Key Arguments

• Socrates asks whether, in ‘the actual acquirement of knowledge’, the body is ‘a hinderer or a helper’, and challenges the reliability of ‘sight and hearing’, calling them ‘inaccurate witnesses’ as ‘the poets are always telling us’.
• He concludes that ‘when’ the soul attempts to consider anything ‘in company with the body she is obviously deceived’, so that ‘true existence’ must be ‘revealed to her in thought, if at all’.
• He claims thought is best ‘when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her—neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure’, when she ‘takes leave of the body’ and ‘has as little as possible to do with it’.
• He describes the knower who ‘goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight or any other sense together with reason’, but uses ‘the very light of the mind in her own clearness’ to ‘searches into the very truth of each’.
• He says the body and its senses are ‘distracting elements which when they infect the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge’, and Simmias affirms that what he says ‘has a wonderful truth in it’.

Source Quotes

That is also true. What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of knowledge?—is the body, if invited to share in the enquiry, a hinderer or a helper? I mean to say, have sight and hearing any truth in them?

What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of knowledge?—is the body, if invited to share in the enquiry, a hinderer or a helper? I mean to say, have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as the poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses? and yet, if even they are inaccurate and indistinct, what is to be said of the other senses?—for you will allow that they are the best of them? Certainly, he replied.

Certainly, he replied. Then when does the soul attain truth?—for in attempting to consider anything in company with the body she is obviously deceived. True.

True. Then must not true existence be revealed to her in thought, if at all? Yes. And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her—neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure,—when she takes leave of the body, and has as little as possible to do with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring after true being?

Yes. And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her—neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure,—when she takes leave of the body, and has as little as possible to do with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring after true being? Certainly.

Certainly. And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight or any other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each; he who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements which when they infect the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge—who, if not he, is likely to attain the knowledge of true being? What you say has a wonderful truth in it, Socrates, replied Simmias.

Key Concepts

• What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of knowledge?—is the body, if invited to share in the enquiry, a hinderer or a helper?
• have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as the poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?
• Then when does the soul attain truth?—for in attempting to consider anything in company with the body she is obviously deceived.
• Then must not true existence be revealed to her in thought, if at all? Yes.
• when she takes leave of the body, and has as little as possible to do with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring after true being?
• not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight or any other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each
• these being in his opinion distracting elements which when they infect the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge

Context

After establishing the philosopher’s indifference to bodily pleasures, Socrates turns to the epistemological question of whether the body helps or hinders knowledge and develops an argument that the soul knows truly only when separated, as far as possible, from the senses.