Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale; I teach philosophy at Mount Saint Mary's
University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. At the end of book six of Plato's Republic
Plato introduces three crucial analogies which sum up major portions of his
thought. These are the images of the sun, the divided line, and the cave. In this
video I will talk about the first of these, the analogy of the Sun. We will start
at 503e where Socrates says the philosopher/guardians will need to
have physical training to develop courage and moderation. But, he says, they
will also need to be trained in many other subjects, including the most
important subjects. He's talking here about a turn toward intellectual
training and schooling for the Guardians. Then at 505a he says the form of the
good is the greatest thing to learn about and it is by their relation to it
that just things and other things become useful and beneficial. But it's difficult
to figure out what the good is and many people are mistaken about it. We are told
that the masses believe that the good is pleasure and more refined or
sophisticated people think that the good is knowledge. But Plato is going to be
much more specific about what the form of the good is and how we come to know
it and he's going to do this through his images of the Sun, the divided line, and
the cave. Socrates first compares the form of the good and what it does in the
world to what the Sun does in the world of sight. So keep in mind throughout the
analogy that the Sun corresponds to the form of the good, the eyes correspond to
the mind, sight corresponds to knowing, and visible things correspond to
intelligible things. At 508c Socrates says what the latter, the good, is in the
intelligible realm in relation to understanding and intelligible things,
the former, the sun, is in the visible realm
in relation to sight and visible things. So we have two worlds here, we have the
physical visible world where the Sun is the source of sight, and we have the
intelligible, the knowable/thinkable world and in this world the form of the
good does the same job as the Sun. It illuminates everything and makes it
possible for us to know things. The Sun makes visible things visible in the
physical world, in the intelligible world, in the world of the forms, the form of
the good makes intelligible things intelligible. Or to put it a different
way it makes knowable things knowable. The Sun makes sight possible and the
form of the good makes knowing possible. In fact we're told by Socrates that the
intelligible world is the offspring of the good, the good has somehow created
this intelligible world in its own image, according to its own model. And we're
also told that when we focus our eyes on something that is brightly lit we see it
well but in dim light we see poorly. By the same analogy then we can know the
good and things like it, things like truth or being or other forms, very well
and very clearly. They are, as it were, brightly lit for the mind. When we try to
know things that are far from the good, things like becoming or change or this
physical world, our knowledge is dim and confused. This is because we are farther
away from the ultimate source of truth and intelligibility. At 508e
Socrates says what gives truth to things known and the power to know to
the knower is the form of the good and as the cause of knowledge and truth you
must think of it as an object of knowledge. So here's the final piece of
information we get about the form of the good: not only does it make it possible
for us to know all other things, it is itself an object of knowledge. We can
come to know what the form of the good is like. So to wrap up some of the
lessons from the Sun analogy from book 6 of the Republic:
Plato tells us that the form of the good is the source of all intelligibility,
that it is itself intelligible and knowable, in fact it is the highest and
best possible object of knowledge, and lastly that we know better or clearer
things like forms that are nearer to or more similar to the form of the good.
That concludes my discussion of the Sun analogy from the end of book 6 of
Plato's Republic. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.