The Good in Plato's Republic

THE GOOD IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC
The good, says Socrates, is 'what every soul pursues and for the sake of which
it does everything' (Rep. SOSdll-el).1 It 'provides the truth to the things known
and gives the power [to know] to the one who knows' (508el-2). And 'existence
and being are in them [sc. the things known] besides as a result of it' (509b7-8).
In these cryptic pronouncements Plato2 links axiology, epistemology and on-
tology: the summit of psychic aspiration, he maintains, is also the ground of
the intelligibility of knowable objects, of the ability of knowers to know, and
of the existence (einai, ousia) of whatever is known. But Plato does not say how
or why value, truth, knowledge and being are linked in the way he claims.
I shall maintain that these claims, properly understood, give us clues to Pla-
to's account of the good3 at the time he wrote the Republic.4 I start by distin-
guishing the senses of 'good' which Plato recognized, so as to make clear what
it is whose account is in question. I then consider accounts of the good which
Plato explicitly rejects in Republic VI. Next I attempt a careful (but necessarily
somewhat conjectural) exegesis of the links Plato makes between the good on
the one hand and knowledge, truth and being on the other, using the parallel
illustrative claims about the sun as a guide. The results of this exegesis lead
to a consideration of what it is to be and what it is to be intelligible, a consider-
ation which (I claim) reveals Plato's account of the good. Having made this ac-
count explicit, I test my interpretation by considering how it coheres with what
Plato has to say in the Republic about the foundations of mathematics, desira-
ble and undesirable states of the soul, and desirable and undesirable charac-
teristics of political systems. Finally I offer a partial appraisal of the account
I attribute to Plato.
I Plato's Uses of 'Good'
Plato perhaps uses the term agathos least self-consciously as an adjective in

the attributive position.8 To be good in this sense is to be good of a kind, good
at doing the sort ofthing that that kind ofthing does. Plato calls what a certain
kind ofthing does its ergon, work or function, and he holds (probably incorrect-
ly) that the ergon of a thing of a specified kind is 'what it alone can do, or can
do more finely than other things', kallista ton allon (353alO-ll). Thus, the er-
gon or work of an eye is to see, because you cannot see with anything other
than eyes (352e5-10). And the work of a pruning-knife is to prune, because you
cannot prune as finely with anything else as you can with a pruning-knife
(353al-8). The noun which corresponds to this attributive use of the word 'good*
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is arete, which we translate as 'virtue' or sometimes 'excellence' or 'goodness'.
The noun kakia, usually translated as Vice', corresponds to the parallel attribu-
tive use of the adjective kakos, usually translated as 'bad.' It is important to
recognize that these terms translated 'virtue' and 'vice' have no moral connota-
tions in their generic use, or even sometimes, I shall argue, in their specific
use of human beings. One can talk about the virtue of an eye or the vice of a
pruning-knife with no sense of oddity. The virtue of a thing is that with which
the work ofthat thing will be done well and without which it will be done bad-
ly; the vice of a thing is that with which its work will be done badly (353c6-7).
Since the work of a thing is relative to the kind under which it is being classi-
fied, so too are its virtue and vice.
Plato identifies the virtue of a human being with the virtue of his or her
soul (335c4, 353e7-8). The work of a soul is to animate the body of which it is
the soul; the soul's presence is both necessary and sufficient for a body's being
alive (353d9, Phoedo 64c4-8, 105c9-d5). In the case of human beings at least,
Plato seems to identify this work of living with initiating, on the basis of cogni-
tive processing, the motion of the body which it animates - 'managing, ruling,
and deliberating, and all such things' (353d4-7). Good human beings — that is,
human beings who possess human virtue - live good lives in the sense of manag-
ing their affairs well (353e4-5). To manage one's affairs well has primarily a
prudential rather than a moral sense: it consists in doing and acquiring what
is good in the sense of being beneficial for oneself.6 Thus a soul does its work
well when it acts so as to benefit itself. Because the concept of human virtue
has this prudential sense, Callicles in the Gorgios (482e-483d) can argue that
(since justice is a virtue) it is by nature just for the stronger to gain the advan-
tage over the weaker, and Thrasymachus in Republic I (348c-e) can deny that
justice, in the conventional sense rejected by Callicles, is a virtue.7
The virtue of a human being will therefore consist in knowledge of what
is beneficial for that person (or, more precisely, for that person's soul), as well
as a disposition to act on that knowledge, if the knowledge does not imply the
disposition. We are thus led to a second major sense of the term 'good,' a sense
in which it is used in the predicative position of types of items regarded as benefi-
cial.8 Plato's characters several times produce a list of such items commonly
accounted good.9 To know what is good in this sense, i.e. beneficial, requires
knowing the consequences of pursuing and possessing various items. But it also
requires knowing the standard by which to judge whether an item or one of
its consequences is worth having for its own sake. It is this standard which Pla-
to means by 'the good.'
A complete account of human virtue will therefore include an account of
the good in this sense.10 At Protagoras 351b3-357b5 Socrates works out with
the agreement of Protagoras an account of human virtue in terms of an account
of the good as pleasure (and the bad as pain) which they believe will be accepta-
ble to the many. In the Gorgias (491e5-492e2) Callicles endorses a similar ac-
count in terms of pleasure conceived as the gratification of the appetites. In the
Phaedo (68c8-69c3) Socrates contrasts two conceptions of the human virtues,
one in terms of pleasure and pain (as well as desire and fear, which in this con-
text would be defined as expectations respectively of pleasure and pain), the

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other in terms of wisdom. In speaking in the Republic about the idea or the
form of the good, then, Plato is referring to the standard11 of intrinsic value
by which we judge whether some item is worth having for its own sake to a
specified possessor.11 As Plato says, the good
is what every soul pursues and for the sake of which it does
everything. The soul divines that it is something but is at a loss
about it and unable to get a sufficient grasp of just what it is,
or to have a stable trust such as it has about the rest. And be-
cause this is so, the soul loses any profit there might have been
in the rest (505d-e).
Without an account of the overarching goal which the soul should pursue,
a definition of its virtues) in terms of knowledge of what is for the soul's benefit,
such as we find at the end of Republic IV,7 will be merely schematic. In Socrates'
own words, it is a sketch, hypographe (504d6). This schematic character of the
definitions in Book IV explains Socrates' remark there (435dl-3) that they will
never get a precise grasp of the virtues by the methods they are using13 but
must take a longer and further road, as well as his claim in Book VI that this
longer road' (504b2) leads to the greatest and most fitting study' (504d2-3), the
study of the idea of the good, by using which things become useful and benefi-
cial (505a2-4)."
It is therefore misleading to translate to agathon as 'goodness,' since 'good-
ness' is usually a synonym for virtue. And interpretations of the good which
relate it directly to the sense of 'good' in which something is good of a kind"
likewise miss the mark.16
II Rejected Accounts of the Good
Socrates declines to tell Glaucon what he thinks the good is, partly, he says,
because what he thinks is a mere opinion rather than knowledge (506c2-d8,
53333-6)" and partly because Glaucon would not be able to follow (506el-3,
533al-3).1B We must therefore try to reconstruct his opinion from the hints he
gives.1'
A negative hint is his explicit rejection of various accounts of the good. A
review of these rejected accounts and Socrates' reasons for rejecting them will
not only help to exclude mistaken reconstructions but also confirm that by the
good Plato means here what he meant by it in such earlier dialogues as the
Protagoras, Gorgias and Phaedo.
Those who believe with the many that the good is pleasure, Socrates points
out, are 'compelled to agree that there are bad pleasures' (505c8) and thus that
the same things are good and bad' (505clO-ll). He seems here to be rehearsing
a standard objection without commenting on its force, his immediate aim being
merely to establish that it is a matter of dispute what the good is (505d2-4)."°
But later (509a9) he regards as blasphemous the suggestion that the good might
be pleasure. So we can take it that Socrates rejects this account.

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Socrates also raises an objection to the view endorsed at Phaedo 69a-c that
the good is wisdom. When asked what kind of wisdom, those who hold this view
are compelled to say that it is wisdom about the good, a ridiculous reply be-
cause 'they reproach us for not knowing the good, and then speak as though
we did know' (505cl-2). The objection is new in Plato's writings, and suggests
a recantation of his earlier position. Socrates' later assertion that the good is
the cause of knowledge implies not only that the good is different from knowledge
in general (508e5-6) but also that it is different from the knowledge of the good
in particular. Even apart from this fact, it is difficult to see how someone who
identified the good with wisdom could meet the charge of circularity, except
by specifying some independent kind of knowledge, which neither the histori-
cal Socrates not Plato seems inclined to do. We may take it that Socrates in
Republic VI rejects the account of the good as wisdom.
In the course of the comparison with the sun, Socrates also makes clear his
rejection of the identification of the good with truth (508e5-6) and with being
(509b7-8).
Ill The Three Claims
Our main clue to understanding Plato's claims about the relation of the good
to truth, knowledge and being must be the acknowledged parallel claims about
the relation of the sun to light, sight and becoming.
The claim that 'what provides the truth to the things known...is the idea
of the good' (508el-3) or that "being known is present in the things known as
a consequence of the good' (509b6-7) is analogous to the claim that it is the sun
'whose light makes...the seen things seen' (508a5-6) or that 'the sun...provides
what is seen with the power of being seen' (509b2-3). The illumination of seen
objects by the light of the sun (508dl-2) is an image of a metaphorical illumina-
tion of known objects by truth (508d5), of which the good is the cause (508e3-4).
The effect of this illumination is in the case of sunlight to make seen things
seen by eyes which turn to them (508a6, dl-2), and in the case of the good's truth
to make known things known by souls which apprehend them (508d4-6). What
the good provides then by its truth is the intelligibility of known objects, just
as the sun by its light provides the visibility of seen objects.21 Truth, however,
is an analogue not only of light (508d5, cf. 508dl, a5) but also of visibility: just
as the sun provides the power of being seen to the things seen (509b2-3), so the
good provides the truth to the things known (508el-2). The explanation of this
double role must be that the analogy breaks down at this point: whereas one
can distinguish the sun's light from the visibility which it confers, one cannot
distinguish the good's truth from the knowability which it confers. That is, the
truth of which the good is the cause (508d4-6) just is the knowability or intel-
ligibility of known objects.2*
The second claim, that 'what...gives the power [to know] to the one who
knows, is the idea of the good' (508el-3) parallels the claim that it is the sun
'whose light makes our sight see in the finest way' (508a5). How does the sun
accomplish this effect? In one passage, where Socrates says, 'Doesn't it [the eye]

