Plato’s Tragicomic Ascent

Abstract

This article explores the richly visual vocabulary characteristic of the Platonic corpus. Focusing on Plato’s linkage of seeing and knowing, it will explore a two-fold paradox: first, that the soul’s ascent is consistently depicted as a painful matter by Plato; and second, that it customarily involves some emphatically bodily mechanics. These textual and rhetorical details may, in their turn, call for a significant re-thinking of several truisms regarding Platonic spirituality and “Platonic love.” Four revisions follow. First, Platonic philosophy was not radically dualistic. Second, it was not aggressively rationalist, and secularist, informed by a blanket opposition to myth, to poetry, and to religious images. Third, it aspired to illumination without breezily claiming to bathe in that light. And fourth, it embraced and ennobled the ecstatic transport vouchsafed to embodied creatures by eros, that subtle species of desire that was, if not divine, then surely sublime.

1. Introduction

In this essay, I would like to highlight Plato’s overlapping interests in tragedy, comedy and the erotic, particularly as these relate to his complex understanding of what it would mean for the human soul, or something like it, to “ascend.” What I wish to highlight is the significant blurring of what can too easily be taken as fairly standard dichotomies in Plato’s work: pain and pleasure, on the one hand; body and soul, on the other. In linking these two dichotomies, we may notice that it is uncertain whether pain and pleasure should be assigned more to the body or to the soul. Much depends on the kind of pains and pleasures in question, as well as—and this is one crux of the matter—the kind of desires to which one aspires.

The essay takes aim at assumptions that continue to work against a productive reading of the Platonic corpus. According to the caricature, Plato’s excessive body–soul dualisms inspired his denigration of the body, its appetites and its demands. Plato’s hierarchical dualisms are assumed to have taken other forms as well, inspiring a rigid rationalism that allows no real place for poetry, passion, imagination, or religious vision. And his alleged moral elitism is taken to suggest that spiritual or soulful ascent was impossible for most, yet almost magically available to the philosopher. This way of reading Plato likely began in the Neoplatonic period inspired by Plotinus (d. 270 CE) and it culminates in the devastating polemics of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). I deeply admire both thinkers, and by reading Plato through them, have identified some conceptual revisions that may help us to read Plato differently.

There are two obvious ways of grappling with this persistent caricature. The first is to rehearse a history of (mostly modern) scholarship on Plato that attempts to subvert the caricature. The second is to let Plato speak, however ventriloquistically, for himself. While I will acknowledge a number of scholars who have profoundly informed my own views, I will focus my attention in this essay on Plato’s own artful meditations: not on dualism, but rather on in-between-ness; not on rationalism, so much as on myth-making; not on the breezy achievement of enlightenment, but rather on the tragicomic aspiration to ascent. What I hope to underscore in this essay will involve a two-fold paradox: first, that the soul’s ascent is consistently depicted as a painful matter by Plato; and second, that it customarily involves some emphatically bodily mechanics. These textual and rhetorical details may, in their turn, call for a significant re-thinking of several truisms regarding Platonic spirituality and the erotic foundations of philosophy.

2. Visual Knowing

To come to see is to come to know; that is a truism of the Greek language, where the Greek term, oida, means “I know,” but in the quite literal visual sense of saying “I have seen.” Plato plays on that semantic point consistently throughout his philosophical oeuvre. In so doing, he raises the enormously complex and subtly layered question of what would be necessary in order for us to see well, rather than to see poorly. He makes extensive use of the language of “shadows” in order to make this blurring plain.

The difficulty of seeing well, of course, may be related to the partially aesthetic difficulty of knowing how to “read” images—that is to say, the difficulty of knowing how to interpret statues, or paintings, or photos, or films, or anything else in the vast visual landscape that human beings currently inhabit. This is one of the central challenges of humanistic enquiry, past and present: the task of visual interpretation. As I hope to show, Plato represents a significant interlocutor in this long tradition of literary exegesis and visual hermeneutics. As I also hope to demonstrate, Plato is acutely aware that the task of the interpreter is made much more difficult when we think that we already know what we are seeing, before we really look. To say oida may be reduced to a dogmatic claim, “I know,” when it is issued before one has taken the time to look. In short, it can be hard to filter out the interpretive noise that surrounds us in everyday life, and so to look at the images that draw our attention and interest afresh.

Plato thought a great deal about the difficulty of interpreting images, and he worried that the so-called arts of imitation (mimêsis) may create false images as well as true ones. Securing the standards of judgment that might enable us to distinguish one from the other is difficult to do; addressing this interpretive difficulty is an essential part of the work of “philosophy” as Plato understood and practiced it. However, if we fail to look carefully, then it is easy to fall prey to the casual notion that Plato was hostile to all images—and all poetry, for that matter—because they were all nothing more than demoted expressions and misleading copies, poor imitations of better originals. This simplification is related to the belief that Plato himself was a rigidly dualistic and hierarchical thinker, one who privileged the “really real” over “appearances,” and who privileged spiritual things over bodily things. I should be quick to admit that Plato says a great many things that lend themselves to that impression… until we look more closely at what he actually says, the language that he uses most artfully and repeatedly, and the very curious ways in which he so often says such things. Bringing that rhetorical strategy into view is the primary task before me in this essay.

Plato plays artfully with a complex vocabulary of images, icons and idols. In fact, his word for what scholars refer to as “the forms”—eidos, and also idea, both terms derived from the Greek root for seeing—as well as a host of other terms for images (like eikôn, and eidôlon, and phantasma) are all intensely visual. And his notion of theôria—a term related in ancient popular language both to the gods (theoi), and to vision (thea)1—highlights the visuality of his overarching philosophical concerns.

Plato also ponders artfully on the subtle interface between material bodies and the souls that animate the sentient ones. This playful dance of dualisms culminates in the Statesman,2 where we witness a confusing second Socrates observe that his interlocutor “seems to have caught sight of something strange” (eoikas gar atopon ti kathoran) (Statesman 291b).3 As we come to see, it is his anonymous and strange interlocutor—not Socrates—who is the radical dichotomist in this dialogue, incessantly cutting up everything into two’s, and two’s, and two’s again (Statesman 262d–282b). Taking the paradox of dualism to its extreme, then, Plato appears coyly to suggest that there are two kinds of philosophers in the world: those who think that there are two kinds, and those who do not. This is not necessarily sophistry, if it is subtly rendered and handled with care. There are, after all, other types, namely, those who see why the dichotomists and their opponents see things the way they do. There are, in fact, two Socrates’ in the Statesman: our stalwart philosopher and another young man by the same name. Our stalwart begins by thanking Theodorus for introducing him to Theaetetus and the Stranger (or Guest, xenos) from Elea. “You will soon owe me threefold (triplasian),” Theodorus smirks, “when these two have worked out the statesman and the philosopher” (Statesman 257a). If two can make three (or more). and if two can create false equivalences (like the two Socrates’), then we may need a sort of mathematics that goes beyond calculation and geometry. In the end, both Socrates’ appear to be on the side of the non-dichotomizers in this dialogue.4

