Plato's Two Worlds Theory in Republic Book V

Abstract

By way of averting the two worlds interpretation at 475e3-480a13 in the Republic, which takes Plato as asserting that 'there is no knowledge of sensibles but only of Forms, and no belief about Forms but only about sensibles', Gail Fine attempts to maintain that "what is" should be regarded as collective truths pertaining to sensibles as well as to the Forms. According to this interpretation the distinctive asset of knowledge consists in its ability to always, hence infallibly, produce true propositions relating to whatever objects. Besides questioning Fine's interpretation of "infallibility" as the definitive characteristic of knowledge, we shall see that upon her interpretation the assertion at 477b3-11 (that knowledge and belief, being different powers, accordingly are set over different things) is to the main argument not so much a required premise as a redundant remark concerning a consequential feature of a person with knowledge.
Furthermore, Fine's interpretation does not and by reason of irrelevance from its viewpoint cannot take adequate notice of Plato's use of phainesthai in contrast to einai at a decisive point in the argument where Socrates presumably points out the ontological defects of "the many beautifuls" -normally understood as referring to the sensibles, or "what is and is not" for the correlative of "belief' -in contrast to "the beautiful itself'. Here, Fine faces the task of giving a convincing explanation for the shift in the reading of esti from a contextually and grammatically natural predicative reading at 479b9-10 ("Is (esti) any one of the manys what someone says it is, anymore than it is not (ouk estin) what he says it is?") to the veridical reading she returns to at 479d3-5.