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get the power it has as a sort of overflow from the sun's treasury?' (508b6-7),
Plato seems to appeal to a special theory of vision according to which the eye's
ability to see is due to an interior fire whose source is the sun. Theories of an
interior fire existed in Plato's day,23 and Plato later himself advanced such a
theory of vision in the Timaeus (45b2-46c6). But neither in Plato's later theory
nor, as far as we know, in the earlier theories does the interior fire in the eye
derive from the sun." And when we look at the other passages in which Plato
describes how the sun is the cause of the eye's sight, we find him appealing in
common-sense terms to an indirect effect due to the sun's illumination of visi-
ble objects (508c4-d3). Socrates' assertion that at night the eyes 'are dimmed
and appear nearly blind as though pure sight were not in them' (508c6-7, my
emphases) implies that sight is in them, as he says is shown when they turn
to things which the sun illuminates (508dl-2). The sun is responsible for sight,
not in the sense that it directly gives the eyes their power to see, but in the
sense that its illumination of visible objects makes it possible for them to actu-
alize that power. The relationship between the good and knowledge is described
in similarly indirect terms, incorporating the doctrine argued for at
476e4-480al3 that the multiplicity of perceptible things are objects of opinion
rather than knowledge. The soul, Socrates says, when it turns to that which
is not illumined by truth but which comes into being and passes away Opines
and is dimmed, changing opinions up and down, and seems at such times not
to possess intelligence' (508d8-9, my emphasis). The good actualizes the soul's
non-manifest intelligence by illuminating knowable objects: 'When it [the soul]
fixes itself on that which truth and being illuminate, it intellects, knows, and
appears to possess intelligence' (508d4-6).2S Hence the good is only indirectly
the cause of the power to know, by being the cause of the power of known ob-
jects to be known. The relationship between the good and knowledge reduces
to the already described relationship between the good and truth.
The third claim that 'existence [einai] and being [ousia] are in them [the
things known] besides as a result of it [the good]' (509b6-8) parallels the claim
that 'the sun...provides what is seen with...generation, growth and nourishment'
(509b2-4). Visible objects, according to Socrates' argument in Book V of the
Republic (479a5-d6), cannot be thought of as being but must be put between
being and non-being because they simultaneously participate in opposite charac-
teristics. Plato's Heraclitean belief in the coincidence of opposites in percepti-
ble phenomena and in their constant change28 led him to characterize the realm
of perceptibles as genesis - process, becoming, generation - rather than ousia,
being.27 Thus, in saying that the sun provides what is seen with generation,
genesis, (509b3) Socrates with some exaggeration makes the sun responsible
for the quasi-existence of visible objects: if the sun did not exist, there would
be no visible objects. In the same way, then, the good is responsible for the very
existence of the things known: if there were no idea of the good, the things known
would not exist. As the analogue of generation, growth and nourishment, einai
and ousia will be the ontological status of the things known. The terms are in
fact a hendiadys, as can be seen by noting Plato's interchangeable use of to einai
and he ousia, as well as to on, for 'being'.28 Plato is therefore not attributing
to the good responsibility for the ousia of the things known in the sense of the

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specific essence of each known object;29 that would be like making the sun respon-
sible for the specific characteristics of each plant and animal to whose growth
it contributes. We therefore have no reason to suppose that in claiming that
the good is the cause of knowledge and truth, Plato means that to understand
anything we have to understand it in its relation to the good. Such a doctrine
seems absurd, for what could it mean to understand the Form of tallness (Phae-
do 102d6) or the Form of shortness (Phaedo 101a5) in its relation to the ulti-
mate object of psychic pursuit, the standard of intrinsic value?30
We have reduced Plato's three claims to two: the good is the cause of the
intelligibility and the being of the things which are known. In what sense of
cause, we might ask, does Plato think the good is the cause of the being and
intelligibility of the things known?31 Since analogies are never perfect, and since
Plato seems to have made explicit as many respects as he could in which the
good and the sun are analogous,32 it might be a different sense than that in which
the sun is the cause of the generation and visibility of things seen. It is reasona-
ble to suppose, however, that it is a cause in one of the three senses which Plato
distinguishes in his comprehensive and recent review of conceptions of causali-
ty in the Phaedo. There he distinguishes what we might call mechanical
(96a8-d7), teleological (97b8-98b6, cf. 98el-99a4) and formal (100c3-e4) models
of explanation of generation, destruction and existence.33 Of these, only the for-
mal model can apply to a causal relationship between the good and the being
or intelligibility of things known. Mechanical explanations appeal to an agent
which initiates a mechanical process whose termination is the generation or
destruction to be explained,34 but the intelligibility and existence of the things
known are not the termination of a mechanical process; they are eternal. Teleo-
logical explanations appeal to the judgement of a thinking agent that things
would be best if they were a certain way,35 but there is no indication in the com-
parison with the sun of a mind using the idea of the good as a model in an eter-
nal 'generation' of the things known.36 Formal explanations, however, account
for the fact that something has a certain property X by its participating in the
X itself, the Form of the X.37 Formal explanation does not require an explanan-
dum which is generated in time, nor does it appeal to any factor other than the
form in which the object participates.
IV Being and Truth
According to the Phaedo account of formal causality, if an object has a certain

property F by participating in a Form, then that Form is the Form of the F,
the F itself. So, if any known object exists (i.e. has the property of being) be-
cause it participates in a certain Form, we would expect that Form to be the
Form of being, being itself. And if any known object is intelligible (i.e. has the
property of truth) because it participates in a certain Form, we would expect
that Form to be the Form of truth, truth itself. How then can Plato both main-
tain that any known object exists and is intelligible because it participates in
the good and at the same time deny (508e5, 509b8-9) that the good is being and
that the good is intelligibility?

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The Phaedo account of formal causality seems also to assume the converse:
that, if something participates in a certain Form, the Form of the F or the F
itself, then that participation causes the thing which participates in the Form
to be F. So we would expect that, if every known object participates in the Form
of the good, the good itself, then the participation causes it to be good, that is,
in some respect an ultimate object of psychic pursuit. But the Forms are known
objects, and Plato in the Republic shows no hesitation about recognizing such
Forms as the ugly and the unjust and the bad (475e9-476a6), which he would
regard as in no respects an object of psychic pursuit.38 On the contrary, the task
of a soul is to strive not to be in any way ugly or unjust or bad (618b6-619bl).
How then can Plato maintain that the Forms of ugliness, injustice and the bad
participate in the Form of the good?
Plato gives us a clue to the resolution of these parallel difficulties in the
contrast he draws between the fact that the good is the cause of being and truth
and the fact that the good is different from being and truth (508e4-6, 509b7-9).38
A natural conclusion from the claim that the good is the cause of being (or truth),
he seems to assume, is that the good is being (or truth).40 To draw this natural
conclusion is to presuppose that, from their participation in the good, the Forms
(and any other known objects)41 do not necessarily acquire the property of being
good (i.e. an ultimate object of psychic pursuit) but rather acquire that property
which the good is. In denying the natural conclusion that the good is being (or
truth), Plato does not necessarily deny this presupposition. And if we reflect
on the proposition that a known object acquires from its participation in the
good that property which the good is, we can find a way out of the above-
mentioned difficulty that some known objects - like the Form of the bad and
the unjust - are in no respects ultimate objects of psychic pursuit.
When Plato asks about an evaluative Form (the good, the beautiful, the just,
the pious) what that Form is, he is not seeking a definition of the term which
designates the Form. In the Euthyphro, for example, when Socrates asks Eu-
thyphro to tell him 'that Form itself by which all the pious things are pious'
(edlO-ll),42 he is not content with the response that the holy is that part of justice
which concerns the care of the gods (12e5-7), even though that is a perfectly
adequate definition of'piety'. Rather, he wants a substantive determining criteri-
on, so that 'gazing at it and using it as a pattern, I may say that anything such
as it which either you or any one else does is pious, and may deny that any-
thing not such as it is pious' (6e4-6).43 Likewise, the Form of the good will be
a substantive determining criterion - pleasure, or wisdom, or some other
property - such that by 'gazing at' it one can say that some particular thing
is intrinsically good for a soul which possesses it because its possession by a
soul is 'like' that property - that is, because the soul which possesses it will
to that extent acquire the property in question.
We should therefore take Plato's claims about the relation between the good
and the being and truth of the things known to be intended as holding true in
virtue of what the Form of the good is. If the good is pleasure, for example, then
the claim that the good is the cause of the being of things known (including
the Forms) would mean that pleasure is the cause of their being, that is, that,
for a thing known (including any Form), to be is to be pleasant. Likewise, the

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claim that the good is the cause of the truth or intelligibility of the things known
would mean that pleasure is the cause of their truth or intelligibility, that is,
that to be intelligible is to be pleasant.44
But wouldn't having the property which the good is make something good
in that respect? And if so, would not that which possesses this property be some-
thing whose possession would be intrinsically worthwhile for a soul? How do
we avoid the apparent conclusion that a soul ought to possess, i.e. participate
in, the Forms of ugliness, injustice and the bad?
We avoid it by rejecting the inference suggested by the second question in
the preceding paragraph. In respect of its being and its intelligibility, a thing
known is good, in the sense that it possesses that property which the good is.
But it does not follow that it would be intrinsically worthwhile for a soul to
possess that known object. It does follow that it would be intrinsically worth-
while for a soul to possess the being and intelligibility of that known object.
But, in possessing the object itself, the soul might fail to possess the being and
intelligibility ofthat object;45 it might even come to possess an opposite property,
as is the case with the Forms of ugliness, injustice and the bad.
An example might help to make this point clear. Suppose that the good is
quietude or peace of mind, ataraxia, a property which a soul can possess. And
suppose we know what pain is, so that pain (i.e. pain itself, the Form of pain)
is a known object. Then, according to the claims Plato makes through the com-
parison of the good with the sun, the being and intelligibility of pain will con-
sist in ataraxia, quietude.48 And in that respect pain (i.e. the Form of pain) will
be good - or, perhaps better, will possess something good.47 But possession of
the Form of pain is not good for a soul, in the sense of being intrinsically worth-
while. In fact, on the account of the good we are entertaining in this paragraph,
to be in pain is intrinsically bad for a soul, because pain is a kind of distur-
bance, tarache, and disturbance is the opposite of ataraxia.
If we are to maintain our interpretation of the causal relationship between
the good and the being and truth of known objects as one of formal causality,
we will have to extend the point just made about the good to being and truth.
That is, in saying what being is, we will not be defining 'being', but will be iden-
tifying a standard or criterion which we can 'gaze at' and use as a pattern on
the basis of which to say that anything which is 'like' it exists. And, in saying
what truth is, we will not be defining 'truth', but will be identifying a standard
or criterion which we can 'gaze at' and use as a pattern on the basis of which
to say that anything which is 'like' it is intelligible. If we were to take the oppo-
site position that saying what being is, and what truth is, is just defining 'be-
ing' and 'truth', then, if we persist in taking Plato to be saying that the good
is the formal cause of the being and truth of known objects, we would have to
say that Plato has in mind an account of the good as being and truth. But, as
we have seen, Plato explicitly denies such as identification. So we must extend
the point just made about the good to being and truth.
What then is being? What is truth? These two question are in fact one, be-
cause Plato virtually assimilates the concepts of being and truth or intelligibil-
ity.48 In the Cratylus he argues both that what is never the same is not something
real (439el-6) and that what is never the same can be known by nobody