The Eleatic Guest stands on the other side. He begins by asserting that created beings (ta gigomena) may be divided into two types: soulless (apsycha) beings; and ensouled (empsycha) ones (Statesman 261b). His stated intention is to focus on bodies with souls. He curiously analogizes his work of dichotomous intellectual dissection to cutting (which is to say, killing and butchering) “some sacrificial animal” (hoion hiereion) by rending it “limb from limb” (kata melê) (Statesman 287c; see also Phaedrus 265e). And he refers to these skinned and sacrificial animals somewhat ominously as “ensouled bodies” (empsychôn sômatôn), implying that the have indeed been killed in the process (Statesman 288e). The questions posed by the Guest’s incessant dualisms, for my purposes in this essay, are several, involving both visual idioms and conceptions of the soul. How are we to determine which of two images is preferable? What constitutes an idol, or an icon, in the first place? When we look at images, how are we to determine an original from a copy? And when we turn to the image of “ensouled bodies,” which part is preferable: the body or the soul? These are impossible questions to answer, or at the very least unhelpful ones, when they are posed in such rigidly dualistic ways. And it bears noting that the last question only comes into view when a body has been severed limb from limb, that is, when the body is untethered from the soul. Such dissection kills the object of its interest. The creation of the dichotomy is what presents the philosophical problem, and we should note that even the Eleatic Guest admits that a thoroughgoing bisection (dicha) is impossible for us to achieve (adunatoumen, Statesman 287c), when describing the kinds of cutting in which both he and the hierophant engage.

The discussion depicted in the Statesman is presented as following upon an earlier discussion with this same Guest that was depicted in the Sophist.5 In that dialogue, Socrates begins with a fascinating observation: philosophers are even harder to see than the gods because they appear in so many different forms (houtoi pantoioi phantazomenoi). Furthermore, it is difficult to know how to establish a clear division between the sophist (sophistên), the statesman (politikon), and the philosopher (philosophon). Socrates even wonders whether the Eleatic Guest and his people consider these various characters as one type, or two, or three (Sophist 216c–217b). Despite the fact that the Guest insists that he considers them threefold, he engages in more dichotomous reasoning to try to get hold of them. The whole dialogical set up is complex, subtle, and very strange. The Guest will engage in a dialogue with a single interlocutor, Theaetetus, so that the plural audience is reduced to a pair. If Theaetetus tires of the enquiry, then he will be replaced by another individual, literally by a second Socrates, a young man of Theaetetus’s own age who accompanies him at the gymnasium and shares his more famous elder’s name. Doubling and pairing, so it would seem, are everywhere (Sophist 217c–218b).

And that is what the Eleatic Guest once again consistently displays: the relentless and repetitive division of things into twos. He starts by defining an angler, as a very specific subset of a hunter of animals, which are yet again defined as “ensouled living beings” (empsychôn zôiôn, Sophist 220a). Next, the Guest coyly observes, in a manner that may surprise many readers of the Synoptic gospels, that sophists actually are essentially “fishers of men” (Sophist 221d).6 Further doubling divisions ensue: hunting land animals rather than sea animals; hunting tame animals rather than wild ones; hunting by force (biaion, such as in piracy, kidnaping, tyranny and war) versus hunting by persuasion (pithanourgikên, such as in law courts, public platforms and general conversation, Sophist 222c). And yet there is a third form of such human hunting, the kind in which lovers engage, and this erotic art (erôtikês technês) has an entirely different form (eidos) from the other two (Sophist 222e). While there are many further twists, turns, and distinctions (diakritikên) yet to be made, the argument runs aground when the two men attempt to cut the human being in two (dichêi temnein), that is, to divide it between the body (sôma) and the soul (psychê) (Sophist 227d–e). After a long aside on the concept of non-being, where the division into twos plays a lesser role, the Eleatic Guest concludes: “the complete separation (to dialuein) of each thing from everything else would be the end of all dialogue (teleôtatê pantôn logôn). For our speech (logos) hinges on the weaving together of various forms (allêlôn tôn eidôn sumplokên)” (Sophist 259e). Just as a sentence must weave nouns and verbs together (Sophist 262a), so human beings must weave the body and the soul. Indeed, it will be best to refer to a mortal being (thnêton zôion) as an “ensouled body” (sôma empsychon) or a “bodied soul” for this very reason (Sophist 246e).7 Some things, and they tend to be the most consequential things, are profoundly and indelibly mixed (summignusthai, Sophist 252e).8

Given the Eleatic Guest’s long discussion of motion and rest, we are meant to see that the issue lying behind these philosophical conundrums concerning mortal animals is, precisely, their mortality: that is, the fact of bodily death. Ever since the poetic portrayals of Homer, which can seem virtually canonical to Socrates much of the time,9 death in the Greek imagination had been depicted as the moment when the soul flies irreversibly past the mouth’s barrier, and the body becomes a stone. Death is what makes the question of the relationship between the body and the soul such an urgent one; it is the moment when something mixed, as well as sacred,10 is cut in two. And it is in this sense that Socratic philosophy has been recalled—sometimes in appreciation, sometimes in condemnation—as “a school for dying.” But this too is a matter of some complexity, as we shall see.

3. Laughing in the Face of Death

Recalling the day of his philosophical friend’s execution, Phaedo remembers something quite striking:

a very strange feeling (atechnôs atopon ti moi pathos) came over me, a bizarre mixture of pleasure (hêdonês) and pain (lupês)… and all of us were in the same condition, sometimes laughing (gelôntes), sometimes weeping (dakruontes).

(Phaedo 59a)11

In fact, the very first thing Socrates observes on this, his last day among them, speaks to this same paradoxical condition:

What a strange (hôs atopon) thing this so-called pleasure (hêdu) seems to be, my friends! How wondrous is its relation to what we tend to see as its opposite, pain (to lupêron)! They will not come to us both at the same time, but if we run after one of them and grasp it, we are immediately (schedon) compelled to grasp the other too; they are like two beings (du’onte) attached to one head (mias koruphês).

(Phaedo 60b).

Socrates was speaking specifically of the physical experience of having his shackles removed. We will meet this image again in one of the most memorable and much-discussed images in the entire Platonic corpus.

