support the positions
that he so enthusiastically advocates. And while these allusions are
most commonly, or at any rate most obviously, to those other two
big political dialogues, Republic and Politics, there will be others—so
I claim—that take us much further back, to the earliest dialogues,
and to the Apology.
At the core of this general proposal, about the fundamen-
tally layered nature of the text of the Laws,32 is the idea that Plato
frequently has the Athenian adapt his ideas specifically for Clinias’
and Megillus’ consumption (and that of the ordinary reader), and
that in the process of this adaptation he—Plato, or the Athenian—
may end up, among other things, actually arguing from their
premises (Cleinias’ and Megillus’) rather than from his own. But
30
I shall now cease to put “Socratic” in scare quotes, on the understanding that
from here on “Socratic” indicates “belonging to the sorts of dialogues frequently
called ‘Socratic,’” or “belonging to Plato’s Socrates as he appears in the early
dialogues”—where “early” indicates membership of Kahn’s Group I (important-
ly, including Cratylus, Phaedo and Symposium: see note 14 above).
31
Malcolm Schofield, “Religion and Philosophy in the Laws,” 1–13.
32
See Rowe, “The relationship of the Laws to other Platonic dialogues” (note
10 above).
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 Christopher J. Rowe
at the same time, I suggest, he will normally indicate, for our benefit
(if we are “practised Platonic readers”), that despite all appearances
his own preferred position remains unaltered.
Here is one example of the strategy, which will be followed by
two more. Near the beginning of Laws IV, the Athenian is reflect-
ing on the conditions needed for the realization of the lawgiver’s
goals: he will pray for a city under the rule of a young tyrant, who
is “young, retentive, ready to learn, courageous and magnificent”;
he must also have “what we were saying33 must accompany all the
parts of virtue . . . if there is to be any advantage from the presence
of the others” (709e6–710a2). Clinias says to Megillus that he
takes the Athenian to be referring to sôphrosunê (“moderation,”
“sound-mindedness”): “the demotic (dêmôdês) sort,34 yes, Clinias,”
says the Athenian, “not the sort that one might mention in a loftier
context (semnunôn), making sôphronein be [a matter of?] wisdom
as well” (710a5–7), but the sort of restraint in relation to pleasures
that one sometimes finds in children and animals—“something
that we said35 was not worth much if it was possessed in isolation
from the many good things we were talking about/the many things
[we were saying were] called good” (a8–b2). What, Clinias and
Megillus might fairly ask, is this sôphrosunê in “a loftier context,”
one that “is wisdom as well”? And how is it to be distinguished
from the “demotic” one? They surely have no idea,36 but neither do
they even ask; nor are any answers given, even indirectly, anywhere
during the conversation in the Laws. Ordinary readers, who just
happened to pick up the Laws, would have every right to be puzzled
too. But those of us who have read other parts of Plato are better
off. We have come across the notion of “demotic” virtues before,
33
I.e., at III, 696b.
34
The phrase dêmosiai aretai at XII, 968a1–2, surely picks up the present passage.
35
I.e., at III, 696d.
36
True, in Book I they encountered a “disposition of soul” that was “sôphrôn
along with intelligence” (631c7), but the Athenian neither refers back to this
passage nor makes it obvious, by his wording, that this sôphrôn disposition is
identical to the loftier sort of sôphrosunê.
— 340 —
Christopher J. Rowe
desires (desires are not mentioned at all in the main conversation); it
is somehow to be identified with a beneficial kind of knowledge; and
this beneficial kind of knowledge is either—perhaps—knowledge
of knowledge of good and bad, that is, knowing whether we have
that knowledge or not, or else the knowledge of good and bad itself.
And that, we might suppose, would be one way of understanding
the philosophical sôphrosunê of the Phaedo and the Republic. At
the least, anyone coming to the Phaedo or the Republic from the
Charmides would have reason to wonder whether the references there
to a philosophical, or non-“demotic” sôphrosunê are not themselves
to be read with the Charmides treatment in mind.43
In short, it appears to me that the Laws IV passage, that is, the
one about two sorts of sôphrosunê, cannot fail to take us back to the
Charmides, either immediately or by way of other stopping-points.44
The immediate addressees, Clinias and Megillus, can have no proper
understanding of the distinction the Athenian has introduced,45 nor
does he stop to explain it to them. Instead, he expands a little on
the sort of sôphrosunê they do understand: it is the sort one finds
flowering naturally in children and animals, making some of them
be self-controlled (enkratôs echein) in relation to pleasures when
others are lacking in control (710a7–8). So it seems that this sort of
sôphrosunê is actually a form of self-control. Nor, it seems, is it the
best sort, and indeed, if it is as closely related to the sôphrosunê of
Phaedo 69 as I have suggested, then from the point of view of the
Socrates, and the argument, of the Phaedo it is not real sôphrosunê
at all, only “a kind of shadow-painting” of the real thing. However
this is the Laws, not the Phaedo, and in the Laws the argument
43
At least part of the point, in both Phaedo and Republic, is that the philoso-
pher has better things to do, better things to enjoy, than mere bodily or material
pleasures—and that he sees that he has. But something more is required to turn
this insight into action; and that, I suggest, is that Socratic view of our desires
which says that, in truth, they can do no wrong (they are not capable, just by
themselves, of causing any trouble).
44
“Cannot fail to take us back to the Charmides”—that is, because of the strik-
ingly intellectualist account of the virtue that is given there. I exclude the pos-
sibility that when writing the Laws, or indeed the Phaedo or the Republic, Plato
had forgotten, or expected us to have forgotten, (a) that he had devoted a whole
dialogue to the same virtue, and (b) how he had treated it there.
45
See note 36 above.
— 342 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
in the Republic37 and in the Phaedo,38 and we also know, from the
Phaedo, of a kind of virtue, and of sôphrosunê, that comes “with
wisdom” and is opposed to one without it—the former being the
philosopher’s version of moderation, which comes merely from his
not being interested in the sort of pleasures, associated with the
body, that excite others.39 If, as seems reasonable, we put all these
passages together, we “Platonic readers” will already have a fairly
firm hold on what a “loftier” kind of sôphrosunê might look like.40
We can, I think, go a step further. We (Platonic readers) are also
familiar with another sôphrosunê similarly associated with wisdom:
the sôphrosunê of the Charmides.41 It may not be clear exactly what
analysis of this sôphrosunê Socrates is intended to be suggesting,
there in the Charmides, but several of its features seem to come
fairly clearly into view: 42 it has nothing to do with restraining one’s
37
VII 500d7–9 (the philosopher-ruler as a “craftsman . . . of sôphrosunê and
justice and in short of all demotic [dêmotikê] virtue”). We may compare Laws XII
967d–968a, where the Athenian explains what any human being would need to
add to the “demotic” virtues (here dêmosiai: note 34 above) if he is to be securely
god-fearing and pious (theosebês) and fit to be entrusted with the rule of a whole
city; the requirements involve applying the fruits of astronomical/theological and
other higher studies to ethical practice.
38
82a (describing the fate of those who “have practised a demotic [dêmotikê]
and civic [politikê] virtue.”
39
69a–c; compare the list of qualities that Socrates derives at Republic VI
485a–487a from the possession of a “philosophical nature.”
40
We would need to suppose that dêmôdês (Laws) and dêmotikos (Republic,
Phaedo) are synonyms, and also that the “demotic and civic virtue” of Phaedo 82a
is not entirely unrelated to the “slavish” (andrapodôdês) virtue of Phaedo 69a–c;
neither looks a particularly daring leap.
41
Cf. also the reference to a justice and piety that comes “with wisdom” at
Theaetetus 176b1–2. Sedley (The Midwife of Platonism, 75–76) interprets this,
reasonably enough, in terms of the general Socratic claim that nothing—includ-
ing the virtues—is good unless combined with wisdom. I interpret it as saying,
in the case of the virtues, that ordinary, conventional, virtuous behaviour, incul-
cated by habit and legislation, needs the backing of wisdom not just to be good
but to count properly as virtuous at all, given that the virtues are supposed to be
good for us. But this seems to entail that the behavior in question must itself flow
directly from wisdom, be a consequence of it; and that is hardly distinguishable,
if it is distinguishable at all, from the claim that virtue is wisdom.
42
That is, on the supposition that the Charmides really is, in the end, about
sôphrosunê and not about something else—as Charles Kahn seems ultimately to
propose (Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, ch. 7).
— 341 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
depends on advocating the importance for people’s lives (even) of
an inferior sôphrosunê. In such a context it will hardly suit Plato’s (or
the Athenian’s) purposes to advertise its spuriousness; he acknowl-
edges it, here in 710, but in such a way as to evade all but the most
attentive reader46 (a description that the unfortunate Clinias and
Megillus can hardly be said to earn anywhere in the Laws). And a
similar strategy may perhaps underlie the wording of the passage at
V, 734b, according to which the explanation for the fact that “the
great mass of humanity” is without sôphrosunê is “ignorance or lack
of control47 or both.” Though the Athenian has earlier called “lack
of control” itself “the greatest ignorance” (III, 689a), presumably in
734b ignorance and lack of control are to be distinguished, and the
obvious way of distinguishing them would be to treat ignorance here
straightforwardly as lack of wisdom. Just as wisdom will give us (or
even is?) a—superior—sort of sôphrosunê, insofar as it will allow us
to make the right choices between pleasures,48 so the lack of wisdom
will by itself tend to make us choose badly. Meanwhile ordinary,
“demotic” sôphrosunê is itself, according to 710a, already something
that gives its possessor “self-control in relation to pleasures”; while
lack of this sôphrosunê will also involve ignorance, still the primary
and immediate cause will be the lack of that self-control.49
“It is now clear,” the Athenian declares, “that if what we’re
now saying is correct,50 necessarily everyone who is akolastos is so
46
For similar reasons, Socrates leaves the inferiority of the sôphrosunê and the
other virtues defined in Republic IV (i.e., by comparison with their philosophical
counterparts) mostly unstated; he refers to it, in fact, only once, and then indi-
rectly and inconspicuously—see note 37 above. (For a defense of the view that
the virtues of Republic IV are to be taken as poor relations of “true” virtue, see
Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing, ch. 5.)
47
I.e., “weakness of will,” akrateia.
48
Thus being accompanied by “the love and desire that follow in its train,” and
giving birth to the other virtues: III, 688a–b. However, this particular passage must,
presumably, apply first and foremost to the legislator’s knowledge and its effects.
49
In other words, the fact that ignorance comes first in the Athenian’s list of
causes, when combined with the fact that ignorance is not the primary cause—by
his own account—of the absence of the inferior sôphrosunê, seems to indicate that
it is not just this sôphrosunê that he has in mind.
50
Sc. that anyone who wants to live pleasantly can’t and won’t, willingly, live
akolastôs.
— 343 —
 Christopher J. Rowe
unwillingly” (734b3–4). This too will have two aspects, depending
on whether our perspective is from the thinking or the unthinking
form of sôphrosunê: either (1) “no one wants to be akolastos” at all
(because no one wants what is unpleasant/bad for him), or else (2)
“no one really wants to be akolastos,” that is, despite the fact that the
akolasia will, apparently, be caused by desires.51 The Athenian has
given his defence of (2) in 733d7–734b3; as for (1) we are left—
those of us who are alive to this reading—to supply the necessary,
and rather more complex, defense for ourselves. Or so I take Plato’s
intention to be.
Here is another example of the same phenomenon, which I
believe is quite ubiquitous in the Laws: that is, a text that invites
us, by allusion, to go past and beyond the simpler message it offers
to its immediate audience. In the course of Book IV, the Athenian
envisages the lawgiver as addressing the colonists of the new city.
The preamble to the law on marriage begins like this:
A man should marry in between the ages of thirty
and thirty-five, having reflected that there is
a way in which the human race, by virtue of a
certain aspect of its nature, shares in immortal-
ity—something at which in fact every desire of
every human being is by nature aimed; for [sc.
desiring] to become famous, and not to lie nameless
after death, is a desire for this kind of thing. The
human race, then, is something that has natural
affinity with the whole of time; it goes along with
it always, and will always do so, in this way being
immortal, by leaving behind children, and children
of children, always being one and the same thing,
and so having a share in immortality, through
reproduction. So (dê) to deprive oneself of this
willingly is never acceptable to the gods (hosion),
51
I.e., by “bad” desires—which, according to a more Socratic analysis (not in
play here in (2)), will properly speaking be a matter of the misdirection of desire,
through ignorance.
— 344 —
Christopher J. Rowe
And that, I propose, is exactly what Plato intends us to do, so that
we may supplement the legislator’s limp argument with something
altogether more vibrant, complete and persuasive.52 After all, what
Diotima offers is nothing less than a comprehensive account of the
origins of all human creativity, whether actual or potential, ranging
from simple reproduction, through heroism, poetry and the arts and
on into the realm of dialectic and philosophy.53 Hence, I suggest,
the circumspect way in which the legislator connects reproduction
with immortality: “there is a way in which the human race, by
virtue of a certain aspect of its nature, shares in immortality.” Yes, I
take the subtext to run, and there are other ways in which we can
share in it even more (as you, good reader, will know from what
I have written before). It could be objected that in that case both
Diotima and the legislator, to the extent that he evokes her,54 will be
making a better case against marriage than for it, since after all mere
physical reproduction is at the very foot of Diotima’s scala amoris,
if it is on it at all. My reply is that it is the colonists, not we, who
need to be persuaded to marry and have children—and that in any
case Diotima’s argument should properly be seen as validating all
the products of Love as well as ranking them. If so, then we readers
52
This is not to suggest that Diotima’s argument is particularly cogent; merely
that it gives us much to think about, and is extremely complex.