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(439e7-440a5). Such arguments underlie his confident assertion in Republic V
that what is completely real is knowable (477a3; cf. 477a9, blO, 478a6, b3, c34),
whereas what is in between the completely real and the completely unreal is
not knowable (477alO-bl, 478d5-10, 479d7-9). Whatever makes something com-
pletely real makes it completely intelligible, and vice versa.
At the end of Republic V, Plato implicitly addresses the question what be-
ing is when he argues (479a5-d6) that the many things which participate in the
Forms do not exist in the full sense49 but have a status between that of existing
completely and that of not existing at all. The reason he gives for denying them
either of the two statuses is that 'each of the several manys...[is no] more what
one asserts it to be than it is not what one asserts it to be' (479b9-10).so A thing
which exists completely, Plato obviously assumes, is in every way what one as-
serts it to be, and a thing which is completely non-existent is in every way not
what one asserts it to be. Since each of the many perceptible things no more
is than is not what one asserts it to be, then each of them is not completely
real and not completely unreal.
To be, then, is to be in every way what one asserts something to be. That
is why Plato thinks the Forms are fully real: each Form 'always stays the same
in all respects,' aei kata tauta hösautös echei, a formula Plato repeats so often
that it becomes a litany.51 In the Symposium, he makes explicit the various
respects in which a Form is always the same. The beautiful itself, he writes,
'is not in one respect beautiful but in another respect ugly, nor at one time beau-
tiful but at another time not, nor in one relation beautiful but in another rela-
tion ugly, nor in one place beautiful but in another place ugly, as if it were
beautiful to some people but ugly to others' (211a2-5).52 Thus the insistence that
a Form is always the same in all respects covers not only its eternity and in-
variability from time to time but also its invariability at a given time between
one aspect and another.53 About the invariability across time Plato is emphat-
ic, at one place using a quadruple negative to express his point: each Form 'never
in any respect in any way accepts any alteration at all', oudepote oudamei ouda-
mös alloiösin oudemian endechetai (Phaedo 78d6-7).M
What single concept can cover both the Form's invariability over time and
its invariability over aspects? Plato gives us a word: monoeides, uniform.55 A
Form is of one form. What Form is it participation in which would cause some-
thing to be uniform? Evidently the Form of unity, the one, to hen.
The good, then is the one.56 Unity is the ultimate object of psychic pursuit,
'what every soul pursues and for the sake of which it does everything.'
We can check this interpretation by taking the claims Plato makes about
the good through the comparison with the sun (including those listed in note
32) and substituting One' for 'good' and 'uniformity' for *being' and 'truth'. We
get the following propositions: Unity is the cause of uniformity, in the sense
that it is by participating in unity that a Form (or any other known object) is
uniform, 'always remaining the same in all respects'. And to be uniform in this
sense, to be what one is and in no respect (at no time, to no person) to be the
opposite, is to exist (in the full sense) and to be intelligible. So unity is metaphor-
ically the 'king5 of everything that is intelligible. Uniformity is unitylike," but,
as the cause of uniformity, unity is not identical with uniformity, but is still

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more beautiful than it; it is itself, however, uniform (by virtue of the principle
of self-predication) and thus itself exists fully and is intelligible. When the soul
knows, it is in contact with a known object and thus acquires for a time the
uniformity which is the intelligibility ofthat known object; it 'remains the same
in all respects.' So knowledge is unitylike, but unity is not knowledge, though,
as the (indirect) cause of knowledge, it can be known.
The coherence and, from a Platonic point of view, plausibility of these propo-
sitions is striking confirmation of the thesis that in the Republic Plato identi-
fied the good with unity.
V The Foundations of Mathematics
We must now consider how well this thesis coheres with the rest of the Republic.
First, Plato claims that the sun is the offspring (506e3-4, 507a3-4, 517c3)
of the good. This claim depends, it seems, on the remarkable resemblances he
finds between the role of the good in the intelligible world and the role of the
sun in the visible world; note his statement as 506e3-4 that the sun is most like,
homoiotatos, the good. Plato frequently links likeness and causal dependence.58
He may therefore simply have assumed that a visible object which so closely
resembles an intelligible object must owe that resemblance to the intelligible
object. In that case his claim that the sun is the offspring of the good is indepen-
dent of the particular account of the good Plato has in mind, and thus compati-
ble with the thesis that the good is unity. But it does not particularly reinforce it.
Second, Plato seems to have thought that a knowledge of the good could pro-
vide the basis for solving foundational problems in the philosophy of mathemat-
ics. Mathematicians, he says, treat their hypotheses as if they were beginnings,
archai, supposing that there is no need to give an account of them; they simply
deduce consequences from their hypotheses (510c6-d3, 511a3-6, c7-dl). Such a
body of thought is not knowledge, because it does not include knowledge of
whether the hypotheses are true; mere consistency is not knowledge (511d2-6,
533b6-c6). To acquire a knowledge of the mathematicians' hypotheses, we need
to engage in dialectic (i.e. conversational question and answer which puts
hypotheses into question - see for example 534b3-d2), as a result of which we
will reach a genuine beginning, an arche which is not a hypothesis (511b3-7,
533c7-d4). Having found this beginning, we can then deduce the mathemati-
cians' hypotheses and thus eliminate their hypothetical character (511b7-c2,
533c7-dl).59
Now the beginning about which Plato writes has two characteristics. First,
it is the culmination of dialectic, in the sense that once one reaches it one is
no longer on the upward path from hypotheses to a beginning but on the down-
ward path from a beginning to a conclusion (511b7-8). Second, it is the begin-
ning of the whole, ten tou pantos archen (511b7), a claim which apparently has
an ontological rather than an epistemological force. In other words, the begin-
ning is an end of inquiry, the last thing known, and a beginning of being, the
origin of everything. These claims, however, are claims Plato also makes about
the good, '...in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considera-

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ble effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this
is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything' (517b9-c2). And
the good is, as we have seen, the cause of the being of all known objects, includ-
ing the Forms, and thus indirectly the cause of the quasi-existence of all per-
ceptible objects, which come into being by participation in the Forms after which
they are named. So the beginning about which Plato speaks must be the good,
or epistemologically speaking the knowledge of what the good is.
Anyone who attributes an account of the good to Plato on the basis of the
comparison with the sun must therefore make it plausible that Plato could have
thought that from this account one could deduce the hypotheses of the mathema-
ticians. He mentions 'the odd and the even, the figures, three forms of angles,
and other things akin to these in each kind of inquiry' (510c4-5). He seems then
to have in mind the postulation of the kinds of entities with which the various
branches of mathematics deal, and perhaps also the definitions of these kinds.
Unity, the Form of the one, is an obvious basis for generating the numbers
with which arithmetic deals. Peano's axioms, from which the set of natural num-
bers can be generated, postulate the number zero. The Greeks, who did not recog-
nize zero as a number, and who had no numerical symbol for zero, regarded
one as the principle of number, and two as the first number. The idea underly-
ing this position is that, when we say how many there are, we have some unit
by which we count. If we say how many apples, the unit is an apple. If we say
how many people, the unit is a person. When we do arithmetic abstractly, the
basis of numbering is the unit, to hen. Thus the recognition of unity as fundamen-
tal in the universe could provide a foundation for arithmetic.60 Furthermore,
after describing the other branches of mathematics which the future rulers are
to study (and which were presumably part of the curriculum of the Academy)
— namely, plane geometry, solid geometry, celestial mechanics and harmonics
— Plato writes, 'If the inquiry into all the things we have gone through arrives
at their community and relationship with one another, and draws conclusions
as to how they are akin to one another, then the concern with them contributes
something to what we want' (531c9-d4). That is, he seems to have thought that
these different branches of mathematics were connected. If so, he might have
thought that a foundation for arithmetic would be sufficient by implication to
supply a foundation for the other branches of mathematics.61 So the thesis that
in the Republic the good is the one harmonizes well with what Plato says about
the foundations of mathematics, even if we suppose that Plato had not yet de-
veloped his unwritten doctrines in detail.
VI The Good of the Individual
If the good is unity, then the ultimate goal of a soul is to be one, or perhaps
uniform, i.e. like the one. We should first try to understand what this might
mean, and then explore its relationship to the claims Plato makes in the Republic
about the good of an individual soul. Given the apparent tentativeness of Pla-
to's commitment to this account of the good, we may not find logical equiva-

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lence. But we should at least find compatibility, and any stronger logical
connection would be confirmation of this interpretation.
The uniformity of the Form, we may remember, consists in its being in no
way and at no time opposite to what it is. The Form of the beautiful is always
in all ways beautiful, and is never in any way ugly. Generally, the Form of the
F is always and in all ways F, and is never in any way non-F. Since the soul
changes, we cannot expect it to achieve the total invariance of a Form. But it
might for finite stretches of time, and even as an ultimate goal, achieve invaria-
bility over aspects. That is, it might sometimes achieve a condition in which
there was no characteristic which it possessed in one respect while it possessed
its opposite in another respect. Such a soul would, we might say, be completely
at one with itself.
Two important characteristics of souls are affirmations and attractions; their
opposites are denials and aversions. If we think of a soul as primarily an initia-
tor of motion on the basis of beliefs and desires, then the unity of the soul will
consist in the fact that there is no proposition which it both affirms and denies
and that there is no possible motion (of itself or the body it animates) which
it has both a desire and an aversion to initiate. The unity of a soul would thus
be its consistency in thought and desire.
Socrates' overriding task in Republic II-X is to define justice and injustice,
and then show that the former is good and the latter bad for its possessor be-
cause of their effects on the soul, independently of the rewards coming from
a reputation for justice or the punishments coming from a reputation for in-
justice. Having redefined justice and injustice as conditions of the soul (which
just behaviour and unjust behaviour respectively produce and preserve), Socrates
only has to determine whether the conditions in question are in the one case
good and in the other case bad. The thesis that the good is unity makes this
result follow immediately, for the just condition of the soul is according to So-
crates' definition just that unity of desire described above. The just man
doesn't let each part in him mind other people's business or the
three classes in the soul meddle with each other, but really sets
his own house in good order and rules himself; he arranges him-
self, becomes his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts,
exactly like three notes in a harmonic scale, lowest, highest and
middle. And if there are some other parts in between, he binds
them together and becomes entirely one from many, moderate
and harmonized (443dl-e2).
By contrast, injustice is 'a certain faction among those three [parts of the soul]
- a meddling, interference, and rebellion of a part of the soul against the whole'
(444bl-3). The unjust man will be subject to the kind of conflict Plato describes
at 439b-441c, the clash of an opposed attraction and aversion towards the same
thing.
Plato does not appeal in so many words to the unity of the just man's soul
and the disunity of the unjust man's soul as the ground for the one condition
being good for its possessor and the other bad. We must therefore consider
whether the reasons he gives are compatible with this ground.