The strange mixture of emotions and sensations that should be easier to separate than they are preoccupied Plato a great deal, especially in the Middle Period, in his four “erotic” dialogues: Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, and Republic.12 Plato was fascinated by the way certain pains can be pleasurable, and certain pleasures (especially the intense ones) can actually cause pain. Erotic desire is the most pertinent example. Sappho famously called it glukupikron, or “sweet–bitter”:

Eros dêute m’ o lusimelês donei,

glukupikron amachanon orpeton

---

Eros the limb buckler once again shakes me,

sweetbitter and impossible predator13

So eros would seem for Plato as well (see Fagan 2013, pp. 21–44). Socrates’s friends loved him sweetly, and this love has committed them to a bitter loss. Yet they laugh as well as cry on this, their friend’s last day.

Thus, in the Middle Period, appropriately enough, and especially when taking up erotic topics, Plato was drawn to reflect on the space “in between” (metaxu) dichotomous extremes.14 Eros, perhaps most emphatically and dramatically, resides in the space between pleasure and pain. Plato considers this strangeness and hybridity very closely. In the Phaedrus (244a–245b),15 we learn that certain forms of madness are not irrational; rather, they are gifts from the gods—poetry and erotic love among the foremost. In the Republic (607b–608a),16 Socrates suggests that poetry is like a lover we know to be wrong for us; he suggests a “break-up” between philosophy and poetry… unless someone can speak in poetry’s defense. (He offers that defense himself, I believe, in the Phaedrus.) In the Symposium (223b–d),17 Socrates insists that the poet who writes comedy must write tragedy as well. Aristophanes (the comic poet) and Agathon (the tragic poet) drunkenly agree, as they nod off one by one. In this remarkably creative period, then, Plato invites us to think about that strange hybrid genre, tragicomedy,18 and the mixing of allegedly foreign elements: tears and laughter, pleasure and pain, body and soul. The Phaedo is precisely such a philosophical tragicomedy, in my view. In a great many of these dialogues, such contrasts are repeatedly mixed, with profound dramatic effects—and philosophical consequences. This fact will also demand a re-thinking of how we might best imagine the soul’s “ascent.”

4. Shadow-Boxing in Court

Plato believed that tragedy and comedy were engaged in a very delicate dance in the Athenian democracy of his own day19; thus, they play a very complicated role in the Apology. In addition to the three formal charges that had been brought against him, which amounted to a “religion and morals” charge (Apology 24b),20 Socrates observed that there was another set of three charges that were never formally brought forward, but the slander (hê emê diabolê) derived from them had done the most damage to his reputation: first, that he was not a wise man, just a wise guy; second, that he applied his wisdom to studying nonsense; and third, that he made the worse arguments sound better (Apology 19b). These charges should sound familiar. This is precisely the portrait of Socrates as the nutty professor that Aristophanes painted so dramatically, and so damningly, in the Clouds—yet another pregnant eidos.21 This comedy created long-lived gossip and slander, which were unjust precisely because rumor and slander are anonymous, so that they cannot ever be cross-examined. Fighting gossip or slander, Socrates suggested here in his own defense, is akin to “shadow-boxing” (skiamachein, Apology 18d). So the joke was on Socrates, even before this trial began. You cannot punch the clouds. In the Republic, Socrates will go so far as to claim that most cities are now ruled by shadow-boxers (skiamachountôn, Republic 520c). It is to the vast and complex role that shadows play in the Platonic account of seeing well that I would like to turn next. This will require a closer look at the Republic.

5. The Shadow Philosopher

Mention of these enemy “shadows” in the Apology will call the so-called Allegory of the Cave to many readers’ minds.22 I want to look more closely at the Cave Allegory in the Republic, in part because it is has been so influential on subsequent Platonisms, and also because I think its profound topsy-turvyness has not been adequately appreciated. In Books 5–7 of the Republic, Plato discusses his image of the philosophical theôros, whom I think we might best refer to—because of, rather than in spite of, its religious resonance—as a “seer.” A certain received philosophical truism would have us believe that the message of this allegory is fairly simple: most people are looking at poor copies, images of shadows rather than of light, and they falsely take such images to be real. Philosophers, who have looked up into the true light, see very different images, and know them to be the true ones. When they try to explain this to the people who are still looking at shadows, they are laughed at and, if they persist, then they may be killed. It is a delicate and difficult situation for everyone, especially for the philosophers, and the allegory paints a very dark picture, quite literally, of human beings and of the world they take themselves to see and to inhabit.

On a more positive note, Diotima’s ladder of erotic ascent in the Symposium, the account of the soul regaining its wings in the Phaedrus, as well as the Allegory of the Cave in the Republic, have all inspired a great deal of mystical literature and visionary poetry.23 I do not think that these inspirations are misguided, nor do I wish to discount the beauty of the imagery they have generated. But I do wish to highlight the apparent fact that Plato does not see such ascent as a philosophical reward, nor as a source of undistilled pleasure. It is rather uncertain, fungible, and incomplete. And it causes pain, albeit a pain that may please in its own strange ways. I propose to stage a closer reading of the Republic now, in order to highlight its unexpected and highly unusual ways of describing how we may hope to see clearly and what we may hope to know.

The Republic begins by making an explicit connection between vision and the divine. Socrates, we learn, has traveled to the Piraeus harbor because he wanted to see (boulomenos theasasthai) the new religious festival that they were celebrating for an important Thracian goddess named Bendis. The word he uses for seeing, theasasthai, echoes the divine subject (thea) he wishes to see and venerate, as well as the vision that will make that veneration possible. And so, after praying and looking (proseuxamenoi de kai theôrêsantes), Socrates and Glaukon moved to depart for home (Republic 327a). But they were seen (katidôn) from a distance by Polemarchos who, together with a band of others, force them to stay (Republic 327b). “Don’t you see (orais) how many we are?” Polemarchos asks the two friends (Republic 327c). Thus the question becomes whether they will be persuaded to stay, or forced to stay. Already the intermingled notions of rhetorical persuasion, brute physical force, and the virtue of justice have been raised, all of this taking place under the aegis of a new deity, who has come dramatically (and in nighttime shadows) to the city of Athens.

The persuasion is explicit, the threat of force implicit. The group of young devotees persuade Socrates and Glaukon to stay, since there will be further religious processions that night that will be worth seeing (axion theasasthai). Thus, if the two will agree to have dinner with the group, then they will go together to see (theasometha) the procession afterwards (Republic 328a). And so the group arrives at the home of Kephalus, Polemarchos’s father, whom Socrates had not seen (heôrakê) for quite some time (Republic 328c). He appears older and more frail, and so Socrates asks him how the passage of time has treated him, and specifically how things stand with “the things of Aphrodite” (namely, his sexual affairs). Like the aged Sophocles, Kephalus is thankful for no longer being shackled to the turmoils of emotional desire and physical appetite, that is, to eros the bittersweet24 (Republic 329b–c). Socrates notes that Kephalus also seems fairly indifferent to money, and this observation prompts a back-and-forth that issues in the first tentative offering of a definition of justice: “speaking the truth and giving back what one takes” (alêthê te legein kai ha an labê tis apodidenai, Republic 331d). While this phrase was made proverbial by Simonides, a notorious skinflint, a poet for hire, as well as “a wise and divine man” (Republic 331e),25 Socrates sets out to prove that it is wrong. Kephalus begs their leave, as he is required to return to attend the divine sacrifices, and his son will now serve as “heir” to the argument.

