The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

57 The Form of the Good
See 504a-505b. It has been clear from passages such as 484c-d and 500b-501b
that, in Socrates’ opinion, nothing is more practical for ruling a city than knowing
the forms. His thought is basically this: to do it well, you’ve got to know what
you’re doing. Just as it would be ridiculous for someone who has never seen a
giraffe to attempt to paint the image of a giraffe, it is ridiculous for someone to
attempt to rule a city who has never contemplated the relevant forms. What forms
are these? Presumably not straightforward things like the form of being three in
number; for while it is well worth knowing what things are and what things are not
three in number, common opinion with respect to three-ness isn’t going to lead
anyone astray. But things like the form of justice are another matter entirely.
Common opinions about justice can be very misleading. And then there is the
form of the good. In positing a form of the good, most valuable of all things to
understand and yet most easily misunderstood, Socrates is suggesting that there is
an essential nature that all things of value have in common. Various things may be
variously good in various respects, but they are all variously the same one thing:
good. To come to know the form of the good is to achieve wisdom.
Do you think there is such a thing as the form of the good? If so, can you
explain its nature? Socrates doesn’t think he can give a direct account of it.
Instead, he will try to describe it through analogies. Can you do any better?
Is everything that is graspable by the mind capable of being defined?
(Complex things can often be broken down and explained in terms of
simpler things. But is everything like this? Is anything so basic that,
though it may be indicated, it cannot be explained?)
Aristotle is of the opinion that what it is to be good is not one thing, a single
form, but many things, somewhat loosely grouped together under the word
“good.” (See Nicomachean Ethics I.6.1096a23-28, Eudemian Ethics
I.8.1217b26-34, and Topics I.15.107a3-11.) The chief reason he gives for
holding this view is that the many things we call “good” – Fido the dog,
God, justice, a line of verse, carrots, a flower arrangement, Henry being at