II. Self-Interest and the Absolute Perspective

At the end of the Image of the Cave, Socrates declares: “My own view, for what it's worth, is that in the realm of what can be known the thing seen last, and seen with great difficulty, is the form or character of the good. But when it is seen, the conclusion must be that it turns out to be the cause of all that is right and good for everything…. I further believe that anyone who is going to act wisely either in private life or in public life must have had a sight of this…. It is no wonder if those who have been to the upper world refuse to take an interest in everyday affairs, if their souls are constantly eager to spend their time in that upper region” (Rep. VII.517b7–c9).

When, a few paragraphs later, Socrates declares that it is their task as founders not to allow those who have reached this vision to stay there and refuse to go down, Glaucon reacts quite reasonably, it seems: “That seems very unfair! Are we going to make them live a worse life when it is in their power to live a better one?” (519d8–9).

In their classic expositions of the absolute conception of the Good, Sarah Waterlow and John Cooper take the argument of the Republic, especially Books VI and VII, to result in a picture of the moral agent who is quite strange to us, for he loses (what we might think of as) his individuality. Cooper describes him as a “high minded fanatic.”⁷

Waterlow writes: “However, the point at which we find Plato's theory taking off altogether from ordinary thought comes when we turn to the reasons that support and explain the relation just mentioned [between justice in the soul and action for the good of others]…. For, as we shall see, these reasons involve the denial of that individuality which, for ordinary consciousness, and in particular moral consciousness, is the most basic fact of all.”⁸

Glaucon's response, however, betrays no recognition of this aspect of the ascent to the Good. Rather, he thinks of the individual who has devoted his life to achieving this blessed state. He has excellent reason to do so. Glaucon challenged Socrates to show why one would choose the just life, to say how justice benefits its possessor and to show what effects (for the good) it has on its possessor. To be told that the philosopher ultimately loses his sense of self, or worse, that he acts for the good of others, to his own detriment, would certainly not satisfy Glaucon. “Why should I be just?” is what Glaucon wants to know, “What good does justice do for me, its possessor?”

Indeed, prior to Books VI and VII, Plato seems to accept rational eudaimonism: for each individual, the ultimate end of all his rational actions is his own greatest happiness. From Book IV, we learn that what justice does for its possessor is to make him happy, because in virtue of being just he develops a psychically harmonious soul, and happiness turns out to be this psychic harmony. Psychic harmony is achieved when and only when reason has acquired knowledge of the Good and the other Forms, which allows reason to rule spirit and appetite. Plato seems to argue that only those who enjoy psychic harmony truly qualify as selves, that is, as persons and thus as moral agents at all.⁹

Strictly speaking, then, only a just person could ever act self-interestedly. All others in some sense act in the interest of some part of themselves, that is, some part of their soul.¹⁰ But, paradoxically, if Cooper and Waterlow are right, precisely these same psychically harmonious souls, in virtue of their knowledge of the Good, are not persons or selves (at least as ordinarily conceived). Thus, the very same phenomenon that constitutes or creates selves destroys them. I will suggest that this paradox of creation and destruction replays itself at the level of the state.

In order to appreciate better how the philosopher, by dint of knowing the Good, can at once lose his individuality and qualify as the only true self, let us briefly consider the evolution of his soul through the course of the Republic, beginning, for the sake of time, with Book II.¹¹

Glaucon's challenge, like the three “rejected” accounts of justice in Book I, takes the standing desires and attitudes of a mature, reflective, and pleonectically self-interested adult as the touchstone. Socrates responds by constructing a state and developing the soul from the bottom up. The nature of the soul is such that it responds first to pleasure and pain; and its desires, the biologically necessary and the acquired, dictate its behavior. Through the joint workings of gymnastic and musical education, the child's desires are molded and values are internalized.¹²

In my view, every citizen in the state is put through the same initial educational regimen.¹³ The presence of “other-regardingness,” among other features, marks a potential philosopher. In Books II and III, then, the founders adhere to the idea that anyone can turn out to be a philosopher, while simultaneously expecting that only a limited few will turn out to be such. The realpolitik of state management quickly segregates the students into different “tracks.”

The second stage of development is found primarily in Book IV's account of the tripartite soul. There is so much to say about aspects of the tripartite soul that I will necessarily leave out much that could and should be discussed.¹⁴

With respect to the soul itself, its parts are displayed in cases of conflict: for example, reason and appetite disagreeing about a course of action. Conflict is between parts, and the one subject/one job principle applies severally to these parts each considered as a whole. In the just individual or soul, there is no conflict between the parts. Reason rules appetite and spirit in such a fashion that each wants the same thing, or rather each wants what reason wants at least in those cases where all can be thought to have a say.¹⁵ Nonetheless, in the just individual it is precisely because reason, especially, but also appetite and spirit, have more than one task that the parts are effaced. Reason has its peculiar excellence, sophia. But it is also tasked with the job of ruling the other parts. In ruling, it looks out for the good of the other parts and the individual as a whole. Reason does not privilege its interests at the expense of the interests of appetite, but its interests are privileged. The molding of the soul, at the hands of philosopher-rulers or founders, is carried out with the aim of securing a path for reason to acquire knowledge.