Predictably, Polemarchos is unable to withstand Socrates’s interrogation of the consistency of Simonides’s claims, nor of the next proposal, that justice consists in “helping friends and harming enemies” (ôphelein tous philous… blaptein de tous exthrous, Republic 334b). Much of this back-and-forth hinges on human beings’ tendency to make errors (hamartanousin), both in judgment and in action (Republic 334c). Unable to listen in silence any longer, Thraysmachus erupts into the dialogue, condemning both Socrates’s arguments and his character with gusto, and a violence that is no longer veiled. True to his own form, Thrasymachus offers a definition of justice that emphasizes force rather than persuasion: justice, he urges, just is “the advantage of the stronger” (to tou kreittonos ksumpheron, Republic 338c). The discussion which this new offer generates is strange and more difficult to follow, largely because Thrasymachus conflates his criticisms of Socrates’s reasoning with castigations of Socrates’s character, particularly his studied use of irony. There is a lot of truth in Thrasymachus’s observations about Socrates the man, somewhat less so about Socrates’s arguments. Still, the conversation falters and threatens to fall apart. Thrasymachus is increasingly angry and aggressive, feeling shame only when he is caught in inconsistencies that his intentional blustering has inevitably created (Republic 350d).

The conversation runs aground when it becomes unclear whether what they are proposing has rendered justice as a virtue (aretê) or as a vice (kakian) (Republic 348c). We turn now to the well-worn question with which Socrates appeared to be obsessed: namely, what constitutes the virtue-ness of the virtues. We might well expect him to use his tried-and-true examples now: the excellence of a cobbler, of a carpenter, of a doctor, and so on. Socrates does indeed gesture in this direction, but he also seizes upon some novel somatic ideas.

“Is there anything with which you can see other than eyes?

(esth’ hotôi an allôi idois ê opthalmous;)

Nothing at all.

(ou dêta).”

(Republic 352e)…

“Is there then a virtue of eyes as well?

(ar’ oun kai aretê ophthalmôn estin;)

They have a virtue, too.

(kai aretê)”

(Republic 353b)

In little more than one Stephanus page, Socrates runs this claim all the way to the conclusion that he needed to posit against Thrasymachus: namely, that “injustice is never more profitable than justice” (Republic 354a). But, Socrates admits, he has been distracted away from his original interest, which lay with defining what exactly justice is (to dikaion ho ti pot’ estin) (Republic 354b). For this line of enquiry, they will all need to start over, and Glaukon will take up the role of primary interlocutor. He proceeds by asking Socrates questions, rather than vice versa, and he tells the startling story of a shepherd named Gyges, who descends into a cave, finds a ring on a corpse that makes it impossible for him to be seen… and thus he is liberated to act with remarkable viciousness. Appearances seem to matter more than the substance of virtue, Glaukon suggests, hoping to elicit a better defense of justice from Socrates. For the man who cares more for appearances, Glaukon adds, the best social strategy is to surround himself with “a shadow-image of virtue” (skiagraphian aretês), and to ensure that people focus on that image, rather than on the vicious fox trailing behind him (Republic 365c).

Book One of the Republic reads very much like many of Plato’s early aporetic dialogues. We work through a series of failed definitions of a virtue, achieve the realization that it is not what we thought or hoped, and thus realize that we will need to find some other way to proceed. Rather than ending with this aporia, however, Plato proposes a new approach in Book Two, one reminiscent of the “second sailing” Socrates counseled in both the Apology and the Statesman. Their entire dinner discussion, Socrates now concludes, “was merely a prelude” (proomion, Republic 357a).26 But Socrates suggests a very strange new tack in Book Two. “The investigation (zêtêma) we are undertaking is no easy thing (ou phaulon), but rather one for a person who sees sharply (oksu blepontes),” he observes (Republic 368d). Since they are not so sharp-eyed, Socrates suggests, it may be better suited to their attempt to read a text written in small letters if they start by looking at the same text written in larger ones. “We all say (phamen),” he notes, that there is justice (dikaiosunê) for one single man as well as for a city (Republic 368e). But a city is bigger (meizon) than a man. So perhaps we should look for justice first in the city, where it will be easier to see, and then we can extrapolate it back into a person.

Thus their new goal will be to build “a city in words from the beginning” (tôi logôi ex archês poiêmen polin). Later, he will refer to his task as being that of “a painter of politics” (politeôn zôgraphos, Republic 501c) and “a myth-maker in words” (muthologoumen logôi, Republic 501e). Socrates expresses his hope that, “if we witness (theasaimetha) the coming to be of a city in words, then we shall see (idoimen) the coming to be of justice and injustice within it” (Republic 369a).27 What I want to emphasize here is that the analogy hinges on the possibility and the importance of “seeing sharply.” While I will not rehearse the fascinating details of this “city in words”—such as the need for “noble lies,” the collective sexual concourse between men and women, and especially the need for a guardian class to serve the interests of justice in the city—I wish to pick up the argument in Books Six and Seven, where the education-and-training of this guardian class of hegemons is addressed at greater length.

In Book Six, some well known Platonic dualisms appear to re-assert themselves. There are philosophical and non-philosophical types, and the guardians should be the former (Republic 484a–485a). As such, they must direct their care to eternal and unchanging things, not to everyday distractions (Republic 484b). In order to do so, they must not be blind (typhlon), but rather need to be sharp-eyed (oksu horônta). This, in turn, will enable them to fix their gaze on the truest things, much as painters (grapheis) fix their gaze on their models (Republic 484c–d). Next, Socrates distinguishes their philosophical nature (philosophôn physeôn) from their education—that is to say, the moral and intellectual formation which their natural talents should receive (Republic 485b). By nature, their attention is capacious, and directed to eternal verities. But most of all, this philosophical type of leader must possess the nature of a lover (ton erôtikon tou physei) and direct his or her care to the needs of whatever beloved (oikeion tôn paidikôn) is the object of their affection (agapan). Socrates here deploys the same erotic vocabulary of lover (the erastês) and beloved (the erômenos, or paidikos) so prominent in the Symposium and Phaedrus. The genuinely philosophical leader is here imagined as a lover who is as careful about his or her loves as he or she is caring for them (Republic 485c). Further echoes of the most explicitly erotic dialogues written in this same time period follow. The philosophical guardian must be easily teachable (eumathês), rather than dull and slow to learn (dusmathês, Republic 486c—echoing the Symposium). And this will require a good memory (mnêmonikên, Republic 486d—echoing the Phaedrus), as well as all the moral excellences (Republic 487a). If such persons can be found, and their natural virtues can be perfected through education (paideiai), together with experience born of age (hêlikiai), then they alone would be suited to rule the city.