53
“Immortality” through reproduction, Symposium 207c–208b, 208e; through
heroism, 208c–e; though poetry, statesmanship (“the kind of wisdom concerned
with ordering cities and households, which is called sôphrosunê and justice,”
209a6–8), and the other arts, 208e–209e; through philosophy, 209e–212a.
54
In principle, of course, he—or rather Plato—could be evoking her in order
to signal that he has moved on. But given that there is no engagement with the
argument of the Symposium, only the bare—but, in my book, unmistakeable—
allusion, and given the signals I claim to have identified even in the small parts
of the Laws I have discussed in this essay, I take it that that option is in fact ruled
out. For examples of other probable or possible Socratic allusions in the address
to the colonists, three in a single Stephanus page, see IV, 716c–717b: 716c2–4
briefly summarizes Lysis 214a–e [on which see Penner and Rowe, Plato’s Lysis,
74–83]; the reference to “all service to the gods” at 716c7, after “prayers and
dedications,” surely leaves clear space for Socrates’ special kind of service to them
(if, that is, we are on the lookout for Socratic connections); and the singling out
of daimones as a special class of beings to be celebrated, separate from gods on
the one hand and heroes on the other, similarly leaves room for Socrates’ peculiar
daimôn. Greek ritual recognizes gods and heroes as objects of worship, not usu-
ally daimones as a distinct group—or is the legislator just covering all his bases?
— 346 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
and whoever neglects [sc. having] children and a
wife does this purposely. (721b6–c8)
The logic of this passage is evidently somewhat murky, but we
can work out roughly what the legislator wants the colonists to get
from it. “There is something in all of us,” the argument seems to
run, “that permits us to share, in a way, in immortality: that is, a
natural capacity to reproduce, which we combine with an ever-pres-
ent desire to live on and not be forgotten. Having children is a way
of satisfying this desire—by reproducing, we actually do become
immortal, like the gods, in our own human way. Given that our
nature touches divinity in this way, it would be impious to deny it,
and deliberately stay single and childless.” But if this is (roughly)
what the legislator is saying, it is by no means all he is saying. Why,
for example, we may reasonably ask (even if Clinias and Megillus
do not, and the colonists are given no opportunity to do so), does
the legislator make the extraordinary claim that “every desire of
every human being is by nature aimed [at a share in immortality]?”
Not only does he not need the claim for his argument, but it seems
patently false. Or rather: it seems patently false until we understand
it in its original context in the Symposium. Even there it is peculiar,
but it at least makes sense. Love, says Diotima, is
of procreation and giving birth in the beautiful.
. . . Because procreation is something everlasting
and immortal, as far as anything can be for what
is mortal; and it is immortality, together with the
good, that must necessarily be desired, according
to what has been agreed before—if indeed love is
of permanent possession of the good. Well, from
this argument it necessarily follows that love is of
immortality as well. (Symposium 206e5–207a3)
It is not extravagant to say that all the surplus features of the
Laws passage, that is, all those not required for the legislator’s
immediate message to the colonists, are explained as soon as we read
the passage in tandem with Diotima’s excursus to Socrates on love.
— 345 —
Socrates in Plato’s Laws
will have at our disposal a much richer argument for the legislator’s
conclusion (“Marry! Have children!”); one containing just the sort
of richness, and philosophical complexity, that the Laws has so often
been critized for lacking.
I draw three conclusions from this. The first conclusion is that
the quality of the Laws as a piece of philosophy is not necessarily to
be judged from its surface. Secondly, I conclude that the apparent
obscurity often detected in the style, and indeed the substance,
of the Laws will at least sometimes, and at least in part, derive
from the fact—and I believe that my last example establishes it
as a fact—that Plato, at least sometimes (indeed, as I believe, very
often), chooses to write simultaneously on two levels, and for two
different audiences.55 And the third conclusion is that the passage
last discussed, from the preamble to the marriage law, gives us one
context in the Laws where what I have claimed more generally for
the dialogue is—or so I would claim—certainly true: namely, that
Socrates is driving the argument. For the whole of Diotima’s exuber-
ant account of Love and his effects is itself a dramatic elaboration
of the fundamental Socratic tenet, which she puts at the center of
her argument: “there is nothing else that humans love,” she says,
“except the good” (Symposium 205e7–206a1), and goes on to describe
how—one possible way in which?—this single principle, for all its
apparent simplicity, might be used to explain human life in all its
variety.56 But this same single principle, as I have argued (and as
Diotima demonstrates), brings a great deal of other, distinctively
Socratic, baggage with it, some of which is strewn, sometimes more
and sometimes less conspicuously, over other parts of the Laws.
Socrates may not be physically present, but he is undoubtedly there
below the surface argument, poking his head through and leaving
telltale traces that we shall need to follow if we are to do full justice
to this challenging dialogue.57
55
See also Rowe, “The relationship of the Laws to other Platonic dialogues”
(note 10 above).
56
See Christopher Rowe, “The Symposium as a Socratic dialogue,” in Plato’s
Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception, eds. James Lesher, Debra Nails
and Frisbee Sheffield (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006),
9–22.
57
In my presentation in Delphi, I concluded with a discussion of Laws X,
— 347 —
 Christopher J. Rowe
One central outcome of my argument will be that the Plato of
the Laws is still committed to that fundamental Socratic-Platonic
project, to put philosophy at the center of our lives. The problem
is that there seems to be no room, in the city of Magnesia as the
Athenian constructs it, for individual inquiry, independent of
any control by the city or by public opinion. Philosophy has been
thoroughly institutionalized, as a kind of instrument of state. And
that, in itself, sounds not only un-Socratic, but positively anti-Socra-
tic. To that extent, I fear that my overall thesis must fail. A Socrates,
surely, can only properly function in an open society. But on the
other hand, our Socrates, that is, Plato himself, from the beginning,
thoroughly disapproves of the open society he lives in, and wants
to change it. The Laws gives us Plato’s notion of what a city shaped
by philosophy, according to Socrates’ requirements, might actually
look like—given the assumption that in fact the vast majority of
people will always be incapable of living the good and wise life for
themselves. Whether we think Magnesia is a realization or a betrayal
of the Socratic vision may ultimately depend on whether we suppose
Socrates to have been more optimistic than Plato about the capacity
of the majority for reasoning. His intellectualist theory of action
in principle would allow anyone and everyone the capacity to get
their lives in order for themselves, and it may be that his application
of the theory, as we observe it in the earlier dialogues,58 is equally
inclusive. Alternatively, that may be wishful thinking. Maybe he
was always bound to be against the very kind of society—open,
and democratic—that allowed him to flourish (even if, in the end,
it killed him off).
903b4–904c4, partly to illustrate the survival—which no one doubts—into the
Laws of the idea, so vividly expressed at the end of the Apology, that divine or
cosmic providence will look after its own (the good and wise), but also to show
how the texture of the dialogue can sometimes be thickened, even rendered close
to unreadable, by a conglomeration of allusions, not just to other parts of Plato’s
own corpus but to other writers: in this case, Heraclitus. As Charles Kahn says,
“the passage is haunted with Heraclitean reminiscences” (The Art and Thought of
Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary [Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979], 328n302).
58
I.e., in the dialogues of Charles Kahn’s Group I (see note 14 above).
— 348 —
Paul Kalligas
copies of their intelligible models which exist “in nature” (596b6–9,
597a4–11). Moreover, in the first part of the Parmenides, the young
Socrates, while introducing the account of the theory of Forms
which is going to provoke the objection known as the Third Man
Argument, suggests that the intelligible Forms are “standing in
nature like patterns, while the other things are assimilated to them
and are their likenesses” (ĞęħĞęēĜőęēĔćėċēĔċƯďųėċēžĖęēĨĖċĞċ).3
But the analogy is most clearly expounded in the Timaeus, where
it constitutes the backbone of the basic cosmogonic myth, accord-
ing to which the Creator god produces the sensible universe as an
image of its intelligible archetype in the world of Forms (see e.g.,
the concluding summary remark at 92c7). It is said there that the
sensible qualities, which inhere in various parts of the quasi-material
substrate of the ġĨěċ, thus making it appear as of this or of that kind
(ĞęēęȘĞęė), are imitations (ĖēĖĈĖċĞċ) of the true intelligible beings.
They affect our cognitive powers in such a way as to produce a sort
of dream-like illusion (ŽėďĉěģĘēĜ), causing confusion between the
true being (ĞŁĕđĒćĜ) and its image (ďŭĔĦėē), that is, with a mere
apparition of something else (ŒĞćěęğĞēėƱĜĠĆėĞċĝĖċ).4
All this has caused the widespread impression among several
readers of Plato that he in this way intends to deprive the sensible
world of what otherwise appears to be its most salient feature,
namely its reality. The above mentioned remarks are often taken to
ascribe merely a demoted existential status to sensible objects and
to reduce them to fleeting and more or less illusory apparitions of
objects which are simply not there, but rather belong to a different,
ontologically distinct, suprasensible world, and thus to duplicate
the reality of being at the level of appearances. As Cornford has
formulated it,5 “the class of ‘images’ (ďűĎģĕċ) we are concerned
with—semblances—imply two relations between image and original.
3
The last remark seems in fact to allude to Parmenides’ own “imagistic” ac-
count in his poem (ĎēĆĔęĝĖęėőęēĔĦĞċ) concerning the deceitful nature of the
opinions of the mortals (fr. B8.51 DK).
4
See Timaeus 48e2–52d1, with the careful analysis by E. N. Lee, “On the
Metaphysics of the Image in Plato’s Timaeus,” Monist 50 (1966), 341–368.
5
See F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trübner, 1935), 199.
— 392 —
From Being an Image
to Being What-Is-Not
Paul Kalligas
One of Plato’s favourite analogies for describing the relation between
sensible particulars and their intelligible correlates is that of images
or copies (ďűĎģĕċ) and their models. Already in the Lysis1 219d2–4,
all the various dear things (Ġĉĕċ) are said to be some sort of images
(or, perhaps, phantoms: ƞĝĚďěďűĎģĕċņĞĞċ) of the primary dear
(ĞƱĚěȥĞęėĠĉĕęė), which is the ultimate object of all our aspira-
tions, and thus to deceive (őĘċĚċĞǬė) us, presumably because they
reflect some of the desirable features of their model. This notion
of an image is hinted at again in the Phaedo 74e3, by the use of
the verb ĚěęĝďęēĔćėċē,2 within the context of a discussion of the
way in which the process of recollection is triggered by something
which is like the recollected object, but in some sense deficiently
so, and is further developed in the Republic, as part of the more
general inquiry into the products of various kinds of imitative
procedures. In the allegory of the Cave, for example, the effigies
held by the puppeteers are repeatedly called ďűĎģĕċ, presumably for
being imitative copies of the real beings outside the cave (Republic
520c4, 532b7; cf. 514c1–515a1), that is, objects of opinion instead
of true knowledge (534c5–6). And the products of the crafts such
as the work of the bed-manufacturer are said to be imitations or
1
That is, assuming that the Lysis is indeed one of the relatively early dia-
logues of Plato.
2
This seems to pick up the case of recollection through similarity illustrated by
means of the examples of “painted images” (čďčěċĖĖćėċ) introduced previously
in the dialogue (Phaedo 73e5–74a3), but the context makes it clear that, in the
end, similarity is not at all the crucial notion here, since recollection can be ef-
fected equally both by similars and by dissimilars (see 74c13–d2).
— 391 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
The image is more or less like the original, though not wholly like
it, not a reproduction. But it is also conceived as possessing in some
sense a lower grade of reality, as illusory, phantom-like” (author’s
emphasis). Thus it is not unusual to find Plato being accused of
abandoning the world of concrete sensible reality in favor of a
nebulous region of intangible presumed “prototypes” of the items
encountered by our everyday experience, of assuming as properly
real what—to every sober minded naturalist—seem to be no more
than abstractions from things or features existing in the world of
our common, and commonly shared, experience.
In what follows, I wish to challenge certain aspects of this
interpretation of the analogy of the image and to suggest that
Plato did not intend to question the reality of sensible existence,
but only to deny that we can be confident about the truth of any
statements we make in reference to it. In my view, in interpreting the
image analogy we have to take seriously into account the extended
analysis Plato offers with respect to the various kinds of imaging
in the Sophist, where a great amount of energy is given to an ex
professo examination of this, at first glance, rather inconsequential
or, at best, marginal topic. A full discussion of the pertinent section
of this dialogue would, however, by far exceed the limitations of
this paper. I wish therefore to propose instead, as a preliminary
investigation, to examine a single passage which seems to give us
some important clues about this issue. Further, in order to unravel
some of the difficulties involved there, I propose to use as a key a
passage from the discussion of the fifth hypothesis from the second
part of the Parmenides, which, as has been pointed out by Charles
Kahn,6 constitutes a significant parallel to the Sophist passage,
thus helping us to understand better a most crucial aspect of that
difficult text. Both passages present considerable textual problems
and have required significant philological interventions for their
restitution. For reasons of economy I will not discuss these problems
here. Let me just assure you that I do not intend to deviate from
6
In his important article on “Some Philosophical Uses of ‘to Be’ in Plato,”
originally published in Phronesis 26 (1981), 105–34, and now incorporated into
his recent volume of Essays on Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),
75–108, esp. 90–93.
— 393 —
 Paul Kalligas
the established scholarly consensus on the matter as represented by
the respective OCT editions of the text and by most of the recent
translations I am aware of.
