Key Arguments

• As the sun is the author of sight and visibility, the Good grants both the object’s truth and the subject’s capacity to know.
• Science and truth are like the Good but are not the Good; the Good holds a yet higher place of honor and beauty.
• Orientation of the soul determines cognition: turned toward ‘truth and being’ it understands; toward becoming/perishing it only opines.
• The Good is explicitly distinguished from pleasure in value and nature.

Source Quotes

True, he said. And this is he whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind: Will you be a little more explicit? he said. Why, you know, I said, that the eyes, when a person directs them towards objects on which the light of day is no longer shining, but the moon and stars only, see dimly, and are nearly blind; they seem to have no clearness of vision in them?

Certainly. And the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence? Just so.

Just so. Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature as more beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honour yet higher. What a wonder of beauty that must be, he said, which is the author of science and truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty; for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is the good?

Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature as more beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honour yet higher. What a wonder of beauty that must be, he said, which is the author of science and truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty; for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is the good? God forbid, I replied; but may I ask you to consider the image in another point of view? In what point of view?

Key Concepts

• the child of the good, whom the good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind
• the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only
• that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good
• science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honour yet higher
• for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is the good? God forbid, I replied

Context

Application of the Sun analogy to the intelligible realm; the Good is presented as cause of intelligibility and knowledge and as superior to both (lines 9890-9935).

Perspectives

Plato

Endorses the hierarchical metaphysics: the Form of the Good grounds both epistemic normativity (truth/knowledge) and axiological supremacy, exceeding them in dignity.

Socrates

Insists on the Good as the ultimate cause of knowing; clarifies the aporia around defining the Good by offering a likeness rather than a premature definition.