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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
This paper is a reaction to a recent article by Raphael Woolf, the drift of which is that, according to the Republic, truth as such is not important. I am not persuaded and in what follows I try to get clear about why.
I would like to thank Anne Baril, Marian David, David Ebrey, Kristen Inglis, Joseph Karbowski, Yannig Luthra, David O'Connor, and Gretchen Reydams-Schils for helpful comments and advice.
1 Woolf, Raphael, ‘Truth as a Value in Plato's Republic’, Phronesis 54 (2009), 9–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare Woolf, Raphael, ‘Misology and Truth’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 23 (2007), 1Google Scholar: ‘[The Socrates of the Phaedo] acknowledges, in effect, that he will fight to defend the thesis of the soul's immortality not out of a love of truth for its own sake but because of the value he places on the state of affairs that would obtain if the thesis were true. The truth is as it may be; and it may not coincide with the outcomes we are most invested in. In battling to make these two elements coincide, Socrates invites us to wonder where his deepest allegiance lies.’
2 Op. cit. note 1, 35.
3 Woolf does not claim that this is flat-out affirmed in the Republic, but argues that it is implied by what is said there (op. cit. note 1, 38). A similar view may be found in Kraut, Richard, ‘The Defense of Justice’, in Kraut, Richard, The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘We can easily understand someone who says that one of the great privileges of his life is to have known a certain eminent and inspiring person. Even if one is not a close friend of such a person, one may have great love and admiration for him, and one may take pleasure in studying his life. That is the sort of relationship Plato thinks we should have with the Forms – not on the grounds that loving and studying are good activities, whatever their objects, but on the grounds that the Forms are the preeminent good and therefore our lives are vastly improved when we come to know, love, and imitate them.’
4 Op. cit. note 1, 38 (emphasis added).
5 Cp. David, Marian, ‘Truth as the Primary Epistemic Goal: A Working Hypothesis’, in Steup, M. and Sosa, E., Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 296–7Google Scholar: ‘Let us consider what it means to talk of truth as a goal…“I want truth” is a bit like “I want fruit”. Like fruit, truth comes in pieces. We have separate words for the different sorts of pieces fruit comes in. The pieces truth comes in we can just call truths. Philosophers often call them true propositions… So, “I want truth” says that I want true propositions. “I want the truth”, taken literally, says that I want exactly the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; that is, taken literally, it says that I want all the true propositions and only the true propositions, no false ones’. Or (apropos Bradley) Candlish, Stewart, ‘Resurrecting the Identity Theory of Truth’, Bradley Studies 1 (1995), 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘But the crucial point is that, though all ordinary judgments will turn out to be more or less infected by falsehood, Bradley allows some sort of place for false judgment even if the place does not look much like what we, who probably absorbed a commitment to the digital character of truth and falsehood with our tutors’ sherry if not quite our mothers' milk, might have imagined in advance' (emphasis added).
6 Here and throughout translations are by Shorey, sometimes modified.
7 That this is a mistake Socrates means to single out here is shown by his use of the point that philosophers love ‘all’ wisdom in the sequel, first in sketching their moral character, and then setting out a program for their education: their souls, he says, ‘ever…seek integrity and wholeness in all things human and divine’ (τοῦ ὅλου καὶ παντὸς…θείου τε καὶ ἀνθρωπίνου, 486a); their object is ‘the contemplation of all time and existence’ (θεωρία παντὸς μὲν χρόνου, πάσης δὲ οὐσίας, 486a); they will be required ‘to gather the studies which they disconnectedly pursued as children in their former education into a comprehensive survey (σύνοψιν) of their affinities with one another and with the nature of things (τῆς τοῦ ὄντος φύσεως)’ (537b–c).
8 He could hardly have picked a blander word for it than μάθημα, and even then he adds ‘or of whatever we must assume the correlate of science to be’ (ἢ ὅτου δὴ δεῖ θεῖναι τὴν ἐπιστήμην).