The passage from the Sophist I wish to discuss (240a7–c6)
forms part of the preliminary treatment of the notion of image or
copy (ďűĎģĕęė) as involving not-being in a way that threatens to
make the nature of its producer, the sophist, intractable by means
of rational investigation. Theaetetus comes up with a suggestion for
a definition of copy that will cover all its different subtypes:
THT: What else would we say a copy [of X]
is, stranger, except something that, by being
made similar to the true [X] ( ĚěƱĜĞŁĕđĒēėƱė
ŁĠģĖęēģĖćėęė), is such (ĞęēęȘĞęė) [i.e., X] while
being other (ŖĞďěęė) [than the true X]?
What this definition amounts to, so far, is that a “copy” is a relational
term combining two distinct items (say, X and Y) in a specific
way. One of these is said to be “true” (ŁĕđĒēėĦė), this presumably
meaning that the attribute X is truly predicated of it. The other, Y,
is said to have become similar to X, obviously by coming to possess
the same attribute X, and thus becoming “such” (ĞęēęȘĞęė) as the
other, at least in this particular respect. On the other hand, Y is said
to be “other” than X in some as yet unspecified way. The Eleatic
visitor’s next question is meant to clarify further this last point:7
EV: You mean “another such true [X]”? Or what
do you mean by “such”?
THT: No, in no way a true [X], but something
that is similar [to the true X].
EV: And by true [X] you mean what is really [X]?
THT: That’s what I mean.
7
I supply the implied predicate X in brackets in order to make the develop-
ment of the argument more transparent. To add a substantive expression such as
Cornford’s “thing” instead would twist the sense towards an existential under-
standing of the “is” involved, thus leading to the impossible conclusion that Y
is a thing which does not really exist, which seems to me to run against the very
notion of “thinghood”: for a thing which does not really exist is no thing at all!
— 394 —
Paul Kalligas
at the same time, being compelled to think of it as being X. On
the other hand, Y may possess all sorts of other characteristics as
parts of its essence, but X is not to be found among them. It may
have some features which make it look or appear as being similar to
X, but these can be assessed only when it is viewed under specific
circumstances or within specific contexts; however, they do not
represent its own proper nature. To take one example, Socrates is a
man, and therefore necessarily exhibits all the basic characteristics
that form part of the essence of humanhood, including, let’s say,
his rationality and his mortality. Accordingly, it would be impossi-
ble even to think of him without these characteristics, since this
would amount to his being other than who and what he is, namely
the man Socrates. On the other hand, an image of Socrates, say a
good photograph of him, would presumably display, more or less
accurately, some of his features, such as the color of his hair, the
curvature of his nose, perhaps even the “bullish” expression of his
eyes. Nonetheless its essential characteristics, that is, its being,
after all, a sort of elaborately colored piece of paper, would make it
something completely different (or “other,” ŖĞďěęėĞęēęȘĞęė, as we
have read in the above text). It is perhaps not less real than Socrates,
but it is certainly capable of receiving certain predicates pertaining
to Socrates himself only in a derivative manner and only after it has
been interpreted in a certain way, that is, after it has been “seen” from
a specific perspective, namely as an image of him. Thus we may say,
pointing at this image, things such as “This is a wise man,” “This
is the son of Sophroniscus,” etc., even though the truth conditions
pertaining to such statements will have almost nothing to do with
the physical object indicated, namely the piece of paper regarded
as a depiction of Socrates. One has to go back to the original being
represented in order to properly assess the import of such claims.
It has to be noted that, under the present understanding of
the passage, no claim has been made here as to the existential
status or the permanence of the X itself. All that has been said is
that if, or as long as, something is the X itself, it must necessarily
be X. But there is no way to know or to guarantee that X will be
around forever or even for any given stretch of time. On the other
hand, Y’s being what it is, is not something that comes under the
— 396 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
So far it becomes clear that Y is not an exact replica of X, differ-
ent from it solo numero but otherwise indistinguishable from it.8
The difference ( ŒĞďěĦĞđĜ) separating them must be of a more
fundamental kind, which renders Y unqualified for the ascription
to it of the strong attributiveƁėĞģĜƁė, that is, of being really [X],
here understood as equivalent to “being truly [X].”
Now the visitor jumps on exactly this point and drives home
the seemingly alarming conclusion that Y must be, in some sense
at least, not-being:
EV: What now: isn’t the not true the contrary of
the true?
THT: What else?
EV: So what you say, of course, is that what is
similar [to the true X] is not really [X], since you
call it not true [X].
By now it should have become clear that what is at stake here is the
exact import of the copulative “is” connecting Y with the predicate
X. For in this case the “is” cannot be carrying the strong attributive
sense of “being truly” or “really” something, since this is restricted
to the case of X itself. It has nothing to do with Y’s being whatever
else it happens to be, or with its existence. In fact, Theaetetus goes
on to point out that Y is, after all, really at least one thing, namely
an image. This, however, does not alter the fact that it is not really
X, as X is said to be. But how are we to understand this difference?
I believe that the best way is to take it at its face value. To start
with, it is taken for granted that a statement of the type “X is X”
is always, invariably and necessarily true. This must be so because
X is taken to represent at least part of what X really is, it is an
essential feature of it and as such cannot possibly be separated from
it. There is no viewpoint from which one may approach X without,
8
This particular point has been emphasized in a passage in the Cratylus 432b4–
d3, where Socrates indicates that an exact duplicate of Cratylus would not be
an image of him at all, since images (ďŭĔĦėďĜ) have to be in some way deficient
(őėĎćęğĝēė) with respect to their models.
— 395 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
focus of discussion: it is only the attribution to it of X which calls
for significant qualifications. For the statement “Y is X” bears no
intrinsic warrant to being true, since it is a matter of interpretation,
and of the circumstances that surround it, whether Y shall be viewed
as being similar to, or as a semblance of X. Such assessments, as
it has been established earlier in the course of the dialogue, are
always dependent on the “correctness” of the point of view of the
observer, which is an integral prerequisite for the image-copies (or
ďűĎģĕċ) to appear in a manner faithful to their models (see Sophist
235e5–236a7). But such correctness is by no means implied by the
statement “Y is X.” And all this has nothing to do with the nature
of Y itself. What matters is the relation of Y to X in terms of their
sharing some common features, where these pertinent attributes
assimilate Y to X. But whereas in the case of X these attributes
are intrinsic to what X is, in the case of their attribution to Y, it
is a matter of interpretation and of understanding Y as a copy of
X, whether the relevant attributions can be regarded as evidence
for its being X. One cannot reasonably deny of Socrates that he
is Socrates, but one may deny of a photograph of him that it is
Socrates, in so far as one may refuse to acknowledge it as an image
of Socrates or even, perhaps, maintain that it is merely an image of
him and consequently not identical with him. A particular white
area on the surface of a piece of photographic paper needs to be
understood as reflecting the whiteness of Socrates’ hair, before it is
properly referred to as “Socrates’ white hair.” But such an interpre-
tation is always open to dispute and would be impossible to force
upon someone who, like the sophist mentioned earlier by the Eleatic
visitor (239e1–240a2), professes to know nothing of such things
and even claims to be deprived of the very eyesight that is required
before any such assessment is possible.
Let me note here that later in the dialogue (Sophist 257d7–258e3)
the Eleatic visitor maintains that, in the case of things that are,
not-being may have the sense of being other than (in the sense of
not being identical with) any one of them. Thus, for example, the
“not-beautiful” and the “not-large” are said to be proper beings (i.e.,
they can be appropriately used as predicates in true statements), while
being other than the “beautiful” and the “large” respectively, as well
— 397 —
 Paul Kalligas
as—we might add here—other than each other. This innocuous
sense of not-being allows for the formation of negative statements
that are fully capable of expressing true claims. Indeed, some such
statement may carry a very strong kind of truth claim analogous to
the one said earlier to pertain to statements of essential attribution.
Thus one may truly declare that Motion is other than Sameness, and
is thereby not-Sameness (in the sense of not-being-Sameness), even
while it participates in Sameness by being the same with itself (cf.
Sophist 256a3–b4). In a similar way, one may truly maintain that
the sum of the internal angles in a triangle is not equal to 360˚ and
be sure that this statement is both meaningful and unchallengeable.
This “horizontal”—as we may call it—sense of otherness helps to
distinguish beings from whatever is not identical with themselves,
including things which may pertain to them in some other way. It
is crucial in delimiting things on the basis of their essential charac-
teristics, to separate them from all other things that lie outside the
strict boundaries of their own identity. No common features are
assumed as being shared by the items separated by this kind of
otherness, and these items may otherwise be completely unrelated
to each other. The sense of otherness which describes the relation
separating the image from its model is somewhat different, however,
and may be described as “vertical.” For in this case there are common
features shared by both the model and its copy; in fact, it is precisely
this common background that allows the one to be described in
terms of the other. This does not place them on the same footing,
however. Here the model possesses the relevant property as part
of its essence, whereas the image exhibits it only accidentally and
temporarily, a fact which can be discerned only when it is envisaged
under specific circumstances. This means that, in the latter case,
the image must be viewed and interpreted as an image, in order to
properly evaluate the ascription of the property to it. The correct-
ness of the ascription hinges on the image’s (presumed) relation to
its model and is therefore derivative and conditional, as opposed to
the ascription of essential attributes to the self-subsistent character
of the model itself.
Returning to our main passage now, in the following exchange
(Sophist 240a9ff.), Theaetetus appears to sense that there is something
— 398 —
Paul Kalligas
If we now look briefly back at the Timeaus again, we may begin
to see why this is the case also as far as sensible bodies are concerned:
these are not the kind of things that can be truly said to be this or
that, because of their non-essentially being what they are said to
be—which accounts also for their unstable and elusive nature. The
truth value of any statement making such attributions is bound to
be under continuous reappraisal, since the relevant truth conditions
are constantly fluctuating and undergoing all kinds of alterations.
Certainly sensible bodies can always be said to be images (ďűĎģĕċ),
but the answer to the question “Images of what?” remains always
provisional and unresolved in any permanent sense.
The conclusion drawn from all this discussion by the Eleatic
visitor appears therefore to be valid and—if interpreted along the
lines suggested so far—even unproblematic, but it is cast in such
a way as to present, at least on the surface, a bewildering paradox:
EV: Therefore, what we call an image [of X] is
really what is not really [X]?
Theatetus’ answer, and the ensuing exchange with the visitor, marks
this paradox and reformulates it in such a way as to make it look
like a plain contradiction:
THT: It appears that in some such way not-
being is interwoven with being, in a most bizarre
combination.
EV: How can it be not bizarre? For you see now that
once again the many-headed sophist has compelled
us, by this counter-grip, to admit, against our will,
that what is not [X] in some way is [X].
THT: I see that, all too well!
However, the tools for resolving the paradox have already been
indicated, though not spelled out in as much detail as one might
have wished. The crucial distinction that needs to be taken into
account in order to attain such a resolution is the one between the
two different uses of “is”: (a) the stronger one, which normally bears
— 400 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
amiss in the preceding argument, especially about the remark of the
visitor that what is not true must be the contrary of the true. For
if this is taken to mean that what is not really X must be the exact
contrary of X, namely really not-X, this would be an illicit move,
in so far as it would deprive Y of its status as an image of X. This
point he attempts to clarify with his remark that “However, in a
way it is [X].” To translate this remark in the way Cornford does, as
“But it has some sort of existence,” is to miss completely its import,
since the existence of Y has never been in doubt; in fact, the whole
discussion takes place under the assumption that there is a Y which
is a copy of X, and it would be pointless to remind ourselves of this
here, where no challenge to this assumption has been advanced.
The visitor sees this clearly:
EV: But not truly [X], you maintain.
THT: Surely not; nonetheless, it is, of course, really
an image [of X].
The reference back to line b2, where Theaetetus had stated that
the copy, that is, Y, is in no way a true [X], but only something
that is similar [to the true X], makes it clear that what is under
discussion here is neither the existential status of Y, nor the ascrip-
tive function of the copula connecting it with the predicate X,
but rather its veridical force, what Kahn has called its “veridical
nuance.” If the “is” here is taken to carry the strong sense of “is truly
or really so-and-so,” that is, if it is regarded as equivalent to what
we previously termed—in our somewhat anachronistic jargon—as
“what is essentially so-and-so,” then, of course, the inference that Y
is not (really) X is valid, but it leaves the ground open for its being
any number of other things, including what it has been taken to
be from the start, namely an image of X. So Y turns out to be not
identical with what is truly X. Nonetheless, it can still be said to
be X—and therefore is “homonymous” with X9 —however, not in
the strong sense of “is” discussed earlier on.
9
See Plato, Timaeus 52a5; cf. Sophist 234b7.
— 399 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
the marker “truly” and expresses the essential attribution of a feature
X to the thing that carries it as part of its own identity or essence and
is inconceivable without X, and (b) the weaker one, which merely
attributes X to something as an external or derivative characteristic
and thus renders it an image of X. Both these senses of “is” have
to do with its veridical aspect, since their application depends on
the rules that ascribe truth values to the statements in which they
appear. Where it applies, sense (a) delivers an unconditionally valid
ascription of “being true” regardless of external circumstances,
viewpoints, relations or other regulating conditions. It is as strong
and unchallengeable as that of any analytical statement. Its negation
would amount to a straightforward contradiction in such a way as
to make the statement itself devoid of real meaning. Not so with
statements exhibiting “is” in the sense (b). The truth value of such
statements is always negotiable and, once again, depends not only
upon external circumstances, but also on a specific interpretation
of their reference. To say, pointing to a piece of paper, “This is a
wise old man” can make sense if one understands the reference to
be to the Socrates depicted on it, but this involves a complex process
of deciphering the available data, which may not be acceptable or
even accessible to other observers, as it is not to animals lacking this
particular decoding mechanism. Pointing to a particular mass of
carved white stone may be a way of referring to a piece of sculpture
or, for that matter, to an image of Hermes; but as to whether this is
actually a depiction of Hermes or not, it may have taken archeologists
a long time and a lot of expertise and hard research to establish even
an imperfect consensus. Even the white material out of which the
statue has been carved, although usually recognized as, say, Parian
marble, is probably already undergoing change, turning into chalk
or gypsum and therefore in need of preservation. But preservation
is needed where alteration is already under way.