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The analogy between justice and health (444cl-445b4) is persuasive for Glau-
con, who believes that being healthy is good for its own sake (357cl-3), but it
would need to be deepened by showing that health is a species of the good. If
the good is unity, this can be shown, since health as defined by Plato - the
condition of an organic whole in which each part does its work - is in fact a
kind of unity in which the parts cooperate rather than conflict: the parts of the
organism do not pull against each other.82
Plato's first argument in Republic IX that the soul of the supremely unjust
man is wretched (576bll-580c8) cites the enslavement of the decent part of his
soul to the most depraved and maddest part, his insatiable desires, and his many
fears. This argument thus relies on common-sense beliefs that slavery, unsatis-
fied desires and fears are intrinsically undesirable. Only the judgement about
slavery can be directly explained by an account of the good as unity. If the cal-
culating or reasoning part of the tyrannical soul is enslaved to a master pas-
sion, then it serves the master passion against its will. That is, it has an averison
to the object to which the tyrant's master passion attracts him. This is precise-
ly the kind of inner conflict or disunity which an account of the good as unity
would imply is intrinsically bad.
Plato's second argument (580c9-583all) appeals to the philosopher's judge-
ment that a life to devoted to wisdom is more pleasant than a life devoted to
honour or to gain, a judgement which is supposed to be preferable to the con-
trary judgements of the lover of honour and the lover of gain because of the
philosopher's superior experience, prudence and arguments. This is obviously
a rather external basis for concluding that one life is more pleasant than another,
and it appeals to a criterion of value which Plato has explicitly rejected. So we
cannot take this argument seriously as an indication of Plato's conception of
the good at this time.
In the 'greatest and most sovereign' (583b6) of his three arguments for the
superiority of the philosophic life (583bl-588all), Plato appeals to the superior
truth and purity of the pleasures of the philosophic life (587dl2-e4). The argu-
ment has two strands. One appeals to the fact that the pleasures connected with
the appetites and the spirited part of the soul are by and large cessations of
pains (i.e. of antecedent yearnings) which restore the soul to a state of indiffer-
ent repose and are thus both mixed with pain and illusory. This strand seems
to take pleasure as a criterion of intrinsic value, and so does not indicate Pla-
to's conception of the good. The other strand, however, appeals to the greater
truth and being of the objects possessed by those who experience the pleasures
of the philosophic life (585a8-e5). Here the criterion of value is not pleasure but
truth: the condition of being 'always the same, immortal and true' (585cl-2).
And the intrinsic value of truth, so understood, is clearly a consequence of the
thesis that the good is unity.
As he does elsewhere, Plato complements his arguments with an image
designed to make what he takes to be rationally persuasive appeal to the im-
agination and emotions of his reader.*3 He constructs (588bl-e2) the famous im-
age of the soul as a hybrid animal like the chimaera or Cerberus, a nature in
which 'many ideas [have] grown naturally together in one' (588c4-5). The soul
is like a human being, a lion and a many-coloured, many-headed beast joined

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into one; on the outside of this hybrid is the image of a human being. 'Then
let's say,' Socrates says,
to the one who says that it's profitable for this human being to
do injustice, and that it's not advantageous for him to do just
things, that he's affirming nothing other than that it is profita-
ble for him to feast and make strong the manifold beast and the
lion and what's connected with the lion, while starving the hu-
man being and making him weak so that he can be drawn where-
ver either of the others leads and doesn't habituate them to one
another or make them friends but lets them bite and fight and
devour each other (588e3-589a4).
The disadvantage of doing injustice is that it produces discord among the parts
of the soul, that is, disunity. By contrast, doing just actions is profitable because
it promotes friendship among the parts of the soul, that is, unity:
...the one who says the just things are profitable affirmfs] that
it is necessary to do and say those things from which the hu-
man being within will most be in control of the human being
and take charge of the many-headed beast...making the lion's
nature an ally and, caring for all in common, making them
friends with each other and himself...(589a-b)
In his descriptions of the character of the various kinds of unjust individual
- the timarchic, oligarchic, democratic and tyrannical man - Plato includes
features of the soul which he clearly regards as undesirable, and whose undesira-
bility would have to be explicable in terms of the thesis that the good is unity.
Without undertaking this lengthy task, we can at least note two passages where
Plato explicitly stigmatizes disunity.
The oligarchic man, he writes,
wouldn't be free from faction within himself; nor would he be
simply one, but rather in some sense twofold, although for the
most part his better desires would master his worse desires ...
such a man would be more graceful than many, but the true
virtue of a single-minded and harmonious soul would escape far
from him (554d9-e5).
The undesirability of such a condition of the soul can be explained in terms of
the opposition within the soul at a given time.
In a delightful portrait, Plato describes the democratic man as one who
lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him,
at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another down-
ing water and reducing; now practicing gymnastic, and again
idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his
time as though he were occupied with philosophy. Often he en-
gages in politics and, jumping up, says and does whatever
chances to come to him; and if he ever admires any soldiers, he

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turns in that direction; and if it's money-makers, in that one.
And there is neither order nor necessity in his life, but calling
this life sweet, free, and blessed, he follows it throughout
(561c6-d7).
What is undesirable about such a life, according to the thesis that the good is
unity, is that there is no constancy of desire over time. The soul lacks the in-
variability which the Forms possess because of their participation in the one.
If a soul succeeded in eliminating all conflicts among its desires, there would
be no basis for distinguishing its parts as is done in Republic IV. In that case,
it would be completely undivided, a condition we might expect to be its ulti-
mate salvation if the good is unity. The metaphor of the soul as a composite
of a human being, a lion and a many-headed beast suggests that this condition
would consist in the disappearance of the spirit and the appetites, so that only
the reason - the true human being - would remain. We get a hint of this posi-
tion in Book X, immediately after the argument for the immortality of the soul:
...let's not suppose...that soul by its truest nature is such that
it is full of much variety, dissimilarity, and quarrel with itself...it
must be seen such as it is in truth, not maimed by community
with body and other evils...when it has become pure...one will
find it far fairer and discern justice and injustice and everything
we have now gone through more distinctly...one must look ...to
its love of wisdom, and recognize what it lays hold of and with
what sort of things it longs to keep company on the grounds that
it is akin to the divine and immortal and what is always, and
what it would become like if it were to give itself entirely to
this longing ...And then one would see its true nature - whether
it is many-formed or single-formed, or in what way it is and how
(611blO-612a5).
In its true nature, Plato broadly hints, the soul is not tripartite or multiform,
but single and uniform, monoeides (612a4). It is pure reason. As long as it con-
cerns itself solely with the Forms, with what truly exists, it 'always stays the
same in all respects', aei kata tauta hösautös echei (Phaedo 79d5). And for the
sake of this, according to the thesis that the good is unity, the soul does every-
thing that it does.
VII The Good of the Polls
A polis is not a soul, but an association of human beings, each governed by a

soul. Nevertheless, Plato thinks of a polis as something which can be benefited
or harmed (412d4-5, el, 413c6-7, 420b7-8, e7, 421bl, 6, 462a2-b3) and he does
not simply identify the good of a polis with the good of the human beings of
which it consists.*4 So it may be that Plato thought of a polis as something which
could as a whole be benefited or harmed, in which case there would have to
be a criterion of intrinsic value for judging whether any given condition of the

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polis was good or bad for it. This application of the concept of the good could
be accommodated by extending its definition from 'that which every soul pur-
sues and for the sake of which it does everything that it does' to 'that which
every end-directed system does and for the sake of which it does everything that
it does'. And we would need to explore the logical relationship between the the-
sis that the good is unity and what Plato says in the Republic about what is
good and bad for a polis.
In this case, in contrast to the case of the individual, Plato is quite explicit.
The greatest good for a city, he writes, is what binds it together and makes it
one, the greatest evil what splits it and makes it many instead of one (462a9-b2).
Here unity is obviously a criterion of intrinsic value, and disunity or multiplic-
ity a criterion of intrinsic disvalue. By unity Plato here means what he meant
in talking about the uniformity of the Forms, a condition in which the city does
not simultaneously possess opposite characteristics in different parts of itself.
The city, he says, must avoid a situation where 'some are overwhelmed and
others overjoyed by the same things happening to the city and those within the
city' (462b8-cl).
As with the individual, in his description of the constitution of the just city,
Plato includes characteristics which he clearly regards as desirable, and in his
descriptions of the inferior constitutions, he includes characteristics which he
clearly regards as undesirable. The desirability and undesirability of these
characteristics would have to be ultimately explicable by, or at least compati-
ble with, the thesis that the good is unity. Without undertaking this lengthy
task, we can note places where Plato explicitly values unity for a city and stig-
matizes disunity.
The good city avoids wealth and poverty, which produce not one city but
many: There are two, in any case, warring with each other, one of the poor,
the other of the rich. And within each of these there are very many*
(422e9-423a2).65 Furthermore, the good city limits its population 'to that point
in its growth at which it's willing to be one' (423b9-10). And the basic constitu-
tional principle that each citizen is to perform the social role which naturally
suits him - one man, one job - has as its explicit aim 'that each man, practis-
ing his own, which is one, will not become many but one; and thus, you see,
the whole city will naturally grow to be one and not many' (423d4-6).ee
Among the inferior regimes, oligarchy makes the mistake of 'not being one
but of necessity two, the city of the poor and the city of the rich, dwelling together
in the same place, ever plotting against each other' (551d5-7).
VIII A Partial Appraisal
Having considered the coherence of the rest of the Republic with the thesis that
the comparison of the good with the sun points to Plato's identification of the
good with unity, I now wish to attempt a preliminary appraisal of this identifi-
cation. I shall confine myself to the theory of intrinsic value - the position that
the only intrinsically good feature is unity. I assume that this position can be