When Adeiamantus observes that most people think “scholars in politics cut a sorry figure,”28 then Socrates replies very strangely indeed: “You ask me a question that requires an image (eikonos) for an answer” (Republic 487e)… “listen (akoue) to the image (eikonos) so that you may see (idêis) how I struggle to create them (hôs glischrôs eikazô) (Republic 488a).29

The problem, we soon learn, is that most people are vicious (ti poth’ ho polloi kakoi, Republic 490d), so that “we must see and understand (theasasthai) the corruption of the nature which settles upon most people (diollutai en pollois), but which a few (smikron) manage to escape” (Republic 490e). This seems a very clear example of the moral elitism with which Plato is often associated. The stakes of this discussion are raised when Socrates adds the chilling observation that the naturally talented, if poorly trained, are far more dangerous and capable of doing far more damage, than the mediocre (Republic 492a). In point of fact, the number of true philosophers is super small (pansmikron, Republic 496b). “Do you see (horais) any salvation (sôtêrian) for those of a philosophical nature?” he asks (Republic 494a).

As if in answer to that conundrum, we are confronted with the claim that there is something greater (meizon)30 than justice (Republic 504d). And that something greater, we are told, is “the form of the good” (hê to agathou idea, Republic 505a). One cannot define it, and it is hard to see clearly, but one may more easily say what its offspring are in images that look most like it (homoiotatos, Republic 506e). This claim inspires another long pass at the phenomenon of seeing and philosophical vision (Republic 507c–508a). The gist of the argument here is that there are things you can see, but not think, and that there are ideas which you can think, but not see (Republic 507c). Such seeing, Socrates suggests, is the most complicated sense, because it relies on three things, rather than two: the objects that are seen; the eyes that see them; and the light (to phôs) that makes the seeing possible. (No dualism here, we should note). The god who is lord of light is Hêlios, the Sun (Republic 508a). Both light (phôs) and vision (opsis) are indeed images of the sun (hêlioeidê), but they ought not be confused with the sun itself (Republic 509a). Now, if we were to extend this same metaphor to the soul (tês psychês), Socrates observes, then we may say that the soul apprehends and knows (enoêse te kai egnô) when it sees things in the light, but that it offers opinions about appearances (dokazei) when it looks in the dark (Republic 508d). The challenge is to secure some way of knowing that does more than see images (eikones) in shadow (skia); the goal is to see with the mind (dianoia, Republic 510e–511a). The conclusion to this long excursus on seeing results in a new distinction, between four different kinds of knowing. Listed in descending order of value, they are: reasoning (noêsin), understanding (dianoian), believing (pistin), and picture thinking (eikasian) (Republic 511e).

So ends Book Six. And yet, as Book Seven begins, we are treated to yet more picture thinking. “Let us make an image (apeikason31),” Socrates proposes, “of our human nature (hêmeteran physin) and how it receives an education (paideia)” (Republic 514a). Socrates proceeds to develop a very strange image, indeed, one that leaves Glaukon (and most of us) rather confused until near the end. It goes roughly as follows.

Human beings are like creatures who live in a cave (oikêsi spêlaiôdei). The cave is extremely deep, so they are all pretty much in the dark, but the entrance to the cave is very wide and some light appears to get in, albeit dimly. These people have been in the cave their whole lives, and worse still, they are shackled (en desmois) in such a way that they cannot move their legs or their heads, so that their gaze is fixed upon the back wall of the cave. The image becomes stranger still. The light comes “from a fire (pyros) burning far above and behind them” (Republic 514b). In between the fire and the shackled people there is an elevated road (metaxu de tou pyrou kai tôn desmôtôn epanô hodon), with a low wall (teichion) running along it, something like what puppeteers use in shadow-plays. Literally, Plato calls them wonder-workers (thaumatopoiois). And that is the central image here: shadow-plays, once again, the very thing that Socrates found so difficult to fight at his trial. At the end of this Cave Allegory, he will refer to justice in courtrooms as shadows of justice (tôn tou dikaiou skiôn) or else as shadows of the statues (agalmaton hôn hai skiai) that are paraded there (Republic 517e). It is worth recalling that sophists were also referred to as wonder-workers (thaumatopoiôn, Sophist 235b). But that discussion concluded with a rousing description of true images (eidôla) made by divine cause (daimoniai): “the phantasmata that come to us in dreams or that arise spontaneously by day, the shadow (skia) created when a darkness (skotos) interrupts the firelight (en tôi puri),… thereby creating an image (eidos)” (Sophist 266b–c). Are these the divine images our cave-bound compatriots are seeing now?

“I see (horô),” Glaukon tells Socrates. “Then see (hora) this too,” Socrates replies.

There are people all along this wall carrying all sorts of things, which they raise above the wall, statues (andriantas) of men and other animals made of stone and wood and all kinds of material; presumably (hoion eikos), some of the people are speaking while others are silent.”

“It’s a strange image (atopon eikona),” he said, “and strange prisoners (desmôtas atopous) you’re describing.”

“They’re like us (homoious hêmin),” I said.

(Republic 515a)

How, we are called to wonder, are we like shackled prisoners or cavemen? Simply put: because we are all in the dark; we see as poorly as they do.32 What we consider to be “the truth” (to alêthes) “is nothing other than the shadows (skias) of material things” (Republic 515c). This is unexpected: material things, as opposed to their shadows, constitute the real images in this allegory. Presumably, you would have to find a way out of the cave in order to be able to see that. The rest of Socrates’s word-picture is devoted to describing what happens when that happens: namely, when someone gets out of the cave.

Some passerby (we never know who) unshackles a person in the cave and forces him or her to turn around, to face the light. The language of force is repeated, three times, reminding us of the very beginning of the Republic. Naturally, the experience is painful (causing algos), and after an entire lifetime spent in darkness, the person does not want to look, at first. The prisoner is eventually dragged upward, out of the cave, and into the light. And as a result, at first, he or she cannot see anything. But after they acclimate (sunêtheias) to the light, they begin to see in a new way, in stages: first they ironically see shadows (skias), all over again; then they see images (eidôla); and finally they see actual things (auta, Republic 516a).33 And for whatever reason, they like what they are seeing now, more than what they saw in the cave. Once acclimated to the light outside of the cave, then, the person who can bear it feels a kind of happiness, or serenity (eudaimonizein), for the first time, and a kind of pity (eleein) for his or her fellow prisoners in the cave (Republic 516c). In short, the pain has become a pleasure.

