Naslov
The Proportion of the Central Analogies of the Republic

Autori
Zovko, Marie-Élise

Kolaboracija
International Leading Scholars in Platonism Lecture Series

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, ostalo, znanstveni

Skup
International Leading Scholars in Platonism

Mjesto i datum
Chengdu, Kina, 10.07.2022

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Pozvano predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
Plato, Republic, Analogies, Proportion, Sun, Line, Cave

Sažetak
The proportion of Plato’s Divided Line forms the centerpiece of the three analogies of the Sun, the Line, and the Cave – and the key to resolving the proportion of knowledge and reality at the center of Plato’s metaphysics. The analogy of the Sun provides the original matrix for exposition of the ascent to knowledge of the Good. This pivotal episode of the Republic emerges from the discussion of the natural predisposition for and education of those chosen from among the guardians to become philosophers and rulers of the just state. The philosopher-rulers are subjected to many studies, the “greatest and most difficult” of which (to megiston mathema) “the idea of the good by reference to which just things and all the rest become useful and beneficial” forms the object of the analogies of the Sun, the Line and the Cave. The imagery of the Line is associated with the imagery of above and below, ascent and descent contained in the adjacent analogies of the Sun and the Cave, but is formulated not as a simple arithmetic progression, but as a geometric proportion. Socrates presents the image of the Line in the manner of a mathematical problem, a task to be undertaken, and a riddle to be solved. With the Analogy of the Line, Plato elaborates the epistemic conditions of knowledge and reality. In its primary division, it depicts the relationship of knowledge (epistēmē) and probable opinion or belief (doksa), to their correlata, intelligible and sensible reality (noēta, aisthēta), demarcating in its subdivisions the individual faculties which contribute to this main division, their interrelationships, and their respective objects. At the same time – like its exposition in the Analogy of the Cave – it describes a path, the path of knowledge, which is at once a path of ascent and a path of descent, moving from “images” cast by “objects of sense” (eikones ), to the things of which we “believe” (pistis) these to be images (“animals... plants and the whole class of objects made by man” 510a), to a type of investigation like that of geometry, which treats the “real” things as images of something else, proceeding from “assumptions” taken to be self- evident, axiomatically or analytically “not up to a first principle but down” to the conclusion one set out to deduce (510b-d). From here one proceeds to another stage of thought which makes no use of things as images, and posits assumptions “not as absolute beginnings, ” but “really as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings and springboards, ” “relying on ideas only and progressing systematically through ideas, ” in order to advance “by the power of dialectics” transcending the original assumptions to formulate new hypotheses and ascending ever higher by the same method to the unconditioned beginning or principle, the starting-point of all. From this apex, the knower descends, “making no use whatever of objects of sense but only of pure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas.” (511a, b-c) To discover the proper configuration of the divisions of the Line and ‘position’ it correctly in relation to the other two analogies, and to recognize possible clues for their mutual interpretation, one must first be able to ‘see’ the relationship of the original two Analogies and terms in the equation (analogues) on the basis of which the further elements of the overarching analogy are derived. To be able to apply that ratio to the interpretation constituent elements of the equation (the likenesses, and likenesses of likenesses) and of Plato’s metaphysical project, one needs to familiarize oneself with the properties of the proportion equation on which the Divided Line is based.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filozofija, Filologija

Napomena
Predviđeno je prevođenje na kineski.

POVEZANOST RADA