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considered independently of Plato's metaphysical beliefs in the separate exis-
tence of the Forms and the separability of the soul from the body.
Let us first consider how the thesis that the good is unity applies in prac-
tice. What implications does it have for the decision-making of an individual
concerned with his or her own welfare?87 What implications does it have for
political decision-makers concerned with the welfare of their polity?
In both contexts, obviously, Plato's thesis enjoins stability over time and
the avoidance of internal conflict. The avoidance of conflict must be genuine
and not forced or repressive, because repressed conflict is still conflict, incom-
patible with unity as Plato understands it. These goals seem to leave wide scope
for individual discretion in managing one's life and for variation between soci-
eties in their constitutional arrangements. Plato, however, limits the individu-
al's discretion. He holds that lives devoted to honour or gain or pleasure are
inferior to a life devoted to the pursuit of wisdom, which aims at the complete
unity described in Book X. One reason for his thinking so might be that these
other goals are unlimited, in the sense that one can always obtain more honour
or gain or pleasure. Hence, if any of these is one's goal, one will always be dis-
satisfied. An unsatisfied desire can be interpreted, with some strain, as a kind
of inner disunity. For in such a condition there is a conflict between the way
things are (and are recognized to be) and the way one wants things to be.
How should we evaluate the thesis that unity is the criterion of intrinsic
value? In its favour is its great generality and abstractness: it is capable of in-
tegrating a wide range of things which are intrinsically valuable. In particu-
lar, it avoids the anthropocentric bias and human chauvinism which infect most
of western philosophy. The good as Plato understands it is not the goal of hu-
man beings only but of every soul, including those of animals and gods.68
Plato's thesis can be generalized even further. The concept of the good is
for Plato essentially action-guiding and tied to the agent who acts. That is, the
good is that which an agent (or end-directed system) pursues as an ultimate
end which she desires to possess for herself. But we use the concept good also
for appraisal, as when the book of Genesis reports that 'God rested, and God
saw that it was good.' Presumably this does not mean that it benefited God,
or that it had the characteristics which enabled it do its work well. Further-
more, some of us at least want to be able to talk about whether a given policy
benefits or harms a species, an ecosystem or a wilderness area, none of which
is an agent pursuing its own good, or, arguably, an end-directed system. Like-
wise, we might like to say that it is good for certain works of art and cultural
products to exist, or that certain changes would improve or harm them. In speak-
ing about benefit or harm to entities or systems which do not direct themselves
toward a goal, we implicitly appeal to a criterion of intrinsic value applicable
to such entities. Unity is one possible criterion of this sort, since entities which
do not govern themselves can have more or less unity.
Plato, therefore, appears to have a general theory of intrinsic value capable
of accounting not only for what is good and bad for human beings but also for
what is good and bad for social systems, ecosystems, animals, species and the
universe as a whole. A contemporary parallel is the axiological component of
the general value theory sketched by Richard and Val Routley (1980). They men-

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tion as some intrinsically valuable features 'meritorious' enjoyment, diversity
of systems and creatures, naturalness, integrity of systems, stability of systems,
and harmony of systems (170). The features of integrity, stability and harmony
of systems clearly correspond to Plato's thesis that the good is unity.
The Routleys' list, however, exposes what I regard as the crucial weakness
in Plato's conception of the good, namely, its incompleteness. Plato's insistence
on the univocity of terms has misled him. Because the term 'good' has a single
meaning (at least in one of its uses), he supposes that there is a single goal which
every soul pursues and for the sake of which it does everything that it does.
But the conclusion does not follow. The definition of the good already assures
univocity. It is compatible with there being several criteria of intrinsic value,
any one of which would make something worth pursuing for its own sake. The
long search in western philosophy for a single summum bonum rests originally
on a logical mistake.
Exposing the logical mistake does not show that there is more than one
criterion of intrinsic value. But Plato's single criterion seems inadequate. It im-
plies a fanatical single-mindedness69 in governing one's life and allows no in-
strinsic value to variety or complexity. It leads to a conception of personal
salvation as becoming pure reason contemplating the Forms in their systemat-
ic unity, completely detached from the corporeal and the perceptible. In politi-
cal philosophy, it ignores the value of pluralism, of ethnic and cultural diversity,
seeing in the attractiveness of a free society only a dangerous seduction. It en-
courages a monolithic state. Indeed, the fundamental mistake of Plato's politi-
cal theory seems to be its insistence on a society being so unified that its members
become mere parts in a whole.70 With these sketchy remarks I do not mean to
reject Plato's theory. I am inclined to think that he has identified at a high lev-
el of abstractness and generality one criterion of intrinsic value. Other things
being equal, to have unity is in itself a good thing. Plato's mistake was to think
that it was the only thing worth possessing for its own sake.71
David Hitchcock
Department of Philosophy
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4K1

82 Unauthenticated
Notes
1. Unless otherwise indicated, in quoting Plato's Republic I use the translation by Bloom (1968).
2. I assume that in general Plato endorsed the substantive claims of Socrates in the Republic
at the time he wrote the dialogue.
3. By 'an account of the good' I mean what Plato means by a logos tes ousias; cf. Phaedo 78dl,
Rep. 534b3-4. Anyone who knows something, he maintains, must be able to give an account,
a logos, of its ousia (essence), equivalently of ho esti (what it is); cf. Rep. 531e4-5, 534b4-6.
I shall argue later (p. 71) that the logos of the ousia of an evaluative Form such as piety
or the good is not a definition of the word which designates the Form, but embodies a theory
of the substantive basis for applying the word to particular actions, persons and objects.
4. Since my concern is with Plato's views at a particular time in his life, I shall in general make
no use of works written after the Republic, that is, of the Parmenides, Theaetetus, Phaedrus,
Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, Laws, Epinomis or the Letters. (For this or-
dering, which I do not necessarily endorse, see Brandwood (1976, xvii).) I shall also make
no use of reports of Plato's unwritten doctrines about the good, since we do not know when
he developed those doctrines. I shall, however, assume that Plato still held views which we
can attribute to him on the basis of works written before Republic II-X, unless there is some
explicit indication that he had abandoned the view by that time.
5. In the Republic, for example, we find references to a good guardian (375c), good body (403a),
good physician (408c), good judge (409b), good education (416b), good painter (472c), good poet
(598e), good lawgiver (599e), good flute (601d), and of course a good man (558b), good soul
(403d) and good life (618c).
6. The conception of human arete as knowledge of how to benefit oneself is evident at Prot.
355e-357b, Meno 87d-89a, Euthydemus 278e-282e and Phaedo 68d-69b. Adkins (I960,220-258)
brings out well the prudential conception of human arete and the agathos human being which
Plato took over from his contemporaries.
7. In Republic II, however, Adeimantus uses the concept of human arete in a moralizing sense
(Adkins 1960, 172-179) in which it is self-evident that justice is a human virtue, but a mat-
ter of dispute whether the good man is happy (364al-b5). Socrates contrary to his practice
in earlier dialogues, carries through this conceptual separation between virtue and benefit
or happiness; see, for example, 427e6-12, 444dl3-445a4, 544a6-8, 576bll-e5, 580b8-c4. But
his definition of the principal human virtues at the end of Republic IV (441c-444d) restores
the usual prudential sense of arete: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice turn out to be
a single condition of a tripartite soul, described from different perspectives, in which the cal-
culating part governs the appetites with the aid of the spirit on the basis of what is advanta-
geous (sumpherontos, 442c7) for each part of the soul and for the soul as a whole.
8. The word agathos can be used in its good-of-a-kind sense in the predicative position, as when
one says that a particular human being or physician or shoe is agathos, but in such uses
it would always be said of one or more individual things rather than of a kind ofthing. See,
for example, Rep. 348d3-4, 350c4-5, 379bl, 427e7-8.
9. At Euthydemus 279a5-c8 Socrates gets Clinias" agreement that everyone includes among good
things wealth, health, beauty, good birth, power, honour in one's country, temperance, justice,
courage, wisdom and good fortune. At Meno 87e5-88b8 things commonly accounted benefi-
cial or good include health, strength, beauty, wealth, temperance, justice, courage, quick-
ness at learning, memory, and magnificence. Glaucon at the beginning of Republic Π (357b4-d2)
distinguishes good things desired just for their own sake and not for their consequences (en-
joyment, harmless pleasures), good things we like both for their own sake and for their con-
sequences (thinking, seeing, being healthy), and good things which are beneficial but not
choiceworthy for their own sakes (gymnastic exercise, medical treatment, working for a liv-
ing). Socrates, who thinks that virtue or wisdom alone is good (Euthydemus 281e2-5, Meno
89al-2; cf. Apology 41dl-2), is skeptical of these customary valuations.
10. In holding that there are two distinct senses of'good' in Plato, I do not imply that Plato was
fully conscious of the distinction. Sometimes he slides illegitimately from one sense to the
other. Thus, at Meno 87el-3 Socrates argues as follows: All good things are beneficial. There-

83 Unauthenticated
fore, if we are good, we are beneficial. And by virtue we are good. Therefore, virtue is benefi-
cial. The first inference in this argumentative chain goes from being good in the sense of
being beneficial to being good of a kind, and it ends in a conclusion which makes little sense.
(The ultimate conclusion, however, can be established in another way by appealing to the
work of a soul as being to benefit itself.) Again, at Rep. 335b6-c2 Socrates arrives by induc-
tion at an implicit definition of 'being harmed', blaptomenos (the opposite of being benefit-
ed), as becoming worse with respect to one's specific virtue. The elision of the two senses
is dubious, since harming a horse or dog (Socrates' examples) by making it suffer does not
necessarily make it a worse horse or dog, and harming human beings does not generally
make them worse human beings, at least as 'harm' is normally understood. The latter claim
could be justified only by holding as a substantive position (not something true by defini-
tion) that the only good (i.e. beneficial) thing for a human being was human virtue; the histor-
ical Socrates appears to have held this view. Again, at Rep. 379bl-c7 Socrates argues that,
since God is good (i.e. good of a kind), God will be a cause of good things but not of bad things;
the assumptions which license this inference are that none of the good things is harmful
Cb3) and that whatever is good is beneficial (bll), assumptions which clearly depend on us-
ing 'good' in the sense of beneficial. To rescue his argument from this equivocation, Plato
would have to appeal to the function of the soul, since a god is for him a good soul.
The comparative rarity and awkwardness of such confusions indicates that Plato does
use 'good' in two senses, though unconsciously.
11. Obviously it is logically possible for there to be more than one standard of intrinsic value.
But Plato seems unaware of this possibility, at least at this stage of his life. All the accounts
of the good considered in the Republic or earlier designate a single standard. For examples
of Plato's insistence on a single substantive standard for the application of an evaluative
term, see Euthyphro 6d9-e9 and Meno 72a6-73c5.
12. Paul Shorey pointed out long ago (1895) the continuity of the conception of the good in the
Republic with the conception of the good in what he called the minor ethical dialogues. Shorey's
interpretation, however, is marred by his dismissal of the claims about the good made through
the allegory of the sun as 'religious poetry colored by sun-worship' (239).
13. Socrates actually says that they will not get a precise grasp of'this', touto, by the methods
they are using. He does not specify the referent. Since the latest previous reference to an
object of inquiry is to whether the same three kinds exist in the soul as exist in the city they
have constructed (435c5-6), it might be thought that Socrates is claiming that one cannot
get a precise grasp of the nature of the soul using the method of considering psychological
conflicts. This interpretation certainly fits Socrates' broad hint in Republic X (611alO-612a6)
that the soul in its truest nature is not of many kinds but of one kind, monoeldes; the defect
of the method of considering psychological conflicts would be that it considers the nature
of the soul in its human life, when it is corrupted by attachment to the body, rather than
the nature of the soul in itself. But when Socrates recalls his comment about the 'longer road'
at 504bl-4, he represents himself as having said that this road is required to get the finest
look at 'them', auta, which in the context can only refer to justice, temperance, courage and
wisdom, mentioned at 504a5-6. And in the earlier passage the question of the kinds in the
soul arises in the context of the question whether the individual human being is just, tem-
perate, brave and wise through the same affections as the city is (435b9-c2). Hence Socrates'
dissatisfaction must be with the method they are using to define human virtues rather than
specifically with the method they are using to determine the kinds in the soul.
14. This claim does not mean, as Santas (1980, 377) claims, that things are useful because they
participate in the good. At 505a3, Plato uses the word proschresomena, making use of, to
describe the relation between things which become useful and beneficial on the one hand
and the good on the other. It is an overinterpretation to translate this word by 'participation
in', as Santas does. The natural interpretation is that something is useful or beneficial if
the extent to which it and its consequences participate in the good outweighs the extent to
which it and its consequences participate in the bad. Such a view is sketched in some detail
at Protagoras 353c-358c in terms of an account of the good as pleasure.
15. See, for example, Luban (1978).
16. Nicholas White claims (1979, 16) that Plato 'does not recognize any significant difference
in the meaning of 'good" in the Republic. But this claim is false. The definition of 'virtue'
as goodness of a kind at Rep. 353c6-7 is significantly different from the definition of the good'