9 On this topic see Culler, Arthur Dwight, The Imperial Intellect: A Study of Newman's Educational Ideal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 173–88Google Scholar.
10 Cp. Statesman 279a ff., where we find the idea that the other sciences contend for the title πολιτική, and in fact are συναίτια in its work. (On this stretch of the Statesman see especially Cooper, John, ‘Plato's Statesman and Politics’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 13 (1997), 71–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar (reprinted in his Reason and Emotion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 165–91Google Scholar).
11 To this it might be objected that the reason that the science of government is called ‘wisdom’ is not that its concern with the city itself is not particular or qualified, but rather that it alone is a form of good judgment (εὐβουλία) (which (after all) Socrates earlier more or less identifies with wisdom). But this is a mistake: the passage makes clear that the distinguishing mark of the science of government is not that it alone is a form of good judgment – that it alone is in the business of giving counsel – but rather that it alone is in the business of giving counsel on behalf of the city itself as a whole. This is the reason that it alone deserves to be called wisdom.
12 See too 442c5–8, 443e5–444a2.
13 For a brief survey of this literature see Pritchard, Duncan, ‘Recent Work on Epistemic Value’, American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007), 101–103Google Scholar.
14 Here it may be useful to compare the idea of substance as treated in Descartes' Third Meditation; for Descartes, the idea of infinite substance is not the idea of substance plus some qualification, e.g. the absence of limitation. Rather it is the other way around: it is the idea of finite substance that it is the posterior idea – it is the idea of substance plus limitation. My point in the text above is that as Descartes thinks of substance, so the Socrates of the Republic thinks of truth.
15 Contrast in this regard true belief. Let it be that, given that one has an opinion on some particular question, then other things equal, it is better if one's opinion is true (and better too if it is justified (vel sim.), and better still if it is both, and best of all it is something one downright knows). Let it be that true, justified, known are forms goodness takes in beliefs or opinions. The idea that, in human beings, excellence increases with the number of questions on which one has an opinion – no matter what about, so long as the opinions are true and/or justified and/or formed-in-a-particular-way or what have you – so that, resources permitting and other things equal, it would be good to accumulate a hoard, the more the better, seems just stupid on its face, both to us and to Plato. Plato: witness the caricatures of πάσσοφοι, e.g. at 398a1–8, 596c–d, 598c–d, perhaps also 409c4–7. Us: witness the recent growing literature on the value of truth (for a brief survey, see Pritchard, op. cit. note 13, 101–103).
16 The point is reinforced by the ironic remark that follows, which presupposes that the dicta of sages are true: ‘“We will take up arms against him, then,” said I, “you and I together, if anyone affirms that either Simonides or Bias or Pittacus or any other of the wise and blessed (σοφῶν τε καὶ μακαρίων) said such a thing”’ (335e7–9). Here note too the collocation of ‘wise and blessed’, which is suggestive of the point considered next in the text cbelow.
17 So e.g. 348e–349a: ‘But, as it is, you obviously are going to affirm that [injustice] is beautiful (καλὸν) and strong (ἰσχυρὸν) and you will attach to it all the other qualities that we were assigning to the just, since you don't shrink from putting it in the category of virtue and wisdom’.
18 A revealing exception (Hesiod), where Socrates signals explicitly that he is not speaking ironically: ‘But further, we may fairly repeat what I was saying then also, that if the guardian shall strive for a kind of happiness that will unmake him as a guardian and shall not be content with the way of life that is moderate and secure and, as we affirm, the best, but if some senseless and childish opinion about happiness shall beset him and impel him to use his power to appropriate everything in the city for himself, then he will find out that Hesiod was indeed wise (τῷ ὄντι ἦν σοφὸς), who said that “the half was in some sort more than the whole”’ (466b–c).
19 E.g. 409c4–d4: ‘But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil, and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart trickster (πανοῦργός τε καὶ σοφός), when he associates with his like does appear to be clever (δεινός), being on his guard and fixing his eyes on the patterns within himself. But when the time comes for him to