This brings us back, once again, to the discussion in the Timaeus:
we now begin to see more clearly why particular sensible objects are
regarded there as equivalent to images. It is not that they are not
real, or that they do not exhibit specific qualitative characteristics
at any given moment. After all, they are said there to be correctly
described as “of such kind” (ĞęēęȘĞęė, Timaeus 49d5–e7). But no
— 401 —
 Paul Kalligas
absolutely true statement can be made with reference to them; none
whose truth value will remain constant and unchanged, unchal-
lenged by alternative interpretations or by the fluctuating nature
of their constitution.
Like an image created with the appropriate skill, a statement
referring to the sensible realm may actually, sometimes, “hit the
mark” and reflect accurately an aspect of the reality “out there,”
just as the semblances produced by the illusionist artists mentioned
in the Sophist (236b4–c4) may create more or less accurate impres-
sions when seen from the appropriate, “correct” viewpoint. But such
“correctness” is always relative to a specific observer, and lacks the
“all around” character required by any true statement, if it is to be
worthy of that name (according to the Republic 598a7–10). This
makes it appear fluctuating and unstable, and thus unsuitable for
supporting any reliable body of knowledge or science aspiring to
universal acceptance.
In order to understand better the reasons for this instability one
has to examine more closely the structure of the statements making
claims concerning images, and to try to understand better the kind
of unreliability that, according to Plato, is part of their nature.
Typically, a statement about an image refers to what is depicted in it,
not to the image itself. In this way, the presence of an image makes
possible the formulation of statements about something that is not
actually there, but is merely represented in a medium other than
itself. However, these statements make truth claims, and even the
image itself may sometimes be said to represent faithfully its model
and thus to be “true” to its original. This does not alter the fact that
the original must be other than it, in the “vertical” sense indicated
earlier; indeed it must be absent from the frame of reference of
the pertinent statements, otherwise the image would be unable to
perform its representational role. In this sense, an image, qua image,
is a representation of what is not present, and thus can be said to be
what is not. On the other hand, it must not be what it depicts, if it is
to be what it is. The apparent paradox of the situation is dissipated
once we realize that there is nothing unreal about the image itself.
It is only its relation to its original that brings out the fact that it
is not really what it depicts, that it is not truly what it is said to be.
— 402 —
Paul Kalligas
their validity. Moreover, at the specific section of the argumentation
I wish to focus on, namely 161e3–162b8, which forms the fourth
of a series of several examinations of the Hypothesis, it seems to
make no difference whether we should take the “is not” of the initial
hypothesis as complete, or as elliptical—that is, as copulative, with
an implied complement. The formal character of the argument allows
us again to lay aside this issue, at least for the time being. We may
rest content with the implication that the expression “is” in this
context is considered as imparting to its subject the quasi-property
of being a “being” (Ɓė).
The argument begins with the seemingly paradoxical claim that,
although the hypothesis we are working with maintains that the One
is not, nevertheless the One must also somehow partake in being:
—Furthermore, it [sc. the One] must surely also
somehow partake in being.
—How is that?
—It must be such as we say; for if it is not so, we
would not be telling the truth when we say that the
One is not. But if we speak truly, it is clear that we
say things that are. Isn’t that so?
—It is so indeed.
Now this is a curious argument. For from the statement that the
One is not and the claim that this statement is true, it is inferred
that the One, by being the subject of a true statement, in some way
partakes in being. But such a conclusion hardly obtains. As Kahn
has pointed out, even granting that we shift from the copulative to
a veridical sense of “is” (or of “being”), the attribute “true” would
have to pertain not to the One itself, but to the statement as a whole,
of which the One is merely the subject. This is more than a simple
stylistic variant of the normal veridical construction. When we say
“things that are” by speaking truly, we make statements bearing the
truth value “True”; from this we can hardly infer that the subject
of such statements is itself in any conceivable sense “true” or, for
that matter, real. To say “things that are” about the One in no way
implies that the One “partakes in being”—that is, unless we are
— 404 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
The “bizarre combination” of not-being with being hangs on the
homonymy between the veridical “is” making the truth claim in
the appropriate statements, and the strongly copulative “is” attribut-
ing—or, in the case of not-being, negating the attribution—of the
predicate “truly [X]” to the given subject. For, as we saw, there are
instances where something is [X] without being truly or really [X],
because although it possesses the pertinent characteristic, this does
not form part of its essence, but is merely present as an additional,
external feature. Such an attribution, even though occasionally
“accurate,” can never claim the sort of stable and unwavering truth
value pertaining to essential attribution, and in this sense cannot be
said to make a statement about what is truly so-and-so. Nevertheless,
it does make a statement about what is not truly so-and-so, and this
statement bears a different sort of true claim.
But how can anything be said about what is not truly what it is
said to be? What truth claim can be made about that which is said
from the start to not truly be what it is? This is the conundrum
facing Theaetetus at this juncture of the argument, and he seems
unprepared to tackle it. He might have been better equipped had
he been present at the laborious dialectical exercise to which the old
Parmenides had subjected his young interlocutor in the eponymous
Platonic dialogue. There, during the examination of Hypothesis V
(160b5–163b6), we encounter an argument that (as has already been
pointed out) comes very close to the situation we have encountered
in the Sophist. This section of the dialogue starts from the hypoth-
esis “If the One is not” and examines the consequences for the One
itself, in regard to the attributes which pertain not to what it is itself
(ĔċĒȷċƊĞĦ), but to what is external to its nature (ĚěƱĜĞƩŅĕĕċ).
Consequently, it becomes obvious quite early that the arguments
it contains are of a purely formal character, taking no account of
the nature of the subject under investigation, namely the One. No
reference is made to any of the specific characteristics pertaining
to the One itself that might differentiate it from any other Form,
or indeed from any other item whatsoever. The One could in this
case easily be substituted by a placeholder representing any of an
indefinite number of entities, concerning which exactly the same
arguments might be applied, without making any difference as to
— 403 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
prepared to take this last phrase as meaning merely that it is the
subject of some true statement. But in such a case it would become
clear that the use of “being” in this context is meant to reflect the
veridicality of any such statement, and makes no claim as to the
ontological status of its subject. This becomes more perspicuous in
the discussion that follows in the dialogue:
—Since we claim that we say what is true, we must
also claim that we say things that are.
—Necessarily.
—So it seems that the One is not-being; for if it
is not not-being, but is somehow to relax its grasp
on being in regard to not-being, it will straightway
be a being.
—Absolutely.
—Therefore, if it is not to be, it must have its being
a not-being as a bond in regard to not-being, in
the same way as, if it is to be completely, what is,
too, must have its not-being a not-being. For this
is how what is would most of all be, and what is
not would not be: what is, if it is to be completely,
by partaking in being in so far as it is being, and
in not-being in so far as it is not not-being; what is
not, by partaking in not-being in so far as it isn’t
being, but in being in so far as it is a not-being, if
what is not is in its turn completely not to be.
—Very true.
—Hence, since in fact both what is partakes in
not-being and what is not partakes in being, so too
the One, since it is not, must partake in being in
regard to its not-being.
—Necessarily.
Here the presentation of being’s function as a “bond” connecting the
subject of a statement with its predicate serves to emphasize that it
forms part of a propositional structure that brings those two terms
together, belonging to neither of them separately, but only in so far
— 405 —
 Paul Kalligas
as they both contribute to a statement bearing a truth claim. This
last point is masked so as to become invisible in the very last remarks
Parmenides offers as the conclusion of the argument:
—Then the One, if it is not, appears to have being.
—It appears so.
—And, of course, not-being, since it is not.
—Undoubtedly.
Here the carefully wrought formula “to partake in being in regard
to not-being” used earlier is replaced by the hopelessly non-per-
spicuous “to have being,” thus creating the impression that this is
some property pertaining to the One. This, of course, is part of
Parmenides’ strategy to lead his argumentation towards a series
of seemingly contradictory conclusions. But it should not conceal
the fact that no real contradiction is involved since, as Kahn again
remarks, here “the positive being is that of the (veridical) copula,
whereas the negative being is that of the predicate.”10 Therefore,
the “being” said to belong to the One is no more than the truth of
its not-being.
If we return now to the passage in the Sophist and examine it
in the light of the preceding discussion, we come to realize that
Theaetetus’ claim that the image [of X] “in a way” is [X] carries a
double edge: on the one hand it posits that it is not really [X], but
merely similar to the true [X], and, on the other, that it can be said
of it truly that it is not the true [X]. It is the strongly veridical claim
embedded in the latter assertion that makes the image appear to have
a hold on being, or—to use the phraseology of the Parmenides—to
be “bound” to it in some way. This is made clear in the penultimate
statement of the visitor, when he asserts:
What we call an image [of X] is really what is not
really [X]?
10
Kahn, Essays, 92.
— 406 —
Paul Kalligas
Imperfection is not what makes a copy be a copy:11 it in fact prevents
a copy from being a true (or “accurate”) copy. However, Plato seems
to admit that there may be true, or even perfectly accurate copies, if
only they are viewed from the right perspective and under optimal
circumstances, as we saw. So it is not a matter of their being less than
X that makes the images of X have such ambivalent status. It is the
fact that they are not X in the appropriate way, which makes any
statement pertaining to them to lack any permanent or unmitigated
truth value. For the truth conditions governing such statements are
external to the intrinsic meaning of their terms; they rely on factors
that lie outside the notional content of the concepts involved.
Any true statement pertaining to the world of Ideas reveals the
logical structure binding these Ideas together in an inexorable fabric
of mutually related concepts, by means of relations of sameness and
otherness. Each such statement expresses the preordained concate-
nation of a Form with its cognates, in such a way as to embed it in a
tightly woven network of genera and species. Conversely, statements
about the sensible universe, even when accurate, describe external
relations between things which merely exhibit features susceptible
to the kind of logical analysis described above, and thus only reflect
some of the truths properly belonging to the intelligible realm. Their
truth values are, therefore, always provisional, depending as they
do on factors outside the compass of their being. They are thus
liable to fluctuation according to the rearrangements constantly
taking place in their environment. Such vagaries are not, however,
unreal. They are just uncontrollable, unfathomable and therefore
ultimately unforeseeable and unknowable, to the extent that they
do not conform to any regular pattern based upon the unalterable
realities beyond the realm of becoming.
11
This point has been forcefully argued by A. Nehamas, “Plato on the
Imperfection of the Sensible World,” in Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and
Socrates (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 138–58 (reprinted from
APQ 12 [1975], 105–117), esp. 151–155. He formulates his view as follows
(144): “When we say that particulars are only imperfectly F in comparison to
the Form of F-ness, the imperfection belongs to the ‘being’ rather to the ‘F ’ n
‘being F,’” but he chooses not to focus on the kind of imperfection involved as
consisting in a difference in the truth claim contained in the pertinent statements.
— 408 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
This clarity is, however, effaced when we reach the final formula-
tion of the paradox, according to which “not-being in some way is”
(ĞƱĖƭſėďųėċĉĚģĜ). For if this is taken to mean that what is
not [X], namely the image, which is other than the true X, is in
some way X, that is, is not essentially what the X designates, then
it merely duplicates the initial statement of Theaetetus and thus
renders the whole ensuing argument superfluous. What gives it the
force of a punch-line, making it look like a glaring paradox, is that it
seems to say that what is not truly X can truly be said to be (in some
way) X. This has been emphasized in the immediately preceding
remark of Theaetetus that the image is really an image [of X]. The
paradox relies on the veridical claim contained in this statement,
thus apparently verging on a blatant contradiction.
The image thus appears as ambivalent between two competing
and opposite claims. The one presents it as being not-X, in the sense
of being other than the X itself or than what is truly X. The other
maintains that, nonetheless, it must be, in some way, X, otherwise
it would not be an image at all. Its very status as an image requires
that there is a sense according to which it can be truly said to be X.
Such conflicting assessments are bound to undermine the validity
of either claim, and thus to render its relation to truth problematic.
And this is precisely the reason evoked in the Republic (597a4–11)
for saying that the image created by the imitative artist is “faint” or
“hazy” (ŁĖğĎěĦė) with respect to truth (ĚěƱĜŁĕĈĒďēċė).
Now at last we can envisage the function played by the analogy
of the image in the Timaeus under a new light. It in no way implies
that the sensible world is, in some way, nonexistent, or even less real
than the intelligible one. After all, there is no reason to think of an
image as any less existent than the thing it is an image of, or that it
is not real, for it is obviously really what it is, namely an image. It
is of course other than the thing it is an image of, but this in itself
does not seem to be sufficient reason to demote its being. For even
if it is not essentially the same as its model, it may exhibit some of
its features in a no less perfect way than they are to be found there.
— 407 —
From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not
The deficiency of our statements about the objects and the
occurrences in the sensible world derives not from their unreality,
or from their defective existence, but rather from the inherent
unreliability of the truth conditions of all such statements. In a
famous dictum, Plotinus has remarked about the intelligible world
that the truth of the beings there “says nothing other than itself,
but is what it says and says what it is.”12 By reversing this formula,
we might say that, for Plato, because language is inexorably related
to the intelligible world, sensible things can never really be what
they are said to be, and that they can only say or express what is
not truly theirs.