84 Unauthenticated
as the summit of psychic aspiration at Rep. 505dll-el. And on the whole Plato keeps the
use of'good' in the sense of good of a kind distinct from the use of'good' in the sense of beneficial.
White adds (16) that Plato offers the same grounds for saying that his arrangements make
the city good (i.e. good of its kind) as for saying that they are good (i.e. beneficial) for the
city and its citizens. But this claim is not quite correct. Plato's grounds for holding that his
city is good are that it possesses the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance
and justice; see 433c4-d5, where ten polin hemin mallsta agathen apergasetai (433c4-5) and
malista agathen auten poiei (433d2) mean respectively 'most will make our city good' and
'most makes it good' (not, as Bloom translates, 'will do our city the most good' and 'is ... done
the most good"). Plato's most explicit claim about what is good (i.e. beneficial) for a city oc-
curs at 462a2-e3, where he says that the greatest good in the organization of a city - that
good aiming at which the legislator must set down the laws - ... [is] what binds it together
and makes it one' and the greatest evil ... [is] what splits it and makes it many instead of
one' (462a3-b2). But there is a close connection between what makes a city good and what
benefits it, because the function, ergon, of a city is in Plato's view to make the city happy;
see, for example, 420b3-421c6. Thus a good city will be one whose constitutional arrange-
ments ensure that it is benefited. Plato's definitions of the virtues of a city ensure this result
by stipulating that the rulers make decisions on the basis of a knowledge of "how the city
as a whole would best deal with itself and the other cities' (428dl-3), a knowledge which must
be interpreted as a knowledge of what is advantageous for the city, given the analogous charac-
terization of wisdom in the individual (442c6-8), as well as Socrates' earlier insistence that
the rulers must do what they believe is advantageous for the city (412d9-e3, e8, 413c5-7).
Since Plato also stipulates that the administration carries out the rulers' decisions and the
subjects obey, in such a system the city would indeed be benefited.
White further points out (35-37, 47^48, 193-194) that the Form of the good, like all Pla-
tonic Forms, is what it is unqualifiedly. He takes this fact to imply that, when Socrates speaks
at 505d-e of the soul as pursuing the good, he means that the soul has as its aim to instanti-
ate the good as unqualifiedly as possible, that is, without the qualification 'in this particular
soul'. Although this interpretation (shared by Cooper (1977)) has the merit of resolving the
difficult problem of why the philosophers in Plato's city consent to abandon the better life
of philosophizing for the worse life of ruling (519b-521b), it has no basis in the text. In the
Symposium (20€e3-8) Plato makes clear that the love of human beings for the good is a desire
for the good to belong to them. If he had meant to repudiate this egoistic perspective in the
Republic, we would have expected him to make the repudiation explicit in the crucial pas-
sage at 505a-506a. Not only does Plato not do so, but in the concluding myth of the Republic
he has Socrates sum up the moral of the whole dialogue (618b6-619bl) in explicitly egoistic
terms: each of us is to make decisions, in this life and the next, with reference to the effect
of the choice on our own soul, so as to become as happy as possible.
17. Socrates' appeals to the ugliness of opinions without knowledge and to the ridicule he would
suffer seem inadequate, given his willingness up to this point to express his opinions, even
when he expects ridicule (473c7-8) from their expression. His reluctance probably reflects
Plato's tentativeness about a belief which he must have adopted comparatively recently, given
his confident but now abandoned identification of the good with wisdom in the Phaedo (69a9-c3).
18. Given the acknowleged importance of a knowledge of the good for an understanding of the
virtues (504a4-505b4), Socrates' assertion that 'it's out of the range of our present thrust to
attain the opinions I now hold about it' (506e2-3) cannot mean that the nature of the good
is irrelevant to their task of discovering what justice and injustice are and what effect each
of them has on the soul of its possessor apart from questions of rewards and reputation.
(358M-7, 367b2-e5). Rather, it must mean that the approach Socrates is taking does not en-
compass what it would take to set out his opinion about the good. In view of his assertions
that the good is 'in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort'
(517b8-cl) and his prescription for the potential philosopher rulers of a ten-year preparatory
education in mathematics before beginning the philosophical inquiry which culminates in
a knowledge of the good (537b-d), Socrates must be suggesting that Glaucon and Adeiman-
tus would need more preparation for what he has to say. If we take Glaucon and Adeiman-
tus as stand-ins in this respect for Plato's readers, Socrates' claim that his opinions about
the good are "beyond their present thrust' will stand for Plato's reluctance to put before a
general audience with indeterminate preparation his thinking about the most fundamental
questions - a reluctance exemplified in the repeated failure of participants in his dialogues
to reach a solution which they find adequate, and articulated later in the Phaedrus (276a-277a)
and the Seventh Letter (341b-342a, 344a-d).

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19. That Socrates (and thus Plato) does have an opinion about what the good is is clear from
506c2-d8 and 533a3-5. The metaphor of paying Glaucon the interest on the debt of an ac-
count of the good (507al-4), Socrates' assertions that his claims about the good are only his
opinions (509c3-4, 519b6-8, 533a3-6), and his derivation from those claims of rejections of
various possible accounts of the good (508e4-6, 509a7-9, b8-9) all indicate that these claims
are hints about Socrates' (i.e. Plato's) opinion concerning what the good is
20 In the Protagoras (351c-d, 353c-354e) Plato sets out the standard hedonist reply to this objec-
tion - namely, that bad pleasures are bad insofar as they produce greater future pains or
deprive us of greater future pleasures. At Gorgias 494c4-495c2, however, Socrates gets Cal-
licles to agree that it is a consequence of Callicles' view that 'pleasant and good are the same'
(495a3) that a life spent scratching an itch or submitting to anal intercourse would be a hap-
py life. These may be taken as pleasures which are either neutral or bad (for all except those
as shameless as Callicles) independently of any unpleasant or painful consequences they may
have, and which are thus immune to the standard hedonist reply given in the Protagoras.
But Plato may have regarded them as refutations only of a hedonism like Callicles' which
identified pleasure with the gratification of the appetites.
21. For the purposes of his analogy, Plato ignores illumination at night by the moon and other
heavenly bodies, as well as illumination by fires and artificial sources of light.
22. On both sides of the analogy Plato equivocates on whether what is caused is an actuality
or a potentiality The equivocation is harmless, since presumably whether actually or poten-
tially being seen or known results depends on whether there is an eye to see or a soul to
know what is able to be seen or known. The more exact way of speaking seems then to be
that what is caused is a potentiality.
23. These included the theories of Alcmaeon of Croton (Beare 1906,11-13) and Empedocles (Beare
1906, 14-21).
24. Theophrastus tells us (De Sensibus, sections 8,18) that Empedocles thinks that daylight aug-
ments the visual fire in the daytime. But this augmentation appears not to be a replenish-
ment of the interior fire, but an increase in the light in the eye.
25. I have reworded Bloom's translation to remove an ambiguity which does not exist in the Greek,
and have translated to on as "being" rather than 'that which is.'
26. For the coincidence of opposites, see 479a5-blO; Heraclitus hints at the same doctrine at Diels-
Kranz 22B10, 59, 60, 61, 62, 67, 88, 103. For constant change see Phaedo 78dlO-79all and
Rep. 585bl2-c5, and compare Diels-Kranz 22B6, 12, 30, 125, 126. Aristotle tells us at Met.
987a32-bl that Plato in his youth got from Cratylus the Heraclitean doctrine that all per-
ceptible things are always in flux, and continued to hold the doctrine in later life. Because
of this doctrine's link in Heraclitus' thought (DK 22B88) with the doctrine of the coincidence
of opposites, it is reasonable to suppose that Plato got the latter doctrine as well from the
same source.
27. Note the contrast between genesis and ousia as two separate realms at Rep. 525b5, 526e6-7
and 534a3-4. There are equivalent contrasts at 508d5-7 between to gignomenon te kai apol-
lumenon, what comes into being and passes away, and to on, what is, and at 518c8-9 and
521d4 between to gignomenon, what comes into being, and to on, what is.
28. At 479c7 Plato says that perceptible things are tes metaxu ousias te kai tou me einai, be-
tween being and not being. He repeats the same point at 479d4-5 using the phrase metaxu
ton te me ontos kai tou ontos. See also note 27. As with the English word Ijeing', the Greek
words on, einai and ousia are ambiguous between the totality of what exists (in the full sense)
and the (full) existence which these things have. In Republic VI and VII Plato repeatedly
uses ousia for the realm of the fully existent; see 485b2, 486a9, 523a3, 524el, 525b5, 525c6,
526c6, 526e6-7, 534a3-4. For its use to designate the status of full existence which items in-
this realm possess, see 509b8-9, 585bl2, c7, 12. Such a general use of ousia is rare in dia-
logues written before Republic II-X; see, perhaps, Hippias Major 301e4.
29. This is a common use of ousia in dialogues written before the Republic. See Meno 72bl; Phaedo
65dl3, 101c3; Cratylus 386a4, el, 4, 388cl, 393d4, 401c5, d3, 423el, 3, 8, 424b2, 10, 431d3;
Republic 359a5, 534b4,585c7. See also note 3. At Euthyphro lla7-8 and Hippias Major 301b8,
Plato contrasts the ousia or essence of a thing with a pathos or attribute of it. A nice juxtapo-