At the end of Book IV of the Republic, we still await a specification of what the just soul knows. In Books V–VII, we learn that what reason knows is the Good and the other Forms. The philosopher is naturally drawn to every study and is insatiable in his pursuit of learning (Rep. V.475c). The study of the Forms (i.e., philosophy itself) is his most pleasurable activity. Furthermore, the Forms themselves are valuable objects in their own right, and, among them, the Form of the Good turns out to be the primus inter pares (first among equals) good. It seems clear that the Form of the Good is not only what it is to be good, it itself is also something good, and by coming to know it one comes to be in possession of a good. There is reasonably broad agreement that the Good is a grand teleological principle embodying Plato's notion that the world as a whole and the world of Forms in particular are well-ordered or structured. The precise form of Plato's teleology aside, the good that one acquires by coming to know the Good is the proper arrangement of one's soul (parts). This arrangement is itself an image of the order among the Forms, and it too is kata logon, here “according to Reason” (now in a different sense than kata logon as it applies to the Forms), and as a result the soul is kosmios and theios (ordered and divine), to the degree possible for a human soul (Rep. VI.500c9–d1). The philosophical nature/person is then internally motivated to pursue the Good and finds it pleasurable to study it, in addition to being benefited by it, since this study provides the internal psychic arrangement that is justice and happiness.

The philosopher will imitate this arrangement among the Forms because “there is no way that one does not imitate that with which he admiringly consorts” (500c5–7). Such a person would also be best at placing the order and harmony that he sees in the world of Forms into the character of other people, both in public and private—“to practice stamping on the plastic matter of human nature in public and private the patterns that he visions there” (Shorey, 500d4–6). It seems, then, that the knowledge of the Good is such that he is compelled and attracted to it and understands both what it will do for him and what it would do for others. But of course it is not easy to stamp patterns on the ordinary everyday citizens in present-day states. Here the philosopher does not receive a warm reception and in fact is better off “wiping the slate [of the character of his fellow citizens] clean” before he tries to place (impose?) in them the arrangement he himself enjoys (501a2–7).

Reinforcing this pursuit of the Good for others is a passage a few pages earlier in Book VI. Here (496d–e) we find the famous image of the philosopher seeking shelter against the wall from the storm of iniquity blowing around him, content to secure his own fortune, free from injustice and impiety. Adeimantus allows that this is no small achievement. Socrates replies: “And yet not the greatest achievement either—not without finding a political system worthy of him. In one which is worthy of him his own growth will be greater, and he will be the salvation of his country as well as of himself” (497a3–5). The philosopher is in some sense better off by sharing his learning with others. It is better to save both the private and common weal than merely to preserve oneself.

This is the backdrop to the philosopher's choice. By VII.516c ff., someone has led the philosopher out of the cave and to the Good. If he should return to the cave, he will be ridiculed by those ignorant of justice, since they will not appreciate the source of his “blindness.” The contrast of the unenlightened with the “illuminated” prompts Socrates to remark on the nature of education. Knowledge cannot be poured into a soul, any more than vision can be poured into blind eyes. “Whereas our present account indicates that this capacity in every soul, this instrument by means of which each person learns, is like an eye which can only be turned away from the darkness and towards the light by turning the whole body … the virtue of rational thought is different. It seems that it really is made of something more divine, which never loses its power, but becomes useful and beneficial, or useless and harmful, depending on which way it is facing” (Rep. VII.518c4–519a1; emphasis added). The nature of the rational soul, then, is such that reason never loses its capacity to know. It awaits redirection. The miserable conditions of the cave are not inevitable. The cave-dwellers are miseducated. True education recognizes that everyone has the power to reason and that reason is such that, by its very nature, it is always capable of coming to understand the Good. Anyone is thus metaphysically capable of becoming a philosopher. This too, then, is something the philosopher also recognizes, and it becomes part of his understanding of the Good.

To turn other souls toward the light is tantamount to ruling the state, for nothing less is able to bring about the right educational circumstances. Socrates famously declares that it is their role as founders to compel¹⁶

the philosophers both to come to know the Good and then to return to rule. Here Glaucon protests: “That seems very unfair! Are we going to make them live a worse life when it is in their power to live a better one?” (519d8–9). Socrates responds: “Now it is your turn to forget, my friend, that the law does not exist for the exclusive benefit of one class in the city. Its aim is to engineer the benefit of the city as a whole, using persuasion and compulsion¹⁷ to bring the citizens into harmony, and making each class share with the other classes the contribution it is able to bring to the community. The law is what puts people like this in the city, and it does so not with the intention of allowing each of them to go his own way, but so that it can make use of them for its own purposes, to bind the city together” (VII.519e1–520a4). The law, through education and nurture, has made them what they are, and they owe a debt, a debt not owed to a city by a “spontaneous” philosopher (520a5–d4).

I am going to make two controversial assumptions here. First, I think that the surface appeal to the law, and founders, and paying back one's debts is directed toward getting Glaucon's agreement, by which I mean that it plays on the characterization of the interlocutor developed in the course of the dialogue/discussion. And while I concede that Plato develops this sort of characterization with the aim of speaking to those in his audience who share the values of Glaucon, I do not believe that we the readers must accept without question that these values provide the ultimate justification for the philosopher's choice. That is to say, what may persuade Glaucon need not persuade us. Second, I am going to assume that there is no difference between the founders, the law, and philosophy itself (i.e., the fully reflective philosopher). This collapse of voices does not merely signal the impersonal standpoint of reason; it is also a standpoint that the philosopher occupies, given that I think at the moment of choice the philosopher (and reader) appreciates the whole of the Republic. Thus, that the law or the founders bid him to descend is equivalent to his knowledge of the Good bidding him to descend. It carries normative force. We may equally call it the Law of Reason. In either case, it seems that the good thing to do, what the Good bids (if you will), is for the philosopher to descend. Since we are asking him to do good, we are not doing him wrong.¹⁸