It is well known that Plato issues a huge caveat at the beginning
of the Timaeus, when he states that the account given there is no more
than a likely story or a myth. The reason is that he is well aware that
all the cosmological and physiological descriptions presented therein
are bound to be conjectural, depending as they do on a given set
of theoretical underpinnings. Once these are removed or changed,
the whole edifice might look arbitrary, or even silly, if seen under
the light of a different theoretical “paradigm.” He seems to realize
that the truth of his account is inexorably dependent on the overall
perspective from which the various phenomena are scrutinized. A
different theoretical perspective, such as ours nowadays, for example,
would easily expose the unreliability of both his standpoint and the
details of his account. But he furthermore seems convinced that any
other such account is bound to be similarly limited and provisional,
because of the fundamental unknowability besetting the structure
and the constitution of sensible reality: and this final and somewhat
dismal truth he considers as unassailable.
12
See Plotinus, Ennead V 5.2.18–20 (ed. P. Henry and H.-R. Schwyzer): Ş
ƁėĞģĜŁĕĈĒďēċęƉĎƫėĚċěȷċƊĞƭėĕćčďēŁĕĕȷƀĕćčďēĔċƯŕĝĞēĔċƯƂ
őĝĞēĞęȘĞęĔċƯĕćčďē.
— 409 —

Word and Image in Plato
Richard Patterson
The ruler of the universe has arranged all things
with an eye to the preservation and excellence of
the whole, . . . and you, wretched fellow, are one
such part—a mere speck. And since a soul is joined
with different bodies at different times . . . all that
remains to the divine draughts-player is to send the
better character to a better place and the worse to
a worse . . . as they deserve. (Laws 903b–e, after
Saunders’ translation)
In the Divided Line passage of Republic VI, Plato relegates all
thought that relies on images to a lower level of cognition than noesis
(the “highest” form of thought, and the kind proper to genuine
philosophy), which proceeds at a purely conceptual level. This
philosophical position, combined with his harsh criticisms elsewhere
(especially in Republic II–III and Republic X) of popular images and
image-makers, has led in some quarters to an understandable but
lamentable undervaluation of the cognitive and philosophical utility
of images, whether these be small-scale illustrations of a local point,
dramatic touches of characterization and action, or extended myths.
However, I am not concerned here with promoting the literary
aspects of Plato’s works in general, or the importance of Platonic
myth in particular. These already have able exponents; and in any
case I want to focus on an issue that is slightly more general, but also
more fundamental. In a nutshell, the main point is that the power
of Platonic imagery of all sorts derives from an alliance of word
and image—of verbal imagery and non-imagistic discourse—and
extends well beyond the capacity of verbal pictures to arouse emotion,
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Word and Image in Plato
(903b).1 There follows a lengthy and somewhat loose-jointed passage
(903b–905d) which nonetheless contains a central image of the
cosmos as a vast and just system overseen by good gods, within
which the administration of human justice—in a wholly impartial
and inescapable manner—is but one detail of the gods’ larger work.
The central image is that of human souls as tiny nameless specks
moving silently up or down through a kind of vast cosmic moral
space to better or worse places, depending on whether their own
wants and character have made them better or worse.
This is by general consensus the least colorful of Plato’s myths—
so much so that it seems to some readers hardly even to qualify as
a myth. In fact even some allegedly comprehensive treatments of
Platonic myth do not treat of it at all.2 But I submit that “for those
who have eyes to see,” the Athenian’s central mythical image of
cosmic justice has considerable power, and all the more so for its stark
simplicity. In any case the passage deserves our careful attention as
the purest example in the corpus of mythical imagery that is expressly
identified as such and is also expressly fashioned to supplement an
explicit argument. Moreover its companion argument is the only
direct argument in Plato attempting to bridge the gap between
good gods who set the heavens into orderly motion, and gods who
insure that humans receive their just deserts. It is no accident that
it is elicited by the Athenian’s attempt to address a good person
who does believe in the gods but who, for understandable reasons,
does not believe that they are concerned with human justice. As a
1
The argument and myth both aim to persuade in the broad sense of
producing conviction. (On the arguments as persuasive, see 885e, 887a–b, and
H. Goergemanns, Beiträge zur Interpretation von Platons Nomoi (Munich: Beck,
1960), 193, 207–208). Both argument and myth are part of the “prologue” to
the law on impiety and thus, like all the Athenian’s prologues, are intended to
persuade citizens toward willing obedience. On the prologues in general, see
especially H. Yunis, “Rhetoric as Instruction: A Response to Vickers on Rhetoric
in the Laws,” in Philosophy and Rhetoric 23 (1990), 125–135; A. Laks, “Legislation
and Demiurgy: On the Relationship Between Plato’s Republic and Laws,”
Classical Antiquity (1990), 209–229; C. Bobonich, “Persuasion, Compulsion
and Freedom in Plato’s Laws,” Classical Quarterly, n.s. 41 (1991), 365–388; A.
Nightingale, “Writing/Reading a Sacred Text: A Literary Interpretation of Plato’s
Laws,” Classical Philology 88 (1993), 279–300.
2
E.g., J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato (London: Centaur Press, 1960, reprint
of 1905 edition).
— 431 —
Richard Patterson
communicate with the philosophically naïve, or—in the words of
Gilbert and Sullivan—to “gild the philosophic pill.” Once forged,
the alliance of word and image can serve a large array of essentially
cognitive as opposed to affective purposes, and can thereby support
quite sophisticated levels of understanding. Moreover, the discus-
sions, arguments, and explanations associated with and informing
a given image can modulate the image’s arousal of emotion so as
to produce an appropriate, and appropriately grounded, affective
response to the “original” or “model” which the image represents.
Section I, then, proposes a general framework for consideration
of the co-operation of word and image in Plato. Here “image” is
meant broadly, to cover everything from brief illustrative touches
(e.g., the Republic’s “philosophic dog barking at the unknown”) to
the complex, extended pictorial elements of a major Platonic myth
(Er’s experience in the world beyond). “Word” of course covers the
words used to create a verbal image, but also any (roughly speaking)
non-imagistic discourse associated with a given verbal image. More
specifically, this basic framework consists of four very general ways
in which words produce and empower verbal images: formation of
an image, interpretation of an image, shaping of the “viewer’s” affective
response to a given image, and rational justification of the content
of an image. Section II discusses several cognitive effects of images
achieved through the co-operation of word and image described in
Section I: illustration by example, integration of thought, explana-
tion, and what may be described as an imagistic intimation of
meaning not yet clearly grasped, and a powerful stimulus to further
thought aimed at clarifying, solidifying, and putting into words
the previously inchoate idea suggested by the image. Images can
achieve other cognitive effects (see note 4 below), but these four are
especially important for present purposes.
My primary illustration of these points will be the myth of Laws
X. There the Athenian first gives an argument against the impious
belief that the gods do not involve themselves in matters of human
justice, and then says that although the impious addressee is now
forced to accept the argument’s conclusion, there is still “need of
charming stories” (őĚȦĎęēĚěęĝĎďȉĝĒċēĖƴĒęē) to persuade him
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Richard Patterson
kind of “bonus,” the argument highlights an important aspect of
justice as defined in the Republic that is there left, at best, implicit.
One might innocently suppose that commentators would have
examined the details of both the argument and myth, if only to
see what might be seen—and then compared the two to find out
whether or not the myth is supposed to go beyond the argument
how precisely the myth is supposed to exercise persuasive power
(especially in the absence of colorful or “graphic” imagery), and so
on. But while one finds numerous helpful comparisons of the myth
with the rational cosmology of the Timaeus, there appears to have
been very little interest either in analyzing the Athenian’s argument
in detail (or, as it turns out, his series of four arguments), or in
considering the details and persuasiveness of the myth in its own
context, where it addresses parties who have not even heard of the
Timaeus. Such considerations show (in Section III, on the argument,
and IV, comparing argument and myth) that the myth does not
try to persuade its audience of anything not already justified by the
preceding argument, let alone anything beyond the power of words
to express. But more interesting (Section V), the Laws myth draws its
emotional power from a complex interplay between its central image
and the non-imagistic discourse with which it is associated—more
specifically, from the manner in which the image integrates the
theological and philosophical ideas and explanations of the preceding
argument(s) into a unified, easily grasped, spare and yet vivid image
of cosmic justice ordained by the gods. In this respect, I suggest,
it provides a particularly good example of principles that apply in
one way or another, and to a greater or lesser extent—depending
on the role of an image in its own context—to Platonic images in
general, as well as to mythical images in particular.3
3
From the point of view of the general framework used here, it is clear that
some (mythical) images incorporate features that are not rationally justified
by anything in their philosophical context, that some myths are more potent
emotionally than others, and that some are provided by characters in a dialogue
with a good deal more accompanying interpretation than others.
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 Word and Image in Plato
I. WORD AND IMAGE: A GENERAL FRAMEWORK
Since Plato’s images are all verbal images, the role of words in
the formation of images is obvious. “It is like a line divided into
two unequal segments; divide each segment . . . in the same ratio.”
(Republic 509d); or, “Picture people in a cave . . . with their necks and
legs bound.” (Republic 514a). But we should also note a less obvious
and very important point concerning the formation of Platonic
images: verbal images enjoy a significant advantage over paintings,
drawings, statues and the like. When Socrates describes the tripartite
creature representing the human soul—part human, part lion, part
many-headed beast, all encompassed in a human exterior—Glaucon
remarks that words are a “more plastic” medium than paint or
stone for the moulding of images (Republic 588d). Many other
passages bear this out equally well—e.g., the Parable of the Cave, the
Charioteer, the Myth of Er, the Ring of Gyges. Such images exploit
this plasticity to the hilt; elsewhere, as in Laws X, Plato employs a
more restrained verbal palette.
With regard to the central image of Laws X, the image formation
process draws on several brief passages, especially the “mere speck”
and “draughts-player” lines quoted above, along with various
mentions of souls moving upward and downwards (or on a slow
day, morally speaking, sideways; see 904b–e). Different readers may
form somewhat different mental images, but the basic picture of
soul-specks moving to their rightful places emerges clearly.
There is sometimes a fine line between the role of words in the
formation of a verbal image and their role in the interpretation of that
image. Recall Socrates’ own description of his enflamed condition
and his efforts to put out the fire and restore calm after he had
caught a glimpse behind Charmides’ cloak (Charmides 155d); or
his private reflections on the results of Republic I: “I had thought
the discussion was at an end, but Glaucon had other ideas, etc.”
(Republic 357a); or Alcibiades’ description of Socrates’ resolute
stride and self-possessed demeanor during the Athenian rout at
Delium (Symposium 220d–221c). Here we inevitably interpret our
mental image as we construct it, and on the basis of information
provided by the narrator concerning the inner states or thoughts
of a character. Sometimes a narrator or implied authorial voice just
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Word and Image in Plato
many possible examples, our understanding of the advantages of
a good life over that of a tyrant, as in Republic IX, with its images
of the tyrant’s fearful, unsatisfied, and slavish life, draws on the
psychology of Book IV, but also on practically everything that
has transpired since the beginning of the work. Platonic images,
far from depending for their content and effect upon their own
pictorial properties, can express and exploit the power of relevant
logoi in general and of associated philosophical logoi in particular.
Equally important, images are not restricted to the convey-
ance of particular items or scenes as opposed to general concepts
and propositions. This is just as true with regard to psychologi-
cal, political, or metaphysical theories as it is in the obvious and
familiar case of diagrams illustrating geometrical truths or steps in
a proof. Certainly most of Plato’s philosophical images are meant
to have general significance; indeed, this is normally true even for
Plato’s images of a particular event or scene such as the gathering
at Cephalus’ house in the Republic, or Socrates’ meeting with the
Athenian generals Laches and Nicias in the Laches, and not just
for such manifestly symbolic images as that of the soul as Winged
Charioteer (Phaedrus 246ff.) or as a hybrid, tripartite creature
(Republic IX, 588bff). Further, what Socrates says about geometry
in the Divided Line—that despite dealing in visual images of this or
that angle or line, it is in effect concerned with intelligible entities—
applies equally well to Plato’s “philosophical” images in general. The
Simile of the Sun is an obvious case in point, as is the Divided Line
itself; but we should count also the Republic’s image in words of a
just city; the Death Scene of Socrates (imaging sophia, sophrosyne,
and andreia; and many others).
Moving beyond these basic points about the role of logoi in
the formation and interpretation of an image and the resulting
potential for the cognitive and philosophical work of images, we
may now make more explicit the role of accompanying logoi in
cueing and shaping our emotional response to verbal images. For
example, we react positively to the image of Socrates striding across
the battlefield at Delium, in part because we are given to believe (by
“Alcibiades”) that this is a reflection of Socrates’ keeping his head
while those around him are losing theirs (Symposium 221a–b). In
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Richard Patterson
has the authority to tell us such things, so that we need neither infer
them nor wonder whether someone is feigning emotion, or lying,
or the like: we simply read them into the image as we construct it.
As a result we can correctly understand and experience the image
as, for example, one of self-possession, courage, or embarrassment.
In the examples just mentioned it is natural to think of Plato or
“Socrates” himself as helping us interpret our picture of Charmides’
entrance into the gymnasium, for example, or the scene at Cephalus’
house. However, there is no need to classify each instance of verbally
given information as exclusively formative or interpretive, for
sometimes the two functions are served simultaneously, and by the
same words. Again, the point is just that appropriate logoi lead us to
construct and understand a verbal image in a certain way; they cause
us to read specific things into the image and hence to experience it
accordingly. In the Laws image, the Athenian explicitly interprets
the “moving specks” for us as human souls, the direction of their
motion as the moral advance or decline of these souls, the larger
system as the result of divine planning and craft, and as guaranteeing
impartial and inescapable (904eff.) justice for all.