86 Unauthenticated
sition of the two senses ofousia, illustrating their difference and the relation between being
in general and the essence of a particular thing, occurs at Rep. 585c7-13, where the ousia
(i.e. essence) of something which is always the same is said to participate no more in ousia
(i.e. being) than in knowledge and no less in truth than in ousia (being). The repetition of
the triad of knowledge, truth and ousia confirms the interpretation ofousia at 509b8 as "being."
30. White (1979, 178-179) and Annas (1981, 246-247) make the supposition I question. Roger Shiner
has pointed out that, in its defence, one could point to the young Socrates' initial refusal
in the Parmemdes (130d3-5) to admit Forms of such an 'extremely unhonoured and trivial',
atlmotaton te kai phaulotaton (130c6-7) thing as hair or mud or dirt. Socrates' reasons seem
to have more to do with the fact that hair and mud and dirt are unimportant than with the
fact that they are not good. He has no trouble admitting a Form of likeness or a Form of
multiplicity (130b3-6), even though the former is value-neutral and the latter of anything
bad. In any case, Parmenides tells Socrates that he will not fail to honour such objects when
he becomes more philosophical (130el-4), a prediction which implies that Plato saw no difficulty
in admitting such Forms.
31. Santas (1980, 379, n.9) claims that Plato does not call the Form of the Good a 'cause ' at
506b-509c. But see 508e3-4, where the good is said to be an aitian of knowledge and truth,
terminology repeated, as Santas notes, at 517c2-4. Plato never says that the good is a 'cause'
of the being of the things known, but the claim at 509b8 that being 'is in them by it', hup'
ekeinou...proseinai, is obviously a causal claim, the word hupo being regularly used, as in
the immediately preceding clause (509b6-7), to introduce an agent or cause. Also, the rela-
tion of the good to being is parallel to the relation of 'providing*, parechein, which holds be-
tween the sun and generation, growth and nourishment - a relation which is obviously causal.
32. In addition to the three claims under discussion, Plato makes the following parallel claims:
(1) Just as the sun is not sight (508all, b9, 509al-2), so the good is not knowledge (508e5,
(2) Just as the sun as cause of sight is seen (508b9-10), so the good as cause of knowledge
is known (508e3-4).
(3) Just as the eye (508b34) or sight (509al-2) is sunlike, so knowledge is goodlike (509a2-3).
(4) Just as the sun is not light (509al-2), so the good is not truth (508e5, 509a3-4).
(5) Just as light is sunlike (509al), so truth is goodlike (509a3).
(6) Just as the sun is not generation (509b4), so the good is not being (509b8-9).
(7) Just as the sun is king of the visible class and region, so the good is king of the intel-
ligible (509d2-3).
He makes three additional claims about the good without making parallel claims about the
sun:
(Θ) The good is more beautiful than knowledge (508e6).
(9) The good is more beautiful than truth (508e6).
(10) The good is more dignified and powerful than being (509b9-10).
33. At first (95e9) Socrates proposes to treat only the cause of generation and destruction. But
he soon broadens his concern to include that on account of which each thing is (96alO, cf.
97c7), and his examples of explanations of why ten is more than eight and two feet is bigger
than one (96e2-4, 101b4-8) show that he is concerned about explaining eternal facts. Hence
it is reasonable to look in the Phaedo for a model of the causal explanation of the eternal
facts that what is known exists and that it is intelligible.
34. Plato does not speak this abstractly, but his examples tend to fit this pattern. Heat and cold
initiate fermentation, which ends in the breeding of a living creature (96b2-3). Blood or air
or fire initiates the process of thinking (96b4). Eating and drinking initiate a process of ad-
ding flesh to flesh and bones to bones, which terminates in a small man's becoming big
(96c7-d5).
35. 'If mind is the cause of everything," Socrates supposes, 'the ordering mind orders everything
and places each thing inthe way in which it would be best' (97c3-5). See also 97c6-dl, d3,
e2-3, e4-5, 98a5-6, bl-3, 99a2-4. Unlike Aristotle, who supposes that things can happen for
the sake of an end even though no thinking agent had that end in mind, Plato in the Phaedo
thinks that explanations in terms of what is best presuppose an ordering mind.
36. The statement at Rep. 597b5-7 that a god produced the Form of the bed is made very hesi-
tantly: 'We would say, I suppose, a god produced" the Form of the bed. Socrates needs an

87 Unauthenticated
analogue to the carpenter who produces the beds we use and the painter who produces an
imitation of the carpenter's bed, and he can think of no better analogue than a god. Since
the position that a god produces the Forms occurs nowhere else in Plato's writings, we should
not take Socrates' hesitant assertion as expressing Platonic doctrine.
37. Plato expounds this model through the example of an explanation of the fact that something
other than the Form of beauty is beautiful (100c4-6, d4-8, e2-3). He expresses a commitment
to this model of explanation in all cases (100c6), but instead of giving a general statement
of the pattern of explanation contents himself with two other examples, explanations of why
larger) things are large(r) and smaller things are smaller (lOOeS-6,101a2-3,4-5, b5-6) Vlastos
points out rightly (1973,88, n. 39) that the word aitia is used in this passage, not of the Forms,
but of participation in the Forms, and he is surely right to insist that Plato is not taking
the Forms to be efficient causes in Aristotle's sense. But the dative construction (all beauti-
ful things are beautiful by the beautiful, toi kaloi - 100d7-8, e2-3; cf. lOOeS, 6, 101a2-3, 4,
b6, 7) and the use of the preposition din, 'through', (everything bigger is bigger through big-
ness, dia to megethos - 101a3; cf. 101a5, b5) both have causal overtones.
38. White (1979, pp. 41,161-2,180) and Santas (1980, n. 30) acknowledge this fact as a difficulty
for their view that Plato takes each Form to be good. It seems fatal as well for Irwin's in-
terpretation of Plato as claiming that a correct definition of a Form involves showing how
it contributes to the good, and that the good is not distinct from the Forms, but just is the
set of Forms thus teleologically systematized. See also Vlastos (1973, 64), who attributes to
Plato a conception of the real as the valuable, and finds this incompatible with holding that
the Forms of injustice, ugliness and evil are real.
39. In the first passage the contrast is indicated by the 'men...de' construction, in the second pas-
sage by a participial construction, which most English translators of the Republic (Jowett,
Shorey, Lee, Bloom, Grube - but not Cornford) take to have an adversative force.
40. White (1979,180-181), who points out that Plato is denying a natural inference from an in-
terpretation of the causal relationship as one of formal causality, argues convincingly that
Plato is not trying to deny that the good is or has being. Indeed, at 509dl Socrates says ex-
plicitly that the good exists.
41. Plato does not mention the Forms in his comparison between the sun and the good at
507c6-509c4, preferring instead to apeak of 'the things known', ta gignoskomena, and 'the
things intellected', ta nooumena. Clearly the Forms are included among the things known,
for Socrates has just reminded Glaucon (507b9-10) of their previous agreement (476c9-d7,
479e7-9) that the Forms are intellected. In avoiding explicit mention of the Forms, Plato may
be not only preserving the parallel between 'things seen' and things known' or 'things in-
tellected', but also leaving open the possibility that other things besides the Forms are known.
One such possibility is the gods, whom Plato has previously argued are unchaning
(380dl-381clO) and who would therefore be knowable. Another possibility is the intermedi-
ate mathematical objects which Aristotle tells us (Met. 987dl4-18) Plato posited. Ross (1951,
58-65) has argued convincingly, however, that Plato had Forms in mind as the correlates
of dianoia on the third section of the divided line, not mathematical objects.
42. Ekeino auto to eidos hoi panta ta hosia hosia estin.
43. Apoblepon. kai chrömenos autei paradeigmati, ho men an toiouton ei hon an e su e alias tis
prattei pho hosion einai, ho d'an me toiouton, me phö.
44. The absurdity of these claims shows that Plato does not have in mind that the good is pleas-
ure. Glaucon finds a similar incompatibility (509a7-8) between hedonism and the claim that
the good is beyond knowledge and truth in beauty. His reaction shows that he takes this
latter claim to be advanced about what the good is; that is, he is supposing that it is absurd
to hold that pleasure is more beautiful than knowledge and truth.
45. If the object possessed is a Form, possession, ktesis - used of a person's relation to something
good at Phaedo 66a6, Symp. 202all, Rep. 505a7-b2, d8 and elsewhere - is a metaphor for
participation - see Laches 192a4, as well as the uses oiechein for participation cited in Ross
(1951, 228-230). Keyt (1969) has pointed to a distinction between what he calls, following
Aristotle (Topics 137b3-13), the ideal attributes and the proper attributes of a Form. Santas
(1980, 388) defines an ideal attribute of a Form F as one which it possesses because it is a
Form, and a proper attribute as one which it possesses because it is an F (according to the