But if this is what the Good bids, then the philosopher actively contemplating the Good will know this. And once he knows this, then given everything we have read, he will want to do the good and hence want to descend. Yet the philosopher is forced, unwilling, to descend. Later in Book VII, when Socrates returns to the philosopher's choice, the philosopher is said to regard it as a burden—he has regrets?—and he descends thinking that he is doing something necessary not fine (Rep. VII.540b2–5).¹⁹

There is something about the relation of his reason to the Good that makes him want to stay in study of it. The metaphysics of psychic reason, if you will, assigns to the rational part of the soul a drive or desire to know the Good. Thus, in turning away from the contemplation of the Good, one is acting against this natural impulse. Moreover, insofar as there is no end to philosophical inquiry, there is the rational impulse to continue in one's pursuit of knowledge.²⁰ In these respects, then, reason must be forced to act against its nature and training. Still, this does not quite capture the full flavor of what is in the philosopher's head, for he knows all this about the metaphysics of the soul. He wants to do the good and he wants to remain in study. The task remains to try to account for the need for compulsion on the founders' part and especially the feel of it on the part of the individuals compelled to descend.

John Cooper, Myles Burnyeat, and Sarah Waterlow have emphasized that, in his contemplation of the Good, the philosopher achieves an absolute and impersonal perspective—no self or other. For Cooper, in contemplating the Good the philosopher comes to want to imitate the order among the Forms by seeking to increase maximally the amount of order in the state (world). Because ruling will do this, it is good to rule. Therefore, even the self-taught philosopher will choose to rule. He thus descends not because he wants to promote his own good, or because he is thinking of the good of others, or because he wants to pay back debts. He aims solely to promote order, and his ruling does this. This seems to me to be an accurate account of what the philosopher contemplating the Good seeks to do. But we have yet to work back to an account of the necessity and regret he feels.²¹

Once the philosopher has reflected and realized that his ruling maximizes the good, he should go willingly to the task. Cooper's effort to account for the need for compulsion concedes that the philosopher will find in contemplation “the most nearly adequate instances of rational order in the natural world.”²²

The philosopher will know this and will act effectively in the light of it. However, it does not follow that he will choose to limit himself to this contemplation. Maybe if he were interested only in his own good, he would; but he wants to maximize the good and thus considers only what will advance the amount of rational order in the world. Since we are considering what will devolve from his ruling an ideal state, it seems safe to assume that he will be able to turn the souls of others toward the Good and thereby promote more order in the world than would be possible were he to remain in contemplation, no matter that (his) contemplative activity itself is the best approximation of the Good. Ruling is educating, and educating is, at the limit, guiding others to the same most adequate approximation of the rational order embodied by the Good. But then why go down with regret?

Cooper seems to me less certain here. He concedes that contemplation of the Good itself is the activity that most closely and perfectly embodies the Good. Thus, no life could be better than this (and this is, of course, what Plato says at Rep. VII.519e). Hence, says Cooper, “if the degree of the philosopher's eudaimonia is judged by comparison with this ideal, Plato's philosophers will settle for a less flourishing existence than they might have had.” But Cooper goes on to take away the account of regret latent in this remark. He reminds us that the philosopher does not concern himself merely with his own good. “His ultimate end is to improve not just the small part of the world that is constituted by his own life, but the whole of it, this part taken together with all the rest. So if a philosopher opted, under the conditions Plato envisages, to ignore everyone else in order to make his own life realize the good more perfectly and fully, he would fail to achieve the goal he was aiming at as nearly as he might have done.”²³

Since the philosopher experiences regret, yet does not regret that he settles for a less flourishing existence, we need a different source for his regret. Cooper does not speak directly to this issue. One possibility is that the source turns out to be the very indifference or independent attachment with which the philosopher views his endeavor to imitate the Good. Maybe he regrets that he has no attachments at all, to self or others. But this seems wrong, and Cooper's concluding remarks suggest the same. For Cooper holds that the philosopher will be attached to this one worldly activity, namely, contemplation of the Good; this is the firmest of his attachments. Recall that Cooper's philosopher is neither an egoist nor an altruist but a “high minded fanatic.” Still, Cooper admits, “his fanaticism is such as to allow him permanent and deep interests in one part of his own good, whereas he cannot have any permanent and deep attachments to any other person's good.”²⁴

This final thought implies that the philosopher faced with the choice between ruling and continuing his contemplation of the Good cannot, in the end, be entirely free of the conception of self and others. The one part of his own good to which he is attached is reason. Other theorists use the language of identification with reason, of allowing the absolute viewpoint to take charge of our souls, and of adopting a nonhuman, impersonal perspective on the human.²⁵

It is hard to conceive of adopting viewpoints, of attachment to or identification with one part of one's own good in contrast to the other parts,²⁶ without allowing for some conception of the self that so identifies. To the extent that we are interested in the rational eudaimonist response to Glaucon, this is to be expected. Moreover, it seems that the philosopher who is an incarnate soul with parts, who has come to identify with reason only after decades of living and training, must also understand that it is in his self-interest to contemplate the Good. But recognizing that it is in his self-interest to contemplate the Good is consistent with his reason for acting not being self-interest but the Good itself: for it is good for anyone to contemplate the Good.

III. The Philosopher Out of the State

I think that Plato is best read as having an absolute conception of the Good and, correspondingly, an absolute conception of reason: when a philosopher has ascended to the Good, he both recognizes that the best thing to do is to maximize the amount of good in the world, and desires to do that. He thus descends in order to promote order, and in particular to promote order in others. I think that he must then have a conception of the others in whom he is trying to induce order, and must have reason to believe that by descending he can do so.²⁷

This reading has been challenged.