Giving Images Their Due
Because language can in principle build a great deal into the way
we comprehend and experience Platonic word pictures, these images
need not be employed only at early, relatively unsophisticated stages
of intellectual or moral development. Nor need they be discarded
when reason comes into play, or intended solely for the “lower”
parts of the soul. The crucial consideration is not simply whether
or not images are involved, but how sophisticated or philosophically
informed our understanding of and response to the image is in a
given instance. And this depends on a combination of the availa-
bility and effectiveness of associated interpretive logoi (as distinct
from properly visual—pictorial, colorful, or graphic—aspects of the
image itself), and the level at which a given “viewer” comprehends
the image. The associated verbal material is in some cases quite
extensive, extending far beyond the immediate context of the image,
and in Plato is typically “philosophical.” To cite only one of a great
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Richard Patterson
their dramatic context, logoi may also influence our response to an
image by showing or telling us how characters within the narrative
react to it. Thus we are told not just that Parmenides and Zeno
smile discretely to one another as young Socrates explains why he
is not impressed by Zeno’s paradoxes, but also that these smiles
reflect admiration for Socrates’ youthful enthusiasm for philosoph-
ical discussion (Parmenides 130a–b). Or again, on contemplating
Socrates’ image of prisoners in a cave, Glaucon agrees, and thus
signals to the reader, that the proper attitude toward these prisoners
is one of pity (Republic 516c)—rather than, say, dismissiveness or
contempt. Similarly in Republic X, Er encourages a specific emotional
response on our part by reporting not just that some celebrated soul
(Odysseus, Orpheus, Ajax, Thersites) chose this or that next life,
but also that the vast scene of souls choosing their next lives was an
altogether astonishing, pitiful, and comic sight (619e).
With respect to the Laws, it is particularly striking that the
Athenian presents the passage beginning at 904e4 as if it were a
direct address from “the gods who dwell on Olympus.” The tone of
the passage is especially elevated, solemn, stern, and authoritative.
This tends to invest our image of divine cosmic justice with like
qualities (provided, of course, that we allow ourselves to be receptive
to such influences—a most dubious prospect so long as we remain
in “scholarly” mode) and thereby to shape both the way we see and
the manner in which we respond to that vision.
From a philosophical point of view, the additional role of logoi
in justifying the content of an image is crucial. A successful image
will at least communicate certain ideas or thoughts, and may arouse
emotion, and the image may thereby prove persuasive. But such
thoughts, persuasiveness, and response still need to be justified,
and there is in fact considerable variation in the extent to which,
and the manner in which, Plato justifies the specific details of a
given image or myth. Many of the colorful and engaging details
of the Myth of Er, for example, are either not justified by way of
critical discussion or are justified only in a rather vague and general
way, whereas other features of the myth’s imagery illustrate ideas
expressly discussed and defended in the body of the Republic. By
contrast, the myth of Laws X has been justified on virtually every
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 Word and Image in Plato
point by the preceding argument. But we will consider this further
in Section IV below.
II. IMAGES BORNE ALOFT BY WINGED WORDS OF
PHILOSOPHY
Granted that verbal images can harness further logoi for
philosophical purposes, we may now consider more closely how the
cognitive work of images gets done. To begin again with the obvious,
note that many of Plato’s most celebrated verbal images—Gadfly,
Barren Midwife, Sun, Divided Line, Cave, Ship of Fools, et al.—
provide a metaphorical or analogical example or model for compar-
ison, i.e., a familiar or relatively easily imagined and understood
example (in one sense of “paradeigma”4) by which to convey thoughts
about things less familiar, perhaps not literally imaginable at all, and
typically more difficult to understand. Communication comes about
through apprehension of alleged similarities between the paradeigma
(e.g., the angler or weaver) and the matter to be illuminated (sophist
or king). Plato has his Eleatic Visitor explain and demonstrate this
use of illustrative and often highly imaginative examples in the
Sophist (218dff.) and Statesman (279a). Thus even if these images
in words are metaphysically third-rate—if, as Republic X has it, they
are mere imitations of imitations of real things (Forms)—it is still
true that by presenting imagistic examples to the mind of the reader
they can serve epistemically in essentially the same way as “second
level” earthly embodiments of Forms to help reveal the nature
of Justice, Courage, and so on. Thus Alcibiades’ verbal image of
Socrates’ demeanor at Potidea can achieve at least something of the
effect of witnessing the scene first-hand—with respect both to our
estimation of Socrates and our implicit appreciation of the nature
of andreia and sophrosyne (stout-heartedness, courage; self-control).
And again, the plasticity of verbal images gives the image maker a
kind of control over the recipient’s vision and interpretation of events
that one does not have over the events themselves.
4
For a survey and discussion of the uses of “paradeigma” (and “mimema,”
“eidola,” and the like) in Plato, see R. Patterson, Image and Reality in Plato’s
Metaphysics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985).
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Word and Image in Plato
philosophical discussion—can in a variety of ways play a construc-
tive role in the development of one’s understanding of important
issues and ideas.
As important as the image’s role as illustration of a concept or
theory may be, this is only the beginning of its cognitive contribu-
tions. Although the point can be developed only very briefly here,
and although Plato himself—in theory if not in practice—rather
neglects the matter, it is essential for present purposes to appreciate
that images often serve to integrate a large amount of information
or thought, showing how things “fit together” coherently. In the
Simile of the Sun, for example, Socrates enumerates an impressive
series of important ideas in non-imagistic language, but also draws
these together as analogues of features constituting a single schema
of sun, vision, and visibles. These points have parallels in the realm
of the intelligible, the Good, and intellect, and are there similarly
integrated—now with the Good occupying the same sort of central,
organizing role as that played before by the sun. The Divided Line
accomplishes something similar (this is so on any of the thirty or so
interpretations available to the industrious scholar), visually bringing
together into a single proportional scheme a series of philosophi-
cal ideas about epistemic states and their cognitive objects. One
can see the same integrative function in the Charioteer myth, the
drone imagery of Republic IX, and almost everywhere else: it is an
unobtrusive but important feature of Platonic images in general.
This cognitive-integrative function supports in turn the
emotional impact, where applicable, of a complex image. That is,
the combining of multiple, closely interrelated ideas into relatively
simple and easily comprehended visual form can give an image an
especially powerful “punch” that is both cognitive and affective.
Republic IX’s graphic depiction of the three-part soul thus focuses a
great deal of the preceding discussion (reaching at least as far back as
Book IV) into a single arresting image in order to reveal starkly to
the advocate of a certain inferior sort of life exactly “what it is he is
advocating” (588d–589d). The ascent of the soul in the Charioteer
Myth of the Phaedrus, the vision of the true nature of the tyranni-
cal life in Republic IX, the activities and effects of various types of
civic drones (winged and wingless; with or without stingers), the
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Richard Patterson
As remarked earlier, Plato’s dialogues provide many thoughtfully
developed, high-level discussions effectively combining images with
non-imagistic philosophical explanation and commentary. These
show that Plato’s images are not mere devices for “beginners,”
although they can serve well—up to a certain point—in that role,
but useful epistemic and emotional guides at higher levels as well.
Granted that some readers may see more in an image, some less,
and that different readers will interpret images at different levels
of sophistication, verbal images can in principle draw together and
clarify through illustration just about any level of understanding
the reader is able to achieve. The significant exception, already
noted, is the power of reason to ascend to a kind of pure conceptual
thought where images cannot go. But that is strictly “advanced
abstract thinking,” open in principle only to a small percentage of
the human population, and having very stiff prerequisites, including
(in the Republic) ten years’ training in all the known branches of
mathematics. There is a good deal of serious thinking to be done
between that lofty pinnacle and the level of a philosophical novice.
In fact, Plato’s philosophically most substantial images ascend
to impressive heights as they illustrate such matters as the nature of
the soul, the life of philosophy, the condition of non-philosophers,
the role of creative intelligence in the cosmos, the activity of king
as socio-political “weaver,” or the place of the Good within the
intelligible realm. In all these cases images are borne aloft by the
power of associated philosophical logoi. This is the reverse of the
word/image relationship that might come first to mind—that of
pedestrian, earth-bound logoi enlivened and borne aloft by flights
of imagistic fancy. But in fairness to both parties, it would be
best in the end to speak simply of the co-operation of imagistic
and non-imagistic logoi in the design, construction, and effective
deployment of Platonic word pictures.
Once gain, this is not to overlook Plato’s insistence in the
Divided Line that philosophical thought in its higher reaches
procedes independently of images. It is rather to affirm that there
is a great deal of progress to be made before one arrives at the sublime
height of pure reflection, and that the use of images—similies,
analogies, parables, myths—especially where these are informed by
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Richard Patterson
moral plumbing and topology of the Earth in Socrates’ story at the
end of the Phaedo and many other complex images might be cited.
These extended images, including some usually classified as myths,
all exercise their emotional effects not only through their pictorial
properties, along with established associations and connotations of
the matters depicted (drones in the hive, judgment in the afterlife,
etc.); they also focus the diverse implications of a series of ideas
into a single compact picture in order to convey a sharply focused
understanding of some important matter—and thereby to evoke
and shape an appropriate affective response as well.
Equally importantly, images often provide visual explanations
by illuminating causal or other explanatory relationships. Probably
the single most impressive Platonic example is that of the Demiurge
creating an ordered and beautiful universe in the image of an intelli-
gible model: looking at things in this way allows Timaeus to explain,
and the reader to understand, why a great many features of the
cosmos and of human physiology are as they are. With regard to
the Laws, this cognitive function is of central importance to the
Athenian’s attempt to reveal to one sort of misbeliever the place of
humankind in the cosmos, and to explain both why any apparent
triumph of wickedness in this world is always an illusion and how
the gods insure that this is so.5
The Divided Line’s proportional divisions of component
segments also brings to mind the large role of images in Greek
mathematics. There, as for example in the Meno, a geometrical
diagram can integrate a series of mathematical steps so as to reveal
how they all fit together to constitute a proof of the theorem in
question. That is, it provides in visual terms both a means of unifying
a series of steps into a logically coherent proof, and what amounts
to an explanation, i.e., a making clear of the reason why some
theorem is true.
5
These are only three of many potential cognitive functions of images, but they
are especially important in considering mythical images and in particular the
central image of Laws X. In that connection, the mnemonic power of many of
Plato’s images should also be emphasized, although this seems less directly tied to
“associated logoi” than the three discussed above. For several additional cognitive
functions of images, see R. Patterson, “Diagrams, Dialectic and Mathematical
Foundations in Plato,” Apeiron 40 (2007), 1–33.
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 Word and Image in Plato
In short, well-crafted images can play many of the same legiti-
mate cognitive roles in philosophical theorizing about metaphysics,
epistemology, politics, et al., as diagrams play in geometry, including
that of integrating a diversity of ideas into a coherent, unified, and
explanatory whole.
Finally, images can attempt to express or convey something that
we cannot yet put precisely into words. They can beckon us to an
understanding that lies beyond any that we are currently able to
express in non-imagistic language, and help give some shape to an
as yet inchoate idea. Again, this is not to say that images can express
understandings that are in principle beyond words. Rather it is to
recognize the fact that in philosophy, science, and elsewhere, one
sometimes hits upon—or is struck by—an image that is strongly
suggestive of some idea or some solution to a problem—something
that seems “right,” even in the absence of any precise and explicit
verbal formulation. A celebrated example from chemistry is Kekule’s
dream of a snake biting its own tail, which led (with much subsequent
reflection and hard work) to the explicit and precise theory of the
structure of benzene molecules as “rings.”6 To cite only one of many
possible examples from Plato, the question of how reason is supposed
to exercise control over the powerful “lower” appetites is dealt with in
various ways. In the Timaeus, Timaeus proposes that reason displays
frightening pictures on the smooth surface of the liver in order to
keep the lower appetites in line; in the more extended imagery of
the Phaedrus’ Charioteer Myth, the charioteer repeatedly subjects
the lustful black horse to rather brutal and bloody discipline, so that
finally it behaves itself, and experiences fitting and proper emotion,
in the presence of the beloved. But what, literally, are such images
meant to express? They address an extremely important question,
and supply vivid, powerful images; but what are these images meant
to suggest? The philosophical and psychological issues involved are
deep and difficult ones, and I would suggest that here images can
serve as a stimulus to further thought, and as providing indications
6
The story, including the difficult task of actually working out the theory of
benzene molecules as closed curves, is well told in Margaret Boden, The Creative
Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (London and New York: Routledge, 2nd edition,
2004), 25–28).
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Word and Image in Plato
cues that Socrates and company may have provided, or the manner
in which this or that point of analogy has or has not been rationally
justified. If the image-maker has done his job well, all of those things
are read into and seamlessly experienced together in the image,
even if we subsequently adopt a more analytic and critical stance.10
III. LAWS X: THE MAIN ARGUMENT
We may now focus in more detail on a specific “case history” of
the co-operation of Platonic imagery and non-imagistic logos—where
the latter consists primarily of explicit philosophical argument. In
Laws X the Athenian addresses three types of impious belief (the
same three as mentioned by Adeimantus in Republic II): first,
that there are no gods; second, that the gods exist but do not have
anything to do with human affairs; third, that the gods exist and
are involved with human matters, but can be diverted from the
path of justice by bribes. Within each type the Athenian further
distinguishes between those impious parties who are basically good
but have been led astray, and those who are genuinely bad people.