Strikingly, Plato never suggests that this feeling of pity motivates the “enlightened” person to go back into the cave; Socrates is neither Buddha nor Bodhisattva. In fact, Plato says the opposite. When Odysseus visited the Underworld in Book 11 of the Odyssey, he met Achilles, among many other heroes and heroines (all of them repeatedly referred to as eidôla and phantasmata). Achilles informed Odysseus that the heroic code was an illusion, and that he would rather be a serf working someone else’s land, and still be alive, rather than to have all the glory in the world, but to be stuck in the cave of Hades (Odyssey 11.489–491).34 Socrates quotes that line in order to suggest that the “enlightened” person would, like Achilles, do anything to avoid returning to the cave. I imagine that Plato also expected his audience to recall Odysseus’s conclusion to his underworld visitation, one that was echoed to dramatic effect by Sophocles: “I see (horô) that we who are alive (zômen) are nothing more than images (eidôl’) or weightless shadow (kouphên skian)” (Ajax 125–126).35

Leaving these literary references aside, Socrates next suggests that we simply assume our novel visionaries do find themselves back in the cave again. For a start, they would presumably be blind as a bat. It would take them as long to acclimate to the darkness inside the cave as it had to acclimate to the light outside. And as I noted earlier, once they begin to tell their fellow prisoners what they remember (because they can no longer see it)—namely, that these shadows on the wall are shadows—then their fellow prisoners will scoff (gelôt’) for a while, but will kill (apokteinein) them if they persist in the story (Republic 517a).

At last, Socrates is in a position to tell Glaukon how he intended this word-picture to be understood; once again, he reminds Glaukon of his own wonder-working, by referring to it as an image (eikonas). The cave symbolizes the world we see with our eyes. The firelight symbolizes the sun. The ascent (anabasis) from the cave to the vision (thean) outside symbolizes the soul’s ascent to mindfulness (eis ton noiêton).36 But this was all just an image, in the end: “God knows (theos de pou oiden) if it happens to be true (alêthês),” Socrates concludes (Republic 517b).

This sudden appearance of a god may be surprising, until we recall that they are discussing these images in anticipation of a nighttime religious festival conducted in the shadows and illuminated by torchlight, and when we recall one further detail about Socrates’s (or Plato’s) word-picture. When the bound person first left the cave, seeing shadows, then images, then things, he or she was enabled to go further: “In the end (teleutaion), I think they would see the sun,” Socrates suggests—not as a reflection, but directly, in its true form (Republic 516b). Amazingly, then, such persons would be able to stare at the sun, without blinding, enjoying this experience of pure light. That word, teleutaion, bears a verbal echo to the teleutê at the Telesterion, the mysterious rites held in the innermost shrine of the sanctuary at Eleusis near Athens, the site where the ultimate revelation of the Eleusinian Mysteries was presented annually to its initiates, offering them confidence of the soul’s immortality.37 This same word—vision (thean)—is what was used to describe that which was revealed there, and it appears to have involved some pretty basic material items, like ears of corn. In other words, some commonplace material was ritually choreographed to inspire new vision, or in-sight.38 Socrates suggested just prior to his own death (Phaedo 62b) that the image of people living “in a sort of prison” (tini phrourâi) is itself “a logos cloaked in mystery” (ho logos… en aporrêtois legomenos), a mystery that is as capacious as it is difficult to comprehend. So the ascent from the cave seems to be framed here as some sort of mysterious religious illumination. As I have previously noted, Socrates offers similar poetic images and allegories for the ascent of the human soul into other ways of seeing elsewhere: most notably, in Diotima’s speech in the Symposium, and in the myth of the reincarnation of the soul and its recuperated memories in the Phaedrus. In both cases, it is depicted as an inspired, but painful journey.

The Phaedrus makes an even more important contribution to our understanding of this idea, for two additional reasons. First, the Phaedrus concludes with a rousing myth that condemns the invention of writing as a technology that will effect human memory for the worse. In other words, Plato appears to condemn writing, in writing.39 Just as here, in the Republic, Plato appears to quarrel with images by using an image, and he troubles eyesight by using his eyes. In Book One, Socrates insisted that eyes have their virtue, and that seeing truly is difficult, but the vision he aims at now involves gazing at the sun, not something our eyes are capable of surviving. I am reminded of Nietzsche’s memorable image from Section 9 of The Birth of Tragedy. When we try (and fail) to look at the sun directly, Nietzsche suggests, then we turn away blinded but begin to see dark spots on our eyes… “as a sort of sacred cure (Heilmittel).” The Greeks, by contrast, gazed so long at the darkness that they began to see specks of light. That sparkle generated the strange new music of tragedy, Nietzsche concludes. This is the heart of Nietzsche’s tragic version of “Greek cheerfulness.”40

The Phaedrus, which I read as providing answers to, or extensions of, some significant questions and claims in the Republic, is especially germane here. It would take a god to say what the soul actually is, Socrates tells us (Phaedrus 246a), but human beings are especially adept at saying what things are like (hôi de eoiken). We live in the realm of images, metaphors, and allegories; this makes it easier for us to see things and to communicate what we think we know. Only gods can be fully present to the truth of things: only they can look at the sun. We necessarily look at the shadows the light casts before us and the imaginative images they inspire. Here, once again, Nietzsche offers an insightful supplement, taken from Section 8 of The Birth of Tragedy:

Owing to a peculiar modern weakness, we are inclined to imagine (vorstellen) the aesthetic proto-phenomenon in a manner much too complicated and abstract.

For the genuine poet (den ächten Dichter), metaphor is not a rhetorical figure but a vicarious image (stellvertrentendes Bild) that he actually beholds in place of a concept (an Stelle eines Begriffes)… How is it that Homer’s descriptions are so much more vivid than those of any other poet? Because he visualizes so much more vividly (weil er um so viel mehr anschaut). We talk so abstractly about poetry because we are usually bad poets.

(Nietzsche 1967–1977, KSA I: 60, and Kaufmann 1967, pp. 63–64).

To be sure, Socrates and Plato (together with Euripides) were the main targets of Nietzsche’s ire in his uncanny first book. How, then, to read these two texts together? Perhaps it will help to recall that Nietzsche, an aspirational poetic thinker, had rendered his own image of Socrates and Plato, one that suited his more lyrical rhetorical purpose. Nietzsche, that is, was a sort of knowing Aristophanes, darkening Socrates with shadows of his own manufacture. As he makes clear in Sections 9–11 of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche sought to make a new myth of ancient Greece, not to write ancient Greek history. His images of Socrates served his tragic myth-making. I am trying to shine some light on that caricature, in this essay. And I note that Nietzsche was as interested in Greek religion in this first book as I take Plato to have been in his Middle Period dialogues.41

A superficial reading of the Cave Allegory in the Republic might conclude that philosophers are the enlightened ones who see the sun and help people to get out of their cave. But that is not really what this image suggests at all. We are all stuck in a cave. We are never told who the people working the shadow plays are. And we are never told what kind of “passerby” first decided to unshackle someone and drag them, kicking and screaming, up into the light. It does not seem to be a philosopher (perhaps the muse was erotic, or divine). Rather, the philosopher is the unhappy one who now has the unenviable task of trying to tell people in a cave what he or she remembers about that painful and unwelcome journey to the outside, then back inside again. I think it especially important to recall that the philosopher in this allegory chose neither to leave the cave, nor to return.