According to what is labeled, unfairly I shall argue, the Plotinian reading, reason's efforts to achieve the absolute or impersonal perspective on happiness consists in its striving to be “like god,” homoiôsis theô.²⁸

Undeniably, the successors of Plato consider him to have identified our final end with becoming like god. They are not wrong, but all the cash value lies in what the divine is, in contrast (say) to being human, in what sense we can become like the divine, as opposed to becoming the same as the divine, and how we are to parse the force of the participle “becoming,” as opposed to “being.”²⁹ The Plotinian Plato emphasizes the identification with reason at the expense of the other parts. It is as though the tripartite soul of Book IV, generally thought to be a Platonic advance over the monolithic “rationalism” of Socrates in Plato's early dialogues, is abandoned. The virtues having to do with the body, the parts of the soul other than reason, and the philosopher's interaction with others in this world are denigrated to the point of being denied any status, according to the Plotinian account.³⁰ The philosopher thus eschews everything this-worldly and material, both the moral virtues involving the other parts of his own soul and any concern for others.

I do not believe that this is an accurate picture of likeness to god in Plato. Plato's god, the Demiurge, is not so aloof from practical action as the (allegedly) Plotinian reading requires. Before turning to the greatest achievement of the Demiurge, it seems to me worthwhile to digress, first to consider in more detail some of what Plotinus himself says about likeness to the divine.

Consider the opening lines of the Fifth Tractate of the First Ennead, “On Whether Well Being Increases with Time”:

For Plotinus, happiness is a state the first stage of which is achieved through a process of purification, the turning away from the bodily and this-worldly circumstances in order to become as like god as possible. In the preceding Tractates, Plotinus has identified happiness with the perfect life, that is, the life lived in identification with the suprasensible hypostasis of the Intellect.³²

But this kind of life is not something foreign imported into the philosopher's nature. Rather, “There is no single human who does not either potentially or effectively possess this thing which we hold to be happiness. It is present potentially as a portion of their being or nature, but when present in actuality and where this perfection is fully realized, that man has passed over into actual identification with it (metabebhke pros to auto)” (I.4.4). Once having crossed over, Plotinus insists, this state cannot be lost. The identification is complete, and since it lies within, no outside influences can cause its loss (I.4.12). However, and this is the burden of the Fifth Tractate, nor can it be increased or altered by time and further acts of any sort: “Happiness has a border and limit (oron te kai peras); it is always the same (kai tauton aei)” (I.4.6). No one happy person, Plotinus argues, can be happier than another, regardless of the different circumstances that the two might find themselves in, and regardless of how much longer the one might have been in the state of happiness.³³

Let me refer to this conception of the permanence and nonaggregatability of happiness as “no backsliding.” Once one is happy, one is always happy. On this conception, one can never, pace Cooper, make one's own life realize the good more perfectly and fully. The properly educated person will have happiness as his sole aim.³⁴

But having achieved this state, what does the philosopher then do? Plotinus's scale of virtues allows that the political virtues are not merely stepping-stones or perhaps necessary conditions for the purificatory virtues, they also constitute a likeness or image of the Divine. While they must be transcended on the way to the purificatory virtues, nothing prohibits them from being “divinized,” if you will, by the philosopher. Plotinus is careful here not to leave the philosopher lost in contemplation. The philosopher's soul is such that it cannot remain in this state, for it will weaken. It has both an inner- and an outer-looking aspect, and when it can no longer look in, when it weakens, the philosopher acts, or produces a praxis that is the shadow of contemplation.³⁵

The idea that even the Soul, of which our soul is an image, has this dual aspect, reinforces Plotinus's insistence that the philosopher, even after he has achieved his aim, will not always and only contemplate. He will not ignore the body. Nor will he ignore others: “He will give to the body all that he sees to be useful and possible, but he himself remains a member of another order” (I.4.16). The philosopher considers nothing external as constitutive of his happiness, but he would wish (etheloi) that all men fare well and that evil befall no one, though how that turns out will not affect his state. “If it be admitted that such a desire would be against reason, since evil cannot cease to be, there is no escape from agreeing with us that the philosopher's will is set always and only inward” (I.4.11).³⁶

Frankly, I think the notion that Plotinus's philosopher would not descend to rule is inconsistent with the basic thrust of Plotinus's metaphysical and (hence) his ethical account.³⁷

The Good or its twin, the One, the highest hypostasis in the system, is so fecund that it overflows, and from this emanation the remaining elements of the metaphysical order, all of them in differing degrees and manners images of the One or the Good, come to have the reality they do (or can) and thereby come to be good and unitary beings to the extent possible for each. If the purified ascendant is to truly imitate the One and the Good, then he must imitate this fecundity or emanation. He does so in the same manner, if you will, that everything flows from the highest hypostasis; that is, he must descend and produce the appropriate political arrangements, thereby “divinizing” the political virtues from which his ascent started. To think that the purified philosopher does not descend is equivalent to thinking that the Good in Plotinus's system does not overflow. The Plotinian reading of the Republic is not then Plotinus's.

I conjecture that the Plotinian reading is the legacy of Aristotle on contemplation and likeness to god. Unfortunately, we do not know what contemplation is for Aristotle. One set of problems arises from the Nicomachean Ethics and especially the tenth book, where we are compelled to adjudicate the relation of practical reason to theoretical reason, and in turn the relation of the life of political virtue to the life of intellectual virtue. A second set of problems arises from Aristotle's remarks in the Physics, De Anima, and Metaphysics about the character of divine contemplation. The two set of problems are related, insofar as Aristotle insists that we are to liken ourselves to this divine activity: “If intellect is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us …” (EN X.1177b30–34).

