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

when they are cheating.) Moving up to level (2), one’s awareness of justice grows
close to an understanding of the virtue’s essential nature. Indeed, this may be the
relation Socrates, Glaucon, and the others are in at present with respect to justice,
now that they have come to realize that it is every part of the city or soul doing its
own proper work. Like the diagrams of circles and triangles that point students of
geometry to the general natures of circularity and triangularity, the phrase “every
part of the city or soul doing its proper job” amounts to being a sketch in words
that points to the form of justice. This is still not full clarity, however, for there
remains a “hypothetical” element (a supposition) in the definition. Consider the
proper work of even one of these parts, the rational part of the soul. What is this
work supposed to be? To rule the soul well. And what is it to rule the soul well?
Wisely. And what is wisdom? Knowing what is good for the soul. And what does
one know when one knows that? Ultimately, Socrates would say, the form of the
good, the basis of all true value judgments. This is what one must know if one is to
achieve a fully clear, “unhypothetical,” level (1) understanding of justice.
(Socrates will briefly return to describing the difference between the hypothetical
and unhypothetical understanding of forms when he takes up the topic of dialectic
at 533b-c.)
Recall Socrates’ suggestion at 401e-402a that a person can encounter and
get a feeling for the beautiful while still young, “before he is able to grasp
the reason.” Which level of awareness would this be?
Suppose someone were to object that this four-level ranking glorifies the
abstract over the particular to an absurd degree – that what it is, for instance,
to understand a violin is to have it in one’s hands and use it well, not to
theorize about its essence. How might Socrates reply?
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