We should also recall what Socrates’s word-picture was originally intended to depict. It was intended to be an image of “the education (paideia) of our human nature.” So now, at the end of this extensive image-laden discussion, Socrates reiterates to Glaukon what his image implies. Education, the philosopher concludes, is the attempt to distinguish between “two disturbances of the eyes (epitaraxeis ommasin), stemming from two sources: the move from light to darkness; and the move from darkness to light” (Republic 518a). In other words, education aims at drawing the soul into an awareness of the fact that all it truly knows is that its sight has been disturbed. We see that we do not see clearly enough… which implies that we know that we do not know clearly enough, either. The aspiration to truthfulness or goodness is a virtue; the claim to certainty is its attendant vice. Even though Socrates associates the move from darkness to light with illumination, we cannot know whether our sight is disturbed because we have gone from light to darkness, or vice versa. And, “if this is true (ei taut’ alêthê), then education (paideian) is not what the boastful professionals (epangellomenoi) say that it is” (Republic 518b). What they say is that they can implant true knowing (epistêmês) into a soul that lacks it, much as if they were to implant vision (opsin) into blind eyes (tuphlois ophthalmous, Republic 518c). True education, then, is a gospel of great difficulty, necessarily involving pleasure mingled with pain. Such education does its work in the cave, tragicomically, bittersweetly, mimicking the labor of a lover, one who woos us into seeing what we desire, and then to seeing that desire differently.

6. Conclusions: Of Caves and Temples

I wish to conclude with some final words about that complex image of a cave. The cave, as Socrates stated very clearly, “symbolizes the world we see with our eyes.” And so long as we are “embodied souls,” or “ensouled bodies,” then all we can see is the world we see with our eyes… and yet. The Phaedrus suggests that we may gain new ways of seeing, new in-sights, in states of madness and spirit-possession. Erotic desire is perhaps the highest form such revelatory madness may take. And there are others. Let us look again at how Plato first describes the cave in Socrates’s word-picture:

There are people all along this wall carrying all sorts of things, which they raise above the wall, statues (andriantas) of men and other animals made of stone and wood and all kinds of material; it would appear (hoion eikos) that some of the people are speaking while others are silent.

(Republic 515a)

Paul Shorey casually observed that, while it is interesting to speculate on the source of Plato’s imagery here, “it bears no significance for the interpretation of the thought” (Shorey [1930] 1969b, 118–119na). I suggest otherwise.

What is striking is how similar to prehistoric cave painting much of this description appears to be. Imagine animal-and-other images deep in the fire-lit recesses of a complex cave system, such as the one at Lascaux, with the off-kilter echoes of hunter-gatherers in ceremony, playing music and imbibing psychotropics.42 It now appears that such art did exist in Greece, on the island of Crete at least (See Strasser et al. 2018, 2020). Could Plato possibly have images like this in mind? Could he have seen primordial cave art? It is impossible to know, of course. We are decidedly in the dark about that. But we know that Plato had a fascination with the Cave of Zeus high atop Mount Ida on Crete. His last work, The Laws, describes the pilgrimage of three elderly, anonymous men on their way to that very Cave. We witness twelve long books of their discussion along the way, but they never arrive. Like so many others, this Platonic dialogue begins and ends in the middle. For Plato then, the philosophical life may be imagined as a pilgrimage to a cave, a complicated dance between light and darkness, pleasure and pain, and a topsy-turvy journey with no clear end. If this makes Plato’s philosophy sound similar to Foucault’s “Theatrum Philosophicum,” (Foucault 1970)43 then so be it. As Foucault saw it, it is possible to view “philosophy not as thought but as theater.” And if this idea seems to call for an overturning of Platonism, then that overturning started with Plato himself, in texts such as the ones I have been reading here. There is thus, in Foucault’s words, a way to convert Platonism, which he deems “a serious task,” not to subvert it, nor to pervert it. Fittingly, I have been examining Plato’s own account of multiple conversions here.

I would like to suggest one other religious image that may have affected Plato’s reflections on spiritual vision here: namely, the monumental gold-and-ivory (chryselephantine) statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the wonders (thaumata) of the ancient world. The nineteenth century Neoclassical art historian, Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849), wrote the definitive book about that statue complex, and about polychromatic Greek art more generally Quatremère (1815). Often remembered as “the French Winckelmann,” Quatremère was not much like Winckelmann at all in several religious particulars, as well as in certain crucial matters of art historical and religious substance. Madame Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) notably summed up Winckelmann’s religious personality thusly: “No one [before him] had, if I may say so, made himself a pagan for the purpose of penetrating antiquity” (as quoted by Pater 1980, p. 152).

In contrast to Winckelmann’s alleged neo-paganism, Quatremère remained a practicing Roman Catholic (and a royalist), even during the early years of the French Revolution, for which he worked tirelessly and in a spirit fully aligned to the egalitarian and fraternal commitments of the age. After the turmoil and the Terror, like many other moderates, Quatremère suffered under the new regime.44 He was imprisoned for six months, then released under a general amnesty, then sentenced to death, and self-exiled to Germany for two years, where he spent time with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) until he was eventually recalled to Paris by Napoleon in 1806, to assist with the reformation of the French Academy. Presumably, the years with Jacobi (see Bowie 1997, pp. 35–41) sharpened Quatremère’s interests in the subtle interplay between Philosophy and Religion, as well as his own starting point: Art. German Idealism would invoke all three of these as “works of the Spirit.” Less speculative is the fact that his experience of the Revolution’s aggressive secularism fueled Quatremère’s sharpest criticisms of the regime, especially its conception of art, and its museums.45 Reflecting on these tumultuous events in later years, Quatremère makes a fascinating observation about the relationship between Classicism and Christianity. The differences are overblown, Quatremère suggests, and not just by Christianity’s neo-pagan opponents (he almost surely had Winckelmann in mind). Christians too, perhaps especially the Protestants, tended to overplay these differences by emphasizing the image-laden quality of Greek religion. Conversely, Quatremère observes that both Classical and Christian culture, were born of religions that imagined the gods anthropomorphically… and that is why they have so much art.46 It is a stunning insight, one which opens up the possibility of viewing Christianity as yet another chapter in the very long history of Greek religion, an Olympian religion that, according to some of its most pivotal myths, actually began in a cave.