These divisions are relevant to the Athenian’s argument and myth,
and to the various punishments for impiety, which he fashions with
particular categories of impiety in mind. The only case among these
six types in which he supplements argument by myth is that of the
basically good person who believes the gods exist, but also believes
that they do not concern themselves with human justice—having
been driven to this conviction by the supposed fact, well-attested by
poets and others, that wicked people often escape punishment and in
fact live quite happy lives, their crimes going undetected until after
they have died (899d–900b). Since the gods are good, and would
not allow this to happen if they were in charge of human justice,
this galling and unjust state of affairs must surely be accounted for
by supposing that the life of the gods is so far above and beyond
ours that they simply have nothing to do with our carryings on.
The Athenian’s main argument against this view consists of two
stages, one showing that the gods do have the job of taking care of
10
If the latter is considered our sole job we may, for better or worse, dispense
with the “experience” of the image and proceed directly to analysis and criticism.
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Richard Patterson
of one or more directions such thought might take. Indeed, images
can accomplish this just as surely as can the termination of Socratic
dialogue in perplexity (aporia).7
Postscript on the Unity of Word and Image
These cognitive functions, along with the emotional impact of
an image, are the result of co-operation between the visual aspects
of a verbal image and the non-imagistic language in accordance with
which it is constructed, interpreted, and justified. Consequently
we must resist any temptation to see the cognitive and emotive
effects of verbal images as arising exclusively from non-imagistic
and imagistic language, respectively. For one thing, it is often
difficult or impossible to draw any clear line between the two sorts
of language.8 Second, insofar as we can identify some words and
passages as predominantly imagistic or non-imagistic, it is quite clear
that each sort can function both cognitively and affectively: it would
be foolish to suppose either that images necessarily function entirely
or predominantly in some sub-cognitive or pre-rational manner, or
that non-imagistic language must constitute non-emotive discourse.9
Third, the two sorts of language make a joint contribution to the
cognitive and affective effects of a verbal image. That is, once we
have absorbed various non-imagistically presented points about the
prisoners in the cave, for example, we can apprehend and respond to
the image as a whole, without consciously rehearsing the directions
for construction and interpretation of the image, or the response
7
This calls for some exercise of the imagination, but need not lead to
unconstrained speculation, so long as one does not take leave of one’s critical
faculties. This is true of Plato interpretation generally—i.e., whether or not the
interpretation of images is involved.
8
This is an enormous understatement, since our thought and language
is permeated with sensory and bodily metaphors and images in a way that
philosophy—especially since the great “linguistic turn”—has sometimes missed.
The situation has changed a good deal in recent decades, but that is another
story.
9
Even this assumes too sharp a distinction between cognition and affect, for
this distinction is just as problematic as that between imagistic and non-imagistic
language. I assume here, however, that we can at least recognize language that
is overtly, deliberately, and conspicuously pictorial, and that we can distinguish
significant degrees of emphasis on the pictorial aspects of a verbal image.
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Richard Patterson
human affairs, the other showing that they will not fail to perform
their job well (900c–902b). I will lay out the argument step-by-
step, not because the core of the reasoning is otherwise difficult to
discern, or because of any “technical difficulties” that need to be
pinpointed (although in fact some interesting subtleties have been
consistently overlooked by commentators, including the rather
basic fact that the Athenian actually presents four distinguishable
arguments rather than one), but primarily because this is essential
to our present purpose of investigating the argument’s relation to the
subsequent myth. Examination of the argument is worthwhile also
for the following reasons: first, spelling out the argument reveals the
key role of deilia (lack of spirit, faint-heartedness, cowardice—the
opposite of andreia) in the passage, a notion that is of importance
for Plato’s conception of justice in a manner not made clear in his
“classical” treatment of the topic in Republic IV; second, this is Plato’s
only explicit argument linking the notion of good gods who set the
cosmos at large in order (as shown in the Athenian’s anti-atheist,
“cosmological” argument, Laws 893b–899d), and gods who tend
to the execution of human justice.11
First stage:
1. The gods have the job of managing the cosmos as a whole.
(Previously established in the anti-atheist section; see esp. 900b–d.)
2. Properly taking care of something as a whole requires taking
care of the details or parts of the thing (as established by epagôgê
or “induction” from various crafts, all of which require attention
to detail.)
3. Human affairs, including reward and punishment of good and
evil, are among the details of cosmic management. (This is taken
for granted here, although not yet with emphasis on the smallness
of humans in the grand scheme of things.)
4. Therefore the gods have the job of caring for human affairs,
including reward and punishment of good and evil.
The interesting feature of this stage of the argument is its
assumption that managing the universe is a kind of craft. This
11
These additional aspects of the argument, and especially the last, deserve
serious attention; but that will have to take place “some other time,” as Euthyphro
said to Socrates.
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 Word and Image in Plato
notion is important again in the next stage—as it is, for example,
in the Timaeus, Sophist, and Philebus—and also in two of the more
elliptical arguments following this main one (see below).
Having a certain task is not the same as performing it, however.
Nonetheless, at this point the Athenian might have simply asserted
that the gods, being good, will not fail to perform their tasks.
Instead, he constructs a more elaborate argument, first enumerating
the reasons why any agent might fail to perform his assigned task,
then arguing that none of these could apply to the gods (901b–902a).
Second Stage:
5. The gods will take care of the details of their job unless
they are either a) unable to do so, b) ignorant of the fact that the
details matter, or c) neglectful of details through laziness, idleness,
indolence, self-indulgence, or sloth.
6. The gods are fully able, knowledgeable, and not neglectful.
7. Therefore the gods do in fact take care of human affairs.
Structurally this stage recalls the Republic’s “argument by
elimination” (of three possible reasons) that the gods are not deceivers
(382c–e). And like Socrates in the Republic, the Athenian provides
refutations for each of the three alternatives to be ruled out. The
last of these arguments is of particular importance here:
8. The gods are good with respect to all virtue (including
andreia, 900d).
9. Laziness, negligence, sloth, softness, lack of determination,
and the like are all forms of, or at least entail, deilia (weakness of
spirit, faint-heartedness, or cowardice).12
10. The gods lack all deilia (because they possess the virtue of
andreia—strength of spirit, stout-heartedness, courage).
11. Therefore the gods cannot be indolent, easily discouraged,
afraid of a challenge, or in any way faint of heart.
12
In a manner reminiscent of Diotima’s geneology of erôs in the Symposium
(203b), the Athenian supports this premise of the sub-argument by giving
a comparatively more elaborate “lineage” of deilia: rathumia (negligence,
heedlessness) is the offspring of [hence presupposes] argia (laziness) and truphê
(softness); argia is the offspring of deilia; therefore rathumia is the grandchild of
deilia (901e).
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Word and Image in Plato
the Laws, the point is not just that the gods ought to perform their
own proper job—which obviously fits the Republic definition of
justice—but that they have the requisite andreia to carry out their
work: they manifest none of the forms of deilia that might prevent
this.
IV. LAWS X: MYTH AND ARGUMENT
Having by dint of this argument forged a link between the gods
as lords of the cosmos as a whole and the gods as overseers of human
justice, and thereby “forced” the impious listener to agree that the
gods do tend to human justice, the Athenian adds his “charming
myths” in order to persuade him. The main features of the content
of the myth are these: 1) souls are immortal, inhabit various bodies,
and receive justice in between incarnations and perhaps in this life
as well; 2) justice is inescapable and impartial; 3) the gods guarantee
human justice through a system of upward and downward motions
of souls to better or worse places and to the company of better or
worse souls; 4) humans bear responsibility for the fate of their own
souls; 5) individual human souls are important to the gods and to
the just cosmos only as very small parts of the larger whole, and
not as anything like the offspring, favorites, etc., of the gods. Points
2, 3 and 5 are most directly depicted in the myth’s central image
of human souls as tiny anonymous specks moving up and down
against a vast cosmic backdrop.
The project of tracing the various ways in which the preceding
argument, the yet earlier anti-atheist argument, and one or two bits of
deduction within the myth section itself combine to provide rational
grounds, direct or indirect, for each of the five principles just listed
would be of some interest for some readers, tedious in the extreme
for others, and in any case too much to carry out in detail here.
For present purposes it will suffice to emphasize a small number of
specific but far-reaching points at which these arguments support the
myth. This will provide an adequate basis for appreciating both the
Philosophic Character,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (1987), 325–350,
and “Philosophos Agonistes: Imagery and Moral Psychology in Plato’s Republic,”
Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (1997), 327–354.
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Richard Patterson
There is much to be said about this entire line of argument,
including the fact that it is followed by three further arguments, all
of which seem to have vanished, Atlantis-like, in the great ocean of
Platonic commentary.13 But the Athenian’s main argument is easily
the most fully and carefully constructed of the lot. The sub-argu-
ment featuring deilia (8–11) is especially important in its own right
for the implied addition, or at least clarification, to the Republic’s
theory of justice. If justice is a matter of doing one’s own job and
not meddling in anyone else’s (Republic IV 433–434), there is an
important connection between justice and andreia that Socrates
leaves almost entirely implicit in Republic IV: justice in the city
requires andreia not just because the soldiers/auxiliaries need it to
do their job, but because it is essential whenever anyone—philoso-
pher-king, sailor, shoemaker—needs determination, perseverance,
endurance, or courage of any sort (moral, intellectual, or “physical”)
in order to perform his or her job. Socrates does indicate in a variety
of ways throughout the Republic that philosophers in particular need
andreia, but he does not make this part of his “official” exposition
of the basic virtues in Book IV.14 For the Athenian’s purposes in
13
These arguments are less fully worked out than the one just discussed. In
fact it looks as though the Athenian is fairly peppering the wayward soul with
quick indications of why the gods will not fail to take care of human justice as a
part of their proper work. One of these arguments turns on the idea that humans
are the possessions of the gods (at 902b; cf. Phaedo 62b–c), and the gods will
take proper care of what belongs to them. A second uses the concept of deilia,
but in a very different way than the main argument: the gods take care of the
big aspects of the cosmos, and since the details of the job—including human
justice—are by comparison easy, a fortiori they will not neglect them as a lazy
or negligent human workman might (902e–903a). (The main argument makes
no assumption that the details of a job are always easier than its larger aspects,
and in some cases surely this is just not so.) A third argument is awkwardly
sandwiched around the second: the gods are just as good at their work as a good
human craftsman; the latter does not neglect the details of his work; therefore
neither will the former. This use of the gods as craftsmen harmonizes better with
the main argument than does the deilia argument just described, in that it makes
no assumption that the details are bound to be comparatively easy; but it makes
no use of the notions of andreia and of deilia. The presence of all this “extra”
material—superfluous in light of the main argument—is perhaps due in part to
the unfinished state of the Laws, and probably reflects various lines of argument
that Plato at least took under consideration at some point.
14
On the importance of andreia in Plato’s moral psychology, and for his
conception and depiction of the philosophic life, see R. Patterson, “Plato on
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Richard Patterson
power of the myth’s central image and the fact that the myth draws
its cognitive and emotive power primarily from the way in which
it visually captures, integrates, and focuses a series of philosophical
ideas and their underlying rational grounds—as opposed to simply
presenting pictorially and emotionally compelling images to the
philosophically naïve misbeliever.
The single most striking feature of the Athenian’s myth, consid-
ered in light of Plato’s other eschatological myths, is the repeated,
emphatic subordination of individual human fates to a much larger
and more important cosmic design.15 This is not inconsistent with,
say, the cosmology of the Timaeus, where newly-created human souls
“dart up” to their appointed stars and descend into bodies. And it
is true that human souls are left anonymous—as in the Laws—in
some of Plato’s other eschatological myths. But Timaeus devotes a
good half of his account to the design of the human body; moreover,
although the materials used in constructing the human soul are less
pure than those used in the World-Soul, he asserts that some few
humans can, along with the gods, attain to knowledge of reality
(51e). By contrast, although the Athenian adopts Timaeus’ view of
the gods as craftsmen, he radically deflates the Timaeus’ impression
of the role of humans in the grand scheme of things by a decisive
shift of emphasis: from a cosmic perspective, the oversight of human
affairs is only one small detail of the craft-gods’ cosmic duties.16
The myth symbolizes and drives home the point by representing
humans as faceless, nameless, utterly minute (pansmikron) specks
moving silently to their appointed locations in a kind of cosmic
moral space.17
15
Cf. Richard Stalley, “Myth and Eschatology in the Laws,” in Plato’s Myths,
ed. Catalin Partenie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 198,
though with emphasis on the unified systematicity of the universe rather than
the smallness of the human role within that system.
16
This is not to say that there is no change from the Timaeus other than one
of emphasis. I leave that subtle question almost entirely aside in what follows.
17
The Athenian supports this central image with the strikingly Heracleitean
figure of the gods’ oversight of human justice as a kind of board game. As Charles
Kahn observes, The Art and Thought of Heracleitus (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, l979), 227, “the fundamental thought is not the childlike and
random movements of the game . . . but the fact that these moves follow a definite
rule.” The board game image also reinforces the conception of individual human
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 Word and Image in Plato
If this is the myth’s most distinctive feature, its most crucial and
probably most controversial assumption is that of individual survival
(and presumably, immortality; 903d, 904e) along with punishment
and reward beyond this world. Certainly our own misbeliever does
not accept any such thing. Having introduced self-moving motion in
the preceding, anti-atheist section, and identified such motion with
soul, the Athenian could now have appealed to the sort of argument
for the everlastingness of self-moving motion Socrates presents to
young Phaedrus in the Phaedrus (245c–246a). The Athenian offers
no such argument, but only a fragment of an argument (although one
that will for some readers recall the Phaedrus; see esp. Laws 904a).
