Have sight-lovers been persuaded?
An interpretation of Plato’s Republic V, 476d7─480a13
2018 Volume 67 Pages 91-104
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2018 Volume 67 Pages 91-104
At 475d1─476d6 in Plato’s Republic, Socrates and Glaucon speak about “sightlovers”（philotheamones）, people who are eager to see any theatrical performancebut not interested in Forms. Socrates says that sight-lovers do not possess “knowledge”（epistēmē）but only “belief” （doxa）. Glaucon imagines that they would be offended to hear this and would object. So Socrates presents an argument to persuade the sight-lovers that his description of them is correct （476e4─480a13）. Interpreters have seldom addressed the question of whether the sight-lovers would have been persuaded by Socrates’ argument. The aim of this paper is to show that they would have been persuaded. The challenge is to show how the sight-lovers, who do not subscribe to the theory of Forms, could accept the argument that rests on that theory（on any interpretation）.
For this purpose, I first present an interpretation of the argument, according to which, “what（perfectly）is” means what is perfectly f（say, beautiful）and refers, for Socrates, to Forms collectively. For Socrates, knowledge concerned with f is acquaintance with Form F, and at the same time, the sufficient understanding of what f is; while belief is acquaintance with f sensibles and an insufficient understanding of what f -ness is.
The key to understanding how the sight-lovers would have been persuaded is to notice that initially they would probably take “what is perfectly beautiful” as referring to exemplarily beautiful sensibles, such as theatrical performances. Without accepting the theory of Forms, they could accept the premise stated at 477a3─4 about the correlation between the degrees of F-ness and the degrees of intelligibility. It is at 479a5-b7 that Socrates makes the sight-lovers accept that no sensible can qualify as “what perfectly is.” They might accept this, since they know from experience, say, that the same theatrical piece once found most beautiful may turn out to be awful depending on the circumstances of performance. By the end of the argument, the sight-lovers are such as neither determinately to reject nor clearly to recognize the existence of Forms.
To conclude, I address the following question: If Socrates could have persuaded the sight-lovers that they lack knowledge, as I have argued, then, what does this fact mean for the broader context in the Republic, in particular Socrates’conception of the ideal city?