It is distinctive of Aristotle to draw the distinction between practical and intellectual virtue. It is not found in Plato or anyone else prior to Aristotle, as best we can tell. It thus behooves us to be wary of reading the contest of the last book of the Nicomachean Ethics (the contest between the political and theoretical lives) back into Book VII of the Republic. True, we have there in the Republic a distinction between the life of ruling and the life of philosophy, but Plato's politikos (nonphilosophical ruler) is vastly different from Aristotle's phronimos (politically virtuous man). Moreover, there seems to be little room in the Platonic account for a contest between the moral virtues and contemplation of the Good, since sophia or wisdom is treated on a par with the other virtues.

Still, there is an undeniable similarity between the Aristotelian contest of moral and intellectual virtue and the apparent choice between (1) going down and engaging in politics, amid the day-to-day experiences of desire, exchange, and dispute that require the exercise of moral virtue, and (2) staying in contemplation and enjoying that best activity, studying the Good. Here, however, I think the similarity begins to mislead. First, note that the structure of moral virtue in Aristotle does not require intellectual virtue to be exercised, and intellectual virtue can run free of the practical. This is not the picture of Plato's tripartite soul. The exercise of contemplation directly affects all the parts and the virtues themselves. In contemplating or knowing the Good, one's soul becomes good; that is to say, one's parts become ordered in a way in which psychic harmony is achieved and the virtues are realized.

But there is a second consequence of the Platonic conception that crucially distinguishes it from the Aristotelian picture. Once we have a well-ordered, psychically harmonious soul—that is to say, once we are happy—there is nothing in the Platonic argument that suggests or, I would contend, even allows that there can be backsliding: once happy, always happy. It is not as though further contemplation of the Good makes one's soul more resistant to the dissolving effects of desire or appetite, as though another layer of protection is added each time we contemplate. Nor in this respect can one do any more for oneself—it is not aggregative in the way that Aristotle's picture of the division between moral and intellectual virtue seems to require that the more time spent in contemplation, the happier our lives. Having become happy, we no longer have reason to avoid those circumstances that stand in the way of our becoming happy. Indeed, what we have reason to do is bring about more order in others. We have reason to be like god—not Aristotle's narcissist, but Plato's providential god, the Demiurge.

IV. Help from Above

The chief difficulties facing those who favor an absolute conception of the Good and the concomitant desire to make more of it by ruling the state are: (1) how to reconcile this reading with Plato's remarks about compulsion and the burden of ruling; and (2) how to explain the status of the state and how the nonphilosophers within it, given their ignorance, are benefited by the philosopher's descent. I want to suggest a way to effect this reconciliation, a way that relies, on the one hand, on a comparison between the philosopher and the Timaeus's Demiurge,³⁸

and, on the other hand, on the possibility that the truly ideal state in the Republic is not the tripartite state, but a variant of the so-called city of pigs. That these are related issues—and that their relation reveals why the philosopher descends with regret—is the burden of this section of the essay.

The Timaeus itself directs us to think about the Republic in contemplating its account of cosmic creation. Perhaps more importantly, the identification of the contemplative philosopher with reason itself suggests this course, an identification reinforced by the Platonic motif of likeness to god.³⁹

Lastly, I think that the Timaeus's account of Necessity or the wandering cause and its role in the physical cosmos offers insight into both the root of the difficulty for improving the lot of the nonphilosophers (namely, the ineradicability of false belief or ignorance—“no cessation of evil”) and how the philosopher accommodates this difficulty in his thinking. Detailing the similarities and dissimilarities between the Republic and the Timaeus would overtax the (already expanded) confines of this essay, so permit me to be declarative in selecting what I take to be the salient connections. First and foremost, both the contemplating philosopher and the Demiurge are simply intelligence—nous. Nous is inherently attracted to the Form of the Good, and the Good guides its actions. When acting in a productive fashion, then, both the philosopher and the Demiurge are motivated solely by the desire to bring about the best state of affairs for that upon which they are acting.⁴⁰ Second, the Demiurge and the philosopher-ruler are both engaged in a productive activity: the Demiurge creates the cosmos, and the philosopher creates the polis (and, in a different manner, he creates himself). When presented with an opportunity to act, and especially when confronted with a state of disorder, intelligence is moved to act.⁴¹ Moreover, both have raw materials from which they, in a craftsman-like manner, make their products. The Demiurge's raw material is the matter of the cosmos.⁴² The raw material for the philosopher-ruler is his own soul and the souls of his fellow citizens. They do not make this raw material, they make it better. And since both are intelligent creators or craftsmen, both have models for their activities. The nature of their models is quite controversial. In the Timaeus, there is no Form of the Cosmos. In the first account of creation, the Demiurge looks to a Form, the World Animal Itself, “of which all other living things are parts, both individually and by kinds” (Tim. 30c). To create a likeness of this image, initially at least, is to create the cosmos, a single living creature with a body and a soul (as its parts, as it were). Ultimately, however, the Demiurge makes this cosmic creature, the imitation of the World Animal Itself, by creating the various kinds of living things—images, as it were, of the species and kinds, now understood as Forms, that are the “parts” (in a different sense this time) of the World Animal Itself. The creation of these living things, in turn, introduces the need to create the appropriate bodies for these creatures, whether they are triangles, earth, air, fire, and water, or compounds of them.⁴³ By creating these, the Demiurge fulfills his intention of introducing order (a best state) into the raw materials by imitating the World Animal Itself.⁴⁴