In any event, Clinias and Megillus appear to regard this fragment
as convincing not because they understand it, but only because they
trust the Athenian. (Regarding this faith in the Athenian and his
reasoning, see 892d–893a.)
However, the larger context provides significant and more
readily grasped, even if indirect, rational grounds for accepting
individual survival. In short, survival of the soul should appear to
the misbeliever as a means of reconciling his longstanding belief in
the gods with 1) the conclusion which the Athenian’s argument has
just forced him to accept—that the gods oversee human justice—
and 2) his belief that wicked people sometimes escape punishment
in this life. Nowadays one might say that once his initial explana-
tion of the injustice he thinks he observes (“the gods don’t tend to
human affairs”) has been ruled out by the Athenian’s argument,
an alternative explanation based on individual survival and punish-
ment in the hereafter becomes for our misbeliever part of the “best
explanation” of how certain apparently irreconcilable statements
can after all be true together. Of course this is not to say that he
consciously frames the matter in terms of an “inference to the best
explanation.” The point is that the Athenian’s vision allows a basically
souls as individually insignificant and, in their anonymity, as receiving impartial
treatment in accordance with the rules. One disanalogy is that the pieces in a
board game are entirely passive in their movements, whereas the Athenian seems
to agree with the divine decree testified to by Er in Republic X: it is not the gods,
but humans themselves, who are responsible for their fate. What the gods are
responsible for is the overall, just system.
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Word and Image in Plato
justice would be as “natural” as punishment of hubris via the atê
(rashness, loss of good sense, as in rash overreaching) to which
overweening arrogance naturally gives rise.18 Consequently, just as
atê can be seen as the natural psychological mechanism by which
“pride goeth before a fall,” so the natural tendency of bad people
to treat others badly and to consort with other bad people would
be a built-in mechanism by which wickedness is punished in this
life. But it must be admitted that from the point of view of our
misbeliever, this view is not likely to win out over the evidence of his
own eyes and the testimony of the poets and others concerning the
earthly prosperity of the wicked—at least, not without a great deal
of further persuading of the sort one finds in the Republic, but not
in the Laws. As the Athenian himself acknowledges, it sometimes
looks very much as if the wicked have quite a good time of it in this
life (899d–900c). The upshot is that the picture of divine justice
which would from the misbeliever’s own point of view be the most
reasonable—given the Athenian’s argument—is precisely that which
the Athenian most conspicuously addresses to him in the myth,
namely, individual survival and divine justice in the hereafter.
V. THE CHARMS OF THE CHARMING MYTH
Such are the main features of the myth and the rational grounds
for its most controversial aspect. The Athenian now adds certain
mythical “charms”—by which the Athenian intends at a minimum
some sort of power to persuade via means other than argument.19
18
No doubt the notion of reward and punishment in this life will appeal to
some readers of the Laws, and especially to readers of the Republic. This would
open up the possibility of taking metaphorically the Athenian’s talk of souls
moving up and down in the great hereafter, or as simply symbolizing the notion
that birds of a feather flock together. This, too, would be more congenial to
some readers than a story of literal survival of the soul. What the misbeliever
thinks, however, may be quite another matter. Notice in this connection that the
Athenian’s rewards in Laws X, are “consequentialist”; they are not the “intrinsic”
benefits of justice that are Socrates’ (and Glaucon’s) first order of business in the
Republic.
19
There is little or nothing further to be gained by looking at Plato’s more
general use of “logos” and “mythos” in the corpus. See, e.g., Robert Zaslavsky’s
collection of passages in Platonic Myth and Platonic Writing (Washington, DC:
University Press of America, l981). His catalogue is not complete (it omits, for
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Richard Patterson
good person who does believe in the gods and their goodness to see
clearly how certain apparently conflicting facts of life can after all
add up coherently, and in such a way as to avoid the repugnant, but
previously inevitable-seeming, conclusion that the gods do nothing
to guarantee human justice.
But this does raise the question of whether he should accept
this as the best explanation. One important alternative would be
that wickedness is punished and virtue rewarded in this life, so
that individual immortality is simply not needed for the execution
of justice, and the apparent prosperity of the wicked in this life is
a mere illusion. Neither Plato nor the Athenian could blame our
misbeliever for finding this option dubious at best, since it flies in
the face of compelling first-hand evidence and the testimony of
weighty traditional authorities. In the Republic, where the position is
nonetheless explicitly advocated, Socrates gives it the kind of careful
and lengthy defense necessary to make it even remotely plausible.
Laws X, however, contains no such defense.
The Athenian does appear nonetheless to endorse precisely a
“punishment in this life” position in the course of his earlier descrip-
tion of the origin of our second type of impious belief: the lives of
the wicked are not really happy, no matter how extravagantly they
may be praised as such (899e). More important is a striking passage
from the myth itself:
This is the sentence of the gods that dwell upon
Olympus—to go to join worse souls as you grow
worse and better souls as you grow better, and alike
in life and all the deaths you suffer, to do and have
done to you according to the standard that birds of
a feather naturally apply among themselves. (904e;
trans. Saunders)
Especially interesting is the passage’s identification of a natural
mechanism for bringing about justice in this life: if bad people
naturally keep company in this life with other bad people, and if
bad people treat other people badly, then bad people will, as is just,
be treated badly themselves in this life. Such a means of securing
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Richard Patterson
Since the persuasiveness of a given bit of discourse is, as Socrates
emphasizes in the Phaedrus, dependent on its appropriateness to
a particular sort of auditor (271b–d), we must consider how the
Athenian’s myth might have the power to charm our specific sort of
misbeliever. Specifically, if the latter has just agreed to the conclusion
of the argument, and hence to the error of his belief, what exactly
is the myth supposed to accomplish? The most reasonable answer
would seem to be that the Athenian wants not just a “forced”
acknowledgment (903b) of divine providence, but ungrudging
acceptance of the truth about the gods, along with appropriate
moral or religious feeling toward the gods and their cosmic system
of justice. The argument can lay the groundwork for this, but
evidently cannot be relied on to accomplish the entire job by itself.
First, the argument prepares the way for the myth, psychologi-
cally as well as intellectually. As a psychologically preparatory step,
it removes the misbeliever’s very reasonable scruples about accepting
any vision of evenhanded and inescapable divine justice. Since he
starts out thinking he has good reason to believe that many great
sinners leave this world unpunished, he would—and should—in the
absence of the Athenian’s argument, find the myth a nice enough
vision of how things ought to be, but in fact just so much wishful
thinking. By first forcing the misbeliever to agree that the gods
do tend to human justice, the argument makes it psychologically
possible for him to take the myth seriously, and even to accept it
with a clear intellectual conscience. His yielding to the appeal of the
Athenian’s mythical vision, if and when he does yield, is no longer a
matter of seductive pictorial imagery or elevated diction attempting
by extra-rational means to disarm a perfectly reasonable disbelief
concerning divine justice.
As for its persuasive charms, the myth can on that basis make
use of the results of the argument—both its conclusion and its
psychologically preparatory effect—to address the misbeliever’s
misguided resentment (complaining, grumbling; aganakteis, 903d1)
at the gods’ presumed neglect of human justice. Even the Athenian’s
example, our passage from Laws X), but he is right that there is no consistent
pattern of usage, even among passages that expressly contrast logos with mythos,
that might establish any one specific definition of “myth” or any uniform
distinction between myth and logos in Plato. Context is all.
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 Word and Image in Plato Richard Patterson

form of direct address contributes to this effect. Up to this point
(903c) he has addressed his auditor politely as “My good sir” or
the like (e.g., Ariste, 902a); now he rebukes him as “wretched”
or “headstrong” (Schetlie . . . ,” 903c). The good but mistaken
admonishee must appreciate that he is only one tiny (pansmicron,
903c) part of the cosmic scheme; he must remember (for he has
forgotten, se te lelethen) that he exists only for the sake of the whole.
Above all he must see that the source of his resentment, far from
finding just cause in the negligence of the gods, is in fact entirely
the result of his own ignorance of the true state of affairs: the gods
not only see to it that the wicked receive punishment, but do so in a
manner that benefits the whole of the cosmos and therefore benefits
him (903c–d).20 The gods’ lack of personal concern for humans
as individuals, and the absence of the personally motivated sort of
divine intervention so prominent in the plots of traditional epic and
tragedy, are not a reflection of divine indifference to human justice.
On the contrary, the impersonality of the gods’ system is in fact far
more appropriate to evenhanded justice, in a way clearly displayed in
the myth’s central image, than are any presumed ties of enmity or
kinship between gods and humans. So the myth calls for a reversal
of the misbeliever’s complaining attitude and provides a positive
vision in which he can believe—given, again, the groundwork laid
by the argument.
At the same time the myth directly confronts the misbeliever’s
great sticking point, the apparent worldly prosperity of the wicked.
In this he had seen, “as in a mirror” (905b), the indifference of the
gods to human justice. The argument had offered nothing directly
to replace either this way of looking at the apparent iniquities of the
human world, or the mistaken attitudes and feelings about the gods
to which such belief gives rise. It had simply forced the misbeliever to
agree to a conclusion that seemed to conflict with the observed facts
of life. But again the myth exploits the results of the argument to
bring about a transformation both of perspective and of feeling; this
it achieves by providing a “look” at the world through a corrective
20
Presumably justice in the cosmos as a whole benefits our impious friend as
well because what is good for the whole is what promotes justice for all, and this
is good for good people, even if they do not understand any of this, and even if
in their ignorance they go so far as to complain about a lack of divine justice.
image wherein supposedly unpunished wickedness appears not as a
reflection of divine neglect but rather as part of a larger system that
does in due time apportion justice in accordance with the wisdom
of the gods.
This cognitive and affective change is of paramount importance
for understanding the role of the myth. For a willing acceptance of
the Athenian’s vision of divine justice promotes the sort of religious
attitude and feeling appropriate to the gods as correctly conceived.
These are not the attitudes, or religious or moral sentiments, that
would be appropriate to gods too high and mighty to bother with
human justice, or to gods who at any time might intervene in human
affairs on the basis of family ties or grand sacrifices (“bribes”), or to
gods who behave towards humans on the basis of personal grudges,
jealousy, or lust. Our corrected and chastened believer now believes
in, but also appropriately fears and worships the gods as orderers
of the universe and guarantors of impartial, if impersonal, human
justice. This becomes a matter of the believer’s piety, where that
consists not just in correct belief (and behavior), but also in proper
feeling and attitude toward the gods and toward the place of human
justice in the larger cosmos.
Put slightly differently, the Athenian’s approach in Laws X is
much the same as Socrates’ in Republic IX—and Plato’s through-
out the corpus. Just as Socrates constructs an image of the soul
as composed of a human, a lion, and a many-headed monster,
all covered over by a human exterior, in order to reveal starkly
and forcefully what it is that the advocate of the life of tyranny is
advocating (i.e., turning over the soul to the monstrous beast), so
the Athenian’s positive image allows a certain sort of believer to
“see” the implications of what he affirms when he agrees to the
conclusion of the argument—the implications, that is, given his
already firm belief in the reality and goodness of the gods. And
just as Socrates’ image encourages one to recoil from the prospect
of giving mastery of the soul over to its monstrous, many-headed
“appetitive” part, so the Athenian provides a cosmic image that
encourages proper reverence and even awe of the gods—and of the
vast, orderly, and just cosmos over which they preside, and of which
we are one small part.

— 453 — — 454 —

Word and Image in Plato

This brings us finally to a general moral applicable to all of

Plato’s myths and images, even if that moral does not apply to the
same degree in every case. A Platonic image typically conveys a set
of important ideas by integrating the results of philosophical, and
sometimes quite extensive, discussion. In many cases it is this very
incorporation and integration of rational considerations into a clear,
simple, readily grasped visual image—rather than the production
of colorful, fearful, or seductively pleasing verbal pictures—that
constitutes the main source of the image’s impact, where that impact
is at once cognitive and affective.
Again, the more properly visual features of the image itself will
do more of the work in some cases than in others. But speaking
generally, the philosophical image must be suitable for receiving,
integrating and effectively conveying any philosophical logoi associ-
ated with it, and must at the same time serve as an effective vehicle
for whatever emotion or attitude, if any, is appropriate to the truth
it conveys. Where both goals are important, the image must of
course be fashioned so as to serve both purposes simultaneously.
It is difficult to think of any philosopher who is even a worthy
competitor to Plato on this front. In Laws X the Athenian manages
to imbue his central image with meanings cosmological, moral, and
theological—meanings drawn from much previous argumentation
and discussion. In light of his arguments against the atheist and
then against the particular sort of misbeliever discussed here, the
myth’s visual restraint, along with its solemn tone (especially in the
Decree of the Gods, 904e–905d, quoted in part above), make it
particularly “suitable for mature audiences.” For such an audience,
the myth’s deliberate exclusion of “old wives’ tales,” its single-minded
attention to the visual condensation of a series of philosophical
logoi into a simple, powerful image of divine justice, make it all
the more effective. And the religious awe, reverence, or fear to be
experienced in contemplation of the Athenian’s image will be of a
sort appropriate to divinities who maintain order in the vast cosmos
as a whole and, as one small part of that work, guarantee justice
among human beings.21
21
Thanks to Cathal Woods and Vassilis Karasmanis for helpful comments on
earlier versions of this paper, and above all to Charles Kahn—teacher, friend, and
revelator of ancient wisdom.

— 455 —