88 Unauthenticated
self-predication assumption about the Forms). If we accept this modification on Keyt's origi-
nal definitions, then the being and intelligibility of a Form will be ideal attributes. Keyt
has argued forcefully (1969, 1971) that it is a mistake for a logical realist like Plato to sup-
pose that in participating in a Form a thing acquires the ideal attributes of the Form; it
acquires only the Form's proper attributes. We should not foist this mistake on Plato when
we do not need to. For other versions of Keyt's distinction, see Owen (1968) and Vlastos (1973,
270-317).
46. The absurdity of such a claim shows that at the time of writing Republic VI Plato did not
think that the good was ataraxia.
47. Of course the Form of pain is not the sort of thing that can be benefited or harmed, so we
should not think that its possession of something good benefits it. Nevertheless, what it pos-
sesses is something that would be good for any entity capable of being benefited or harmed.
The participation of a Form in the good does not imply the absurdity that the Form thereby
receives some good for itself. And, as I have argued above, the sense of'good' as being good
of a kind is not in question here. If a Form is a perfect example of its kind and in this sense
good (i.e. a good F), we should not try to explain this in terms of the participation of the Form
in the good.
48. See Rep. 508d5, 515dl-7,597alO-ll with 597dl-2. In Republic V Plato argues for the equiva-
lence of existing and being knowable; he appears, however, to get from the claim that what
is knowable exists (476e7-477al) to the claim that what exists is knowable (477a3) by a fal-
lacy of illicit conversion. He does not consider the possibility that only some existing objects
can be known.
49. Pantelos on, 477a3. Equivalent expressions are teleös on (597a5), ontos on (597d2) and eilikrinos
on (477a7, 478d6-7, 479d5). Vlastos points out (1973, 58-66) that it is more natural to trans-
late on in such expressions as 'real' rather than 'existent', and I shall occasionally do so. But
Vlastos pushes too far, I believe, the difference between saying that something exists and
that something is real. In taking Veal' to signify for Plato either cognitive reliability or ulti-
mate value, Vlastos deprives the word of any ontological significance. That one can say some-
thing is completely real or is more real (or less real) than something else, and still give "real'
an ontological sense, is clear from common-sense judgements that shadows are less real than
the objects that cast them, reflections less real than what they reflect, and the contents of
dreams less real than the contents of waking experience. The first two judgements seem to
rely on a criterion of independence for having full ontological status: shadows exist only as
long as the objects that cast them, and reflections only as long as what they reflect. The judge-
ment about dreams seems to rely on a criterion of independence from the experiencer for
having full ontological status: the contents of dreams exist only in the mind of the dreamer,
whereas the contents of waking experience exist independently of the experiencer. Plato may
have generalized incorrectly from these common-sense judgements, but they are clearly his
starting point for the doctrine that some things are less real than others; he uses the con-
trast between dreaming and being awake at 476c2-d4, and the contrast between shadows
and reflections on the one hand and their originals on the other at 509d8-510bl and 515a5-e5.
Furthermore, inferences such as the one at 476e7-477a5 from the premiss that knowledge
is knowledge of something to the conclusion that the completely real, to pantelos on, is com-
pletely knowable make no sense unless we give 'real' an ontological sense.
50. Plato reaches this conclusion by generalizing from a number of cases in which he asserts
that each of a group of many things called by the same name (beautiful, just, pious, double,
big, little, light, heavy) will appear to be the opposite of what it is called (ugly, unjust, impi-
ous, half) or will also be called by the opposite name (little, big, heavy, light). He gives no
reasons for any of these assertions. For a statement of his reasons, we have to look to other
dialogues; see Phaedo 79c2-d8, Cratylus 439d3-440cl, Symp.211a2-b5.
51. See Phaedo 78d2-3, d5-6, Rep. 479a2-3, e7-8, 484b4. Truncated versions of the formula occur
at Phaedo 79a2, a9, d2, e4, 80b2-3, and at Cratylus 439e3. Equivalently, each Form is said
to be auto kathhauto, 'itself in the same state' (Phaedo 78d5-6), auto kath'hauto meth'hautou
monoeides aei, 'always itself in the same state, the same, uniform'(Symposium 211bl-2), and
aei to auto, 'always the same' (Cratylus 439e3-4). At Phaedo 79d5 Plato uses the full stan-
dard formula, aei kata tauta hosautös echei, of the soul when it is in contact with the Forms.

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52. Ou tei men kalon, tei d'alschron, oude tote men, tote de ou, oude pros men to kalon, pros de
to aischron, oud'entha men kalon, entha de aischron, has tisi men on kalon, list de aischron.
53. Strictly speaking, Forms are atemporal.
54. Though these are ideal attributes, as defined in note 45, they may not exhaust the Forms'
ideal attributes; for example, it might be a necessary feature of a Form to be a one over many,
an object after which many other things are named and in which they participate. Santas'
statement, The ideal attributes of all the Forms other than the Form of the Good are proper
attributes of the Form of the Good' (1980, 381), should therefore be modified to: 'Some of the
ideal attributes ..."
55. See Phaedo 78d5, 80b2, 83e2, Symp. 211bl, e4.
56. Azar (1967), Kramer (1959, 1969), de Strycker (1970) and Findlay (1974) have reached the
same conclusion about Plato's conception of the good in the Republic. But their justification
for doing so tends to rely on Plato's later dialogues and on the testimonies about Plato's un-
written doctrines, among which was the doctrine that the good is the one. (See, for example,
Aristotle, Met. 988al4-15, blO-15, Eudemian Ethics 1218a25.) What I hope to have shown
is that we can justify this interpretation on the basis of the Republic itself and the dialogues
preceding it. The interpretation has links with the neoplatonist reading, but Plato clearly
differs from the neoplatonists in holding (at least in the Republic) that the good is a Form
(476a4-5,505a2,507b5-7,508e2-3,517b8-cl, 534b9-cl), exists (509dl), and can be known (508e4,
517b8-cl, 534b3-c5). A neoplatonizing interpreter might point to the statement at 509b8-10
that the good is beyond being, ousia, in dignity and power. But the qualifying phrase is cru-
cial. Plato does not mean that the good is beyond being in the sense that it is a principle
which transcends the realm of what exists, but only that it is a Form more dignified and
more powerful than being, which he presumably thinks of here as a Form (as he does at
478el-2). The statement is parallel to the earlier statements at 508e5-6 and 509a4-5 that
the good is more beautiful, kallion, and still more greatly to be honoured, eti meizonos timeteon,
then being and truth.
57. To monoeides is monoeides. Plato would regard this self-predication as a patent truth.
58. See, for example, Rep. 476c5-7, 509d8-510bl, 514b-516c3, 520cl-dl, 532b6-c3, 595c7-598c5,
600e4-602c3. Also compare Phaedo 74a2-75a3 with 100c3-e7.
59. By 'destroying the hypotheses', tas hupotheseis anairousa (533c7), Plato probably means des-
troying their hypothetical character rather than showing them to be false. He is unlikely
to have thought that all the basic assumptions of contemporary mathematics were false. That
the process of going back down again from the beginning to an end (511b7-8) is deduction
is suggested by the linguistic similarity between Plato's description of this activity and his
description of the mathematicians' activity of deducing consequences from their hypotheses
(510dl-3).
60. De Strycker (1970) takes the one to be a goal for mathematical objects, using Aristotle as
evidence. But the position Aristotle describes at Eudemian Ethics that the one is the good
because the numbers have desire is one which Plato may not personally have held or may
have adopted after writing the Republic. There is no basis in the Republic for taking Plato
to attribute desires or purposes to numbers. I therefore agree with Kramer that the relation
between the good and the objects of mathematics (as well as that between the good and the
being and truth of the things known) is an ontological rather than an axiological one. Both
Krämer and de Strycker, however, are too willing to use the testimony about Plato's unwrit-
ten doctrines in interpreting the Republic. Given the relatively well established date of 369
B.C. for the Theaetetus, and assuming that immediately after writing the Republic Plato
wrote first the Phaedrus, then the first half of the Parmenides and then the Theaetetus, we
can conclude that Plato finished the Republic no later than the mid to late 370s, at which
date he had another 25 years in which to develop his ideas. Furthermore, as I indicated above
(note 17), Socrates' uncertainty suggests that Plato had only recently adopted his account
of the good, in which case he would probably not yet have developed it in the detail reported
in the testimonies about his unwritten doctrines. For a convenient collection of these tes-
timonies in English translation, see Findlay (1974, 413-454).

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61. Roger Shiner reminded me that this programme is Pythagorean in inspiration; see, for ex-
ample, the accounts of Pythagorean doctrines in Barnes (19Θ2, 382-383) and Kirk, Raven
and Schofield (1983, 324-345). The Pythagorean account of the 'generation' of numbers did
not take the one as a basic principle, but regarded it as the first thing to be 'generated' from
the principles of numbers (Aristotle, Met. 986al9-20,1080bl6-21). The Pythagoreans regarded
the principles of numbers to be either limiters and unlimiteds (DK44bl) or the odd and the
even (Aristotle, Met. 986al8-19).
62. It could be argued that health in the general sense is not necessarily a kind of unity. Even
so, psychic health in particular would be a kind of unity, because of the functions of the three
parts of the soul.
63. For this strategy, see Hitchcock (1973).
64. At 420b3-421c7 Socrates tells Adeimantus that the task of making a happy city does not
consist m making each group of citizens as happy as possible but in making sure that each
group, and especially the group of guardians, does its work well. The share of happiness which
each group receives is a byproduct of these arrangements.
65. Plato's justification, however, is not that wealth and poverty produce disunity, but rather
that wealth produces luxury, idleness and innovation, whereas poverty produces illiberality
and wrongdoing as well as innovation (422al-3). We can rerconcile his justification with the
thesis that the good is unity by noting that innovation is variability over time, and that idle-
ness and crime conflict with the principle that each person is to do the work she is best suit-
ed to do, a principle whose implementation Plato claims at 423d2-6 will make the city one
and not many.
66. Despite this claim of a harmony between the good of the individual citizen and the good of
the city, it is not clear why Plato thinks that a person who performs that social role for which
he or she is naturally best suited will become one in the sense of having a harmonious soul,
nor is it clear why a city composed of citizens with unified souls will necessarily be unified.
67. We do not need to share Plato's exclusively egoistic framework to raise such a question.
68. The generality of Plato's definition of the good is not an accident. His colleague Eudoxus
used the alleged fact that all animals pursue pleasure as an argument for the thesis that
the good is pleasure (Philebus 67bl-7; cf. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 1172b9-26), and Plato
took his argument seriously enough to write the Philebus in reply. If Plato had tacitly con-
ceived of the good as the human good when he wrote the Republic, he would have made this
explicit in response to Eudoxus. But the Philebus studiously maintains a non-anthropocentric
conception of the good.
69. The word fanatical' may offend. But Cooper (1977,157) uses it too, albeit on different grounds:
'... the just man in Plato is ... a sort of high-minded fanatic.'
70. Aristotle, who recognizes the premiss of Socrates in the Republic that it is best for the whole
city to be as unified as possible, objects (Pol. 1261alO-blO) that extreme unity is incompati-
ble with being a city.
71. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Waterloo, McMaster Univer-
sity, and the 1986 Canadian Philosophy Association congress. I am grateful for my audiences'
questions and comments. I am particularly grateful to my colleague Wil Waluchow, for com-
menting on an early draft, and to David Gallop, whose penetrating commentary at the CPA
forced me to clarify my interpretation. He will not necessarily agree with the result.

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The Good in Plato's Republic - David Hitchcock PDF

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I Plato's Uses of 'Good'

Plato perhaps uses the term agathos least self-consciously as an adjective in

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II Rejected Accounts of the Good

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Ill The Three Claims

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IV Being and Truth

According to the Phaedo account of formal causality, if an object has a certain

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V The Foundations of Mathematics

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VI The Good of the Individual

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VII The Good of the Polls

A polis is not a soul, but an association of human beings, each governed by a

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VIII A Partial Appraisal

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53. Strictly speaking, Forms are atemporal.

55. See Phaedo 78d5, 80b2, 83e2, Symp. 211bl, e4.

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Adkms, Arthur W.H. 1960. Merit and Responsibility. Clarendon, Oxford.

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