This is a continuation of a series arguing for the importance of the Divided Line in understanding the Republic. In an earlier post, I gave some indication of the mapping of the Divided Line quarternity (eikasia, pistis, dianoia, noesis) onto features of the larger dialogue. One of those mappings was of the speaking characters in the dialogue, which can be expanded in the following manner:
EIKASIA
eikasia — Cephalus
PISTIS
pistis (right opinion) — Polemarchus
pistis (wrong opinion) — Cleitophon
DIANOIA
dianoia (downward-looking, undermining belief, cynical) — Thrasymachus,
dianoia (downward-looking, establishing belief) — Adeimantus
dianoia (upward looking toward noesis) — Glaucon
NOESIS
noesis — Socrates
Let me begin to point out the grounds of these homologies:
Cephalus (Eikasia) — The segment corresponding to eikasia on the Line is the region of images and shadows. Cephalus has been freed from the tyranny of desires (a type of shadow) but is afraid of the shadows of injustices that he may have committed in life:
[When] someone thinks his end is near, he becomes frightened and concerned about things he didn’t fear before. It’s then that the stories we’re told about Hades, about how people who’ve been unjust here must pay the penalty there — stories he used to make fun of — twist his soul this way and that for fear they’re true. (Grube/Reeve, 330d)
His fears take shape in the theater of his dreams:
If he finds many injustices in his life, he awakes from sleep in terror, as children do, and lives in anticipation of bad things to come. (Grube/Reeve, 330e – 331a)
His obsession is with overcoming injustice (which can only be a shadow of some unspoken working notion of justice) but he never gives voice to justice as such. Socrates tries to turn him toward some belief in justice, even puts words in his mouth, but Cephalus departs the scene without pursuing justice. In the Cave Allegory, Cephalus would be like one who is turned from the shadows toward the fire, but finds the light too confusing and dazzling and so turns back to his fears and dreams. His concern is thus fully for images, not the higher reality of which they are the images. He is aware that his fears are shadows of realities, but the realities he pursues are his prior acts of injustice toward which he attempt to make recompense to gods and offended persons.
Polemarchus and Cleitophon (Pistis) — Pistis means dedication to, and defense of, belief. Polemarchus begins by defending his father and the traditional belief about justice that is implicit in his father’s fears. He is characterized as loyal and courageous. The traditional version is that justice is a matter of “giving back what is owed” (331e); that what is owed are “benefit to friends and harm to enemies” (332d); that “friends” are those who are actually just and “enemies” are those who are actually unjust (334d). But Polemarchus is converted by Socrates to a truer belief about justice: that justice is always a benefit, that “it is never just to harm anyone” (335e). (Note that this amounts to a true belief about justice and not a true belief of justice — there is a difference.) Polemarchus commits to defending this modified opinion of justice. He becomes a loyal ally (i.e. “auxiliary”) of Socrates, and he commits to serve as his “partner in battle” (335e) against any version of justice that has been shown by the argument to be defective. Polemarchus later in fact comes to Socrates’ aid against Thrasymachus and his follower Cleitophon at 340a-b. The brief appearance of Cleitophon as a “believer” in the teachings of Thrasymachus show that pistis is also capable of defending a false belief (that it is “just to obey the orders of the rulers” — even presumably orders that harm the ruled (340a)) to the one unfortunate enough to follow the wrong teacher. In the Cave Allegory, both Polemarchus and Cleitophon are like those who measure the various shadows of justice in accordance with the puppets that produce them i.e. belief in a trusted authority such as tradition, family or teacher. Belief, at this level, is the highest standard of measure. Courage, spirit, steadfastness and loyalty are the virtues of this stage; Polemarchus is the paradigm.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
shared ignorance 