Plato: Republic
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Socrates tells Glaucon that true and false philosophers have appeared and asks which class should rule, concluding that guardians must possess vision of truth; he sets out the philosopher's nature as lover of eternal knowledge, temperate, just, and gentle, and holds the State should be entrusted only to such men. Adeimantus interposes with the charge that philosophy's votaries become useless or rogues, and Socrates answers with the parable of the ship whose sailors mutiny against the true pilot, then traces how the gifted nature is corrupted by the public, the greatest Sophists, leaving philosophy desolate but for a small remnant. Declining to state the good directly, Socrates offers the child of the good: he names the sun, cause of sight and offspring of the good, and draws the divided line dividing visible from intelligible, assigning reason, understanding, faith, and perception of shadows to its four divisions—a distinction Glaucon has him restate. Socrates then presents the figure of prisoners in the den mistaking shadows for realities, applies the ascent to the soul's journey toward the idea of good, and defines education as turning the whole soul toward being. He proposes the studies drawing the soul from becoming to being: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmony as prelude to dialectic, the coping-stone reaching the first principle. Finally Socrates tests the virtues for true versus bastard, sets out an educational timeline from childhood calculation through gymnastics to dialectic at thirty, warns that dialectic breeds lawlessness, and describes how survivors at fifty behold the absolute good and order the State. Glaucon calls him a sculptor of governors as they conclude describing the perfect State.
Glaucon implores Socrates to explain the good as he explained justice, temperance, and the other virtues. Socrates declines to state the nature of the good itself, offering instead to speak of the child of the good; Glaucon consents. Socrates recalls the distinction between the many and the absolute idea or essence of each thing. He examines sight, noting it requires a third nature—light—joining seer and seen, and names the sun as lord of light. He identifies the sun as the child of the good, begotten in its likeness, ruling the visible world as the good rules the intelligible. Comparing the soul to the eye, he calls the idea of good the cause of truth and knowledge, itself surpassing them, and author of being and essence, exceeding essence in dignity. Glaucon exclaims at this. Socrates introduces the divided line: a line cut into unequal parts, one visible, one intelligible, each subdivided. The visible comprises images (shadows, reflections) and their originals. The intelligible comprises a lower part using hypotheses and images, as in geometry, and a higher part where dialectic ascends to a first principle above hypotheses. Socrates assigns four faculties—reason, understanding, faith, and perception of shadows—to the four divisions. Glaucon assents.
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