In the Republic, it is also not clear what model the philosopher looks to in considering his product.⁴⁵

Since there is no Form of the State, let alone a tripartite one, to what model does the philosopher look and how does he go about making the state?⁴⁶ The answer would seem to be the Form of the Good, as well as the Forms especially of Justice, Wisdom, and the other virtues, and the Soul Itself. That is, just as the Demiurge makes the cosmos by making the species of animals (i.e., through its parts), so the philosopher indirectly makes a state by making its “parts,” that is, by educating the souls of its would-be citizens. Absent a Form of the State, there is no definition or essence of the state, no political imitation (of the State), and no way to ground the notion of the common good in the essence or nature of the state.⁴⁷ There is just the same one best condition that each individual soul can achieve. The philosopher-ruler thus focuses on individual souls. His model is the fully intelligent, completely virtuous soul, a soul whose motion and direction, as it were, are in accord with its complete and constant knowledge of the Forms.⁴⁸ To put it differently, but, I think, equivalently, he takes to heart the idea of homoiôsis theô: he uses his knowledge of the Good and other Forms, along with his self-knowledge, to recreate in others, to the best of his and their ability, an image of reason.⁴⁹

Granting that both the Demiurge and the philosopher are creative craftsmen, it follows (according to the laws, as it were, of Platonic metaphysics) that their creations are imperfect, for everything created is imperfect. Nevertheless, there are, I want to argue, some important differences between the Demiurge and the philosopher with respect to this fact about creations—differences, I believe, that help us to understand the state of mind of the philosopher when he is choosing to descend. Broadly speaking, I want to concentrate on the similarities and dissimilarities between the creative aims of the Demiurge and the philosopher in order to secure an interpretation of why, in the case of the Demiurge, there is no regret on his part in viewing his task, whereas there is regret for the philosopher in deciding to descend to engage in his creative undertaking.

One similarity concerns the role of Necessity in the Timaeus and the Republic. In the Timaeus, the Demiurge, being good and without jealousy (phthonos),⁵⁰

embarks upon his creative endeavor cognizant of the role that Necessity, or the wandering cause, will play in his creation. He understands that the nature of his raw material, in combination with the presence of purposive intelligence, will introduce a secondary imperfection into his product.⁵¹ The laws governing body, or matter, are such that when he organizes his raw material or creates a given body and sets it in motion, that body will interact with other bodies and set them in motion in ways that are beyond his control. These are the secondary or random motions of bodies that the Timaeus labels the “wandering cause” or “Necessity.” These unintended motions of matter result from the nature of the physical system: the fact that space is a plenum and that bodies (plural) are set in motion by purposive acts on the part of the Demiurge and other intelligent souls. That such motions occur is simply a given, the consequence of the nature of body or matter, acted upon by intelligent souls. Evil souls (i.e., ignorant souls) magnify the phenomenon. Perfectly intelligent souls can do nothing to completely offset the situation. That is to say, given the nature of the raw material, the Demiurge can succeed only for the most part in imposing order on his raw material. He can persuade his material only to a certain extent.⁵²

A similar situation confronts the philosopher in contemplating what will happen when he descends. The souls he confronts, namely the souls of his fellow citizens, are as a matter of empirical fact imperfect, because they are embodied. Desire, appetite, and spirit will inevitably lead them to act in pursuit of the ends that appetitive souls and honor-seeking souls set for themselves; and the motions (i.e., actions) that such souls generate will not be fully compliant with reason or intelligence. Moreover, insofar as individuals live together in a society, each individual, even when acting purposively and rationally, will interact with others acting in the same way, often in competition for goods—resulting in unintended consequences for the individual and others. Finally, the philosopher will descend into a state where at least some of the people will be youths—young souls guided primarily by desire and lacking reason. There is nothing he can do to entirely overcome this dynamic situation.

So much for the similarity between the Demiurge and the philosopher. What is the difference? The difference is that nowhere in the Timaeus does Plato say or even suggest that the Demiurge regrets or needs to be compelled to create, even though he understands that his creation will be imperfect or, put differently, that his creation will not be fully amenable to the persuasive aspects of reason. But this only raises the bar: what explains the difference between the Demiurge and the philosopher such that compulsion and regret visit the latter but not the former? My answer is that alternatives are available to the philosopher.⁵³

There are no alternatives for the Demiurge. It is not as though he has some better world in mind that he could create, if his materials were not so recalcitrant, such that he believes that he is settling for some “compromise.” That there are no alternatives for the Demiurge means that there is no better world that he could bring into being, and a fortiori no better world that he could bring into being if his materials were different. He sets out to do what is best for the materials at hand, and he accomplishes this aim by introducing the greatest possible order into these materials.⁵⁴ He has no regrets and he need not be compelled to his act of creation because he realizes that he is producing the best (and, therefore, for him, only) world possible, despite the fact that, in the unfolding of time, the created cosmos will necessarily tend toward disorder.

In contrast, I think that there are alternatives for the philosopher, and the fact that there are alternatives is crucial, indeed necessary, for the philosopher's regret.⁵⁵

The alternative I have in mind is that the philosopher realizes that there is a condition of soul which, given the metaphysical nature of the raw material with which he works, is superior to the condition of most of the souls even in the tripartite Kallipolis, that is, the state consisting of souls most of whom are ruled by appetite or spirit. That is to say, given the philosopher's full understanding of the nature of soul, and the Forms, and the inherent conditions of his raw material, there is an alternative to the tripartite state, namely, a “state” in which each soul is philosophical. The difference between the philosopher and the Demiurge, then, is due to the different metaphysical natures of their raw material and their subsequent knowledge of the raw material with which each works. The philosopher-ruler, or one who has achieved the absolute perspective, knows that anyone can, in principle, take on that perspective, and he knows from his own case that embodied soul is capable of overcoming its real-world conditions, even if only temporarily. I take this commitment to the metaphysics of reason to be the thrust of the passage at Rep. VII.518b6 ff., where Plato writes that every soul has the power to learn, that is, the power to be educated toward the Good, should the right teachers be present. This is not to say that the philosopher thinks that conditions in this world will tend toward such an eventuality. Rather, it marks only the presence of an alternative he can envisage at the end of a long educational process when he has climbed to the summit. In this sense, then, the philosopher cannot lack self-awareness, for he must reflect that he is a soul with his own history, now as like to the divine as one can be. If, following this strand of Plato's argument, we focus squarely on reason and its relation to the Good, then we must conclude that the ideal situation is one in which every rational soul contemplates the Good; and we must conclude that this is a real possibility. If this possibility were to be realized, this is what it would be to maximize the amount of rational order in the world. This is a fact about reason that reason itself recognizes in full contemplation of the Good. It follows that the ideal circumstance is one in which everyone is a philosopher. While we might describe such an outcome as a community of philosophers,⁵⁶ such a circumstance is one in which there is no need of rulers, for each can rule him- or herself. The state evaporates. Plato, then, is committed to philosophical anarchy, the condition in which each soul rules itself. Philosophical anarchy is the ideal nonpolitical condition sought by reason.

This is one alternative and one side of the philosopher's dilemma. The other is the likely outcome that most souls will not make it. This realization arises from considerations that have appeared in the Republic up to this point. The first is that the life of the philosopher is not simply the act of philosophical contemplation. This act is atemporal, absolute, and nonhuman. The philosopher, or at least the philosopher under discussion in the Republic, has had and continues to have a life, only one part or some parts of which consist in contemplation. Insofar as his reason is human reason, it recognizes that it bears relations to spirit and appetite, that it has a history and a future in which it will yet again be confronted by appetites and spiritive desires, and that as a citizen of the world some of its beliefs will be false, thus setting off the unintended consequences of matter in motion. While human reason endeavors to be like god's reason, it also recognizes that it is not god's. To fail of such self-knowledge is to be hubristic, and eo ipso to fail to be fully reflective. At the same time, having achieved psychic harmony, there is nothing more that the philosopher can do for himself, if there is no moral backsliding. Insofar as his understanding of the Good motivates him to promote it, his prime opportunity to do so would be to invest in helping others.

The second consideration is of a piece with the first. Just as the philosopher realizes that he is of this world, he also realizes that as a matter of fact the vast majority of his fellow human beings will simply fail to become philosophers. This realization seemingly holds even in the ideal city. At the beginning of Book VIII of the Republic (546a1–547a5), Plato reminds us that destruction attends everything that comes to be. Whatever one makes of the eugenics of this passage, there are other reasons for the failure of the majority to become philosophers. The metaphysics of imperfection, of the dissolubility of everything that is composed, goes hand in hand with Plato's skepticism about knowledge of the physical world. Even if one thinks that knowledge of the physical world is possible, it is isolated. Indeed, all human beings are prey to false beliefs about some matters.⁵⁷

The sources of this ignorance are multiple. Beyond the imperfection of the physical, there is the fact that humans interact with the world through the senses. The Timaeus (esp. 42e–44c) makes most vivid the strand of Plato's thought that finds in the interactions of the senses with the world a source of confusion and false belief. That the problem is especially acute in youths reminds us that in Plato's psychology the young are most malleable because they lack reason, at least in any developed form. Here, I think, is a crucial reason why ignorance is ineradicable from the actual world: in every state, there will not only be some adults with false beliefs about value, there will be youths, i.e., dynamic souls who have yet to mature. As with Necessity or the random element in the Timaean physical cosmos, Plato thinks that once ignorance (i.e., false belief) is introduced into the system, it cannot be eliminated from the system. There is nothing that the philosopher can do to overcome this situation, for even if he were to wipe the slate clean for a moment, he would still be working with immature ten-year-olds living in the actual physical world and interacting with others. Being part of the political and physical system, they will, inevitably, revert to the norm.

The allure of the static moment, so powerful in our thinking about the act of contemplation and the absolute perspective, distracts us from the philosopher's condition in the actual world, where he confronts a dynamic situation with souls whose beliefs and developmental stages are vastly different. Perhaps at the culmination of a great cycle the world might be such that all souls are alike, but in no real state is there this possibility. Similarly, the allure of the absolute perspective, the (self-)knowledge that leads one to conclude that any human soul as such is capable of becoming philosophical, distracts us from the fact that ruling concerns a collective, not the isolation and education of individuals one-by-one. Just as the Demiurge seems not to be everywhere at once—world-construction is a process and not momentary (catastrophic)—so too the philosopher knows that he cannot be everywhere at once in the state. Not all interactions between the citizens can be controlled. Ignorance, like the random factor, manifests itself in unpredictable ways, and the philosopher knows that his prescriptions can never be precise enough. The richness and variability of human interactions and circumstances cannot be predicted or accommodated from the absolute perspective.

The philosopher knows that ignorance is ineradicable from the actual world, that some souls will fail to be freed from the leaden weights of the sensible realm. This is the realpolitik, and it is at odds with his recognition that the best of all worlds is one in which the good is maximized by bringing it about that each soul is ruled by reason. This maximization of the good will not happen. Both considerations have in common the idea that there is an ideal that the philosopher contemplating the Good can recognize and yet also realize that he will fall short of. Both, I suggest, are sources of regret, reasons why the philosopher has to be forced to rule.

Nonetheless, the philosopher recognizes that, given his circumstances and those of the other citizens, it is better to go down to rule. Why is it better? I think that the answer is that the philosopher recognizes that the very same means needed to create a prospect for anyone to become a philosopher will also make for the most good even for those who will not make it—and this means is education. Now this is a persuasive line of thought only if the philosopher can see how his intervention will actually produce an imitation of the Good even in those who are not philosophers.⁵⁸

Here I think he can tell himself the following. First, whereas in the physical cosmos there is an inevitable move toward a worse condition (except when nous intervenes), in the case of the soul the dynamic is different. Souls as they mature move toward a better condition, namely the inevitable emergence of the rational capacity, whose course and strength can only be augmented by education. Whereas the “natural” course of the physical is toward disorder, the natural tendency of the soul is toward order and intelligence. Any move toward controlling desire is an improvement and a move toward order. Hence, the specification of the different kinds of desires and their “education” (i.e., the control of the necessary desires and the selection/habituation of the optional desires) is appropriately the focus of Books II–X of the Republic. From the engaged, this-worldly perspective, the philosopher can reflect on his own education and course of study and see how the process of internalization, especially the taking on of the appropriate beliefs about values, functions to structure the souls of all citizens. The question may then be (on the one hand) whether this is improvement enough given that the nonphilosopher, because his reason fails to know the Form of the Good, follows the values set by appetite or spirit, and (on the other hand) whether the philosopher can actually instill an intuition of the Good in citizens.

The question is: What constitutes the improvement of these appetitive and spiritive citizens? These citizens believe that honor or pleasure is the good for them. Is this fatal? Well, if they did not believe this, they would not be who they are: auxiliaries and workers. And if they thought that there was something better for them and that they could not achieve it, they would be miserable. Thus, they cannot but value for themselves honor and pleasure. When we speak of a goal and which part of the soul sets it, sometimes, it seems, we assume that each of the parts has something like a rational capacity. This strengthens the account of those who think that at a certain stage a person loses the possibility of becoming a philosopher (or perhaps anything different). If, however, we think that each part is (reasonably) simple—that whenever reason is at work, it is the functioning of the rational part—then even in the case of the nonphilosophers, reason is at work in the setting of goals.⁵⁹

It may be that reason is not working perfectly or properly, or at least not on its own proper goals. But the fact that reason is at work allows us to understand how the education of the young and the old alike can be counted as progress toward a better state. The parent who says to his child, “You do not know what is good for you,” does not think that the child will adopt the parent's values, certainly not then and often not ever. The parent's values are offered as an alternative, a better one to be sure, in order to start a process which may lead to a change in view, but primarily in order to establish in the child the notion that there is a difference between what seems (at the moment) good to/for the youth and what is good for the youth. That is, the parent's statement is part of a process whereby the child comes to recognize that whatever one's values, one concedes that there is a difference between apparent and real self-interest. The philosopher, then, relying on the premise that everyone accepts the difference between his real and apparent good (Rep. VI.500d), thinks he can instill at least a dim intuition of the Good. Each person's embrace of alternative reasons, or pursuits leading away from the valuation of pleasure and honor, is thus an incremental increase in psychic order.⁶⁰

If the philosopher descends, and if he can begin to pass on his values even to a limited degree so as to provide some citizens with the proper upbringing, he can reckon that (some of) the nonphilosophers are improved in that they can concede (1) that there are different values for different people; (2) that the rule of philosophers makes possible that different people can pursue what each is best at and values most, and that this is a good thing; and (3) that the philosopher-rulers themselves do not overreach in seeking what they have and value for themselves. Therefore, the nonphilosophers can be brought to see that not everyone overreaches and therefore that overreaching is not necessary for one's good or for their own good. And this is the point of the noble lie—that one should be satisfied with one's own state: in doing one's own and being satisfied with one's own, one imitates justice as far as possible.⁶¹

Finally, the philosopher can reason that by descending he can provide the “substitute reason” necessary for instilling in the young potential philosopher the beliefs requisite for him to develop control over the appetites and the spirit. By the same token, however, the philosopher also offers to the mature but nonphilosophical adults alternatives to their own beliefs about pleasure and honor.

The idea of “substitute reason,” of externalizing the values of reason, requires much more analysis than I can provide in this essay. But insofar as the spirit and the appetite always borrow their rationality from reason, and insofar as it is always possible for the rational soul to be persuaded to change (beliefs) for the better (until, that is, it comes to know the Good), and, finally, insofar as knowledge of the Good provides a telos or benchmark for progress or ethical improvement, the philosopher can reckon that by descending to rule he will make more good even for the nonphilosophers. We know from the storm passage⁶²

that there are circumstances so bad that the philosopher realizes that he can do no good, and hence he will not descend into them. But provided that the circumstances surrounding his choice are not that bad, or at least provided that he cannot see that they are that bad, he can persuade himself that in virtually every circumstance, whether he owes something to the state or not, the good thing to do is to descend even if only to help a few. The source of his regret—the reason that the founders, themselves all philosophers, have to compel him to descend—is that they must force him away from a commitment to the maximal outcome as a result of his understanding of the Good and his own soul (i.e., philosophical anarchy).