With this thought in mind, another aspect of the Cave Allegory may come into sharper focus. The divine actors in Socrates’s shadow play, if such they are, are not described, and they are never seen. As I noted above, we do not know who first unshackled a person in the cave, nor who dragged him or her out into the light, nor how it was decided that they were to return. They are decidedly not anthropomorphic figures in this verbal allegory. The anthropomorphic figures here are shadow images of statues (andriantas) rendered in the guise of people and of animals; later in the journey, presumably, the philosopher would be able see the statues themselves. The god(s) of the philosophers were allegedly, and notoriously, non-anthropomorphic. Yet Plato’s imaging of the gods is far more subtle. For all of Plato’s lingering suspicion about mimetic images—images placed in the service of the divine—he voices no blanket condemnation of statues in this allegory. I wish to conclude with one further suggestion as to why he may have been disinclined to do so.

As mentioned above, Quatremère’s magnum opus was the massive 1815 volume, Le Jupiter Olympien. It would serve as the standard work on polychromatic Greek art for the remainder of the century. Whether discussing the monumental gold-and-ivory statues of Athena in Athens and Zeus at Olympia, or the multimedia smaller art forms so common throughout the Greek world, or the startling phenomenon of brilliant painting on the white marble surface of Classical statues, Quatremère brought color back to the Greek world of visual imagery. Quatremère’s thesis was as overarching as it was overwhelming: “almost always we have looked upon these sculptural monuments in gold and ivory as exceptional works (ouvrages d’exception), or as accidental and occasional (productions de caprice). I am out to prove that this taste reigned supreme for twelve centuries (douze siècles)” (Quatremère 1815, xx–xxj, translation mine). Clearly, an older image of Greek art symbolized by pure white marble would have to be seriously revised (see Ruprecht 2022b). Quatremère was to do for the Greek visual arts what Nietzsche would subsequently do for Greek poetry, religion and philosophy.

The primary challenge that Quatremère faced in 1815 was the imaginative reconstruction of statues that no longer existed: especially that of the Olympian Zeus. Plato’s fellow-Athenian, Pheidias (d.430 BCE), had overseen its construction, and whether or not he ever saw primitive cave art, Plato had almost surely seen this Pheidian masterpiece. Moreover, he absolutely had seen Pheidias’s companion piece, the chryselephantine statue of Athena housed in the Athenian Parthenon. “For there can be no doubt. We touch, we gaze upon, the marbles that Pericles and Plato saw,” Quatremère enthused (Quatremère 2012, p. 132). Yet all we have for the re-imagining of that lost visual image in its cavernous temple now are words. I close with two Roman-era descriptions of this statue, one in Greek and one in Latin.

The first comes from Dio Chrysostom’s Orations (12.50–52):

O best and noblest of artists (dêmiourgôn), how pleasing and attractive a spectacle (horama) you have wrought, a vision of infinite delight for the benefit of all, both Greeks and barbarians, who have ever come here, as they have come in great numbers time and time again—this no one will deny. For even the non-rational (alogon) natural creatures would be struck with awe if they were once to see this great work… And among people (anthrôpôn de), whoever is burdened with pain in his or her soul (psychên), having borne many misfortunes and griefs in his life and never being able to attain sweet sleep—even that person, I believe, standing before this image (eikonos), would forget all the terrible and harsh things that one must suffer (pathein) in a human life. Such a wondrous vision (theama) did you design and fashion…

(Cohoon 1977, II: 54–57)

In this passage, the image of the Olympian Zeus offers us an image of tragicomic ascent that is both inspiring and vision-altering for the embodied soul in pain. The second description is still more remarkable, and it was one of Quatremère’s favorite classical citations. It comes from Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory (12.10.9):

On the other hand, Pheidias is thought to be better at representing gods than men (tamen dis quam hominibus effingendis melior artifex creditur). In ivory and gold he would be unrivaled even if he had created nothing more than the Athena in Athens (Minervam Athenis) and the Zeus at Olympia in Elis (Olympium in Elide Iovem), the beauty of which is said to have added something to the received religion (receptae religioni), so perfectly does the majesty of the work equal the majesty of the god (adeo maiestas operis deum aequavit).

(Butler 1979, IV: 452–455)

This a truly remarkable statement. It suggests that a visual image, the image of a god, has the capacity actually to change, and to elevate, the received (that is, the “traditional” or “inherited”) religion of the Greeks. Art is not only like religion; Art’s visual images can change religion and improve its means of seeing and saying. Images have the power to heal and to elevate, not simply to distort or to mislead. They can contribute to newer and sharper vision. That, I have suggested, is what Plato attempts in his extended word-pictures from the Republic.

Granted, two Roman observers do not a Plato make. We do not know what Plato’s own experience of these Pheidian statues was, nor what they may have meant to him. We do know, and Quatremère insisted on this point, that this forty-foot statue was housed in a dark, cave-like temple, illuminated by torchlight reflecting off of an olive oil bath below; it would have shimmered and moved the way cave art moves, the way torch-lit museum art moved in the early 19th century. I am suggesting that, in this Greek world, replete with religious images of this kind, it would be strange indeed if Plato were to present himself simply as an enemy of the image. Looking at Plato too as a significant chapter in the long history of Greek religion, and of Greek religious imagery, we may be in a position to pose new, and sharper, questions about the lines of reflection that take us from Plato to Plotinus in the third century, and then to the robust Platonism of the Greek Orthodox Iconodules in the eighth century. With that rather grandiose historical suggestion, I close here. I hope at least to have cleared some space for the consideration of the following amendments to interpreting Plato’s various images of soulful ascent.

First, it was not radically dualistic. We are embodied souls and we see with our eyes. We are also spiritual creatures who aspire to spiritual vision. Second, it was not aggressively rationalist or secularist, informed by a blanket opposition to myth, to poetry, and to religious images. Quatremère’s criticism of the iconoclastic excesses of the French Revolution may thus be utilized to see Plato’s concerns anew. The question is not whether these two thinkers were conservative or progressive. Their question, rather, was how to prevent progressive democratic reformers from becoming architects of the next Terror. Third, it aspired to illumination without breezily claiming to bathe in that light. And that is because it insisted on the necessary connection between pleasure and pain in the works of spirit: art, religion, and philosophy. Fourth, and quite possibly above all the rest, it embraced and ennobled the ecstatic transport vouchsafed to embodied creatures by eros, that species of desire that was, if not divine, then surely sublime. Anne Carson observes this of the ancient Greek lyric tradition: “change of self was loss of self to these poets” (Carson 1986, p. 39). Plato, not rejecting such poetry but in dialogue with it, saw the matter differently; change may be better seen as transformation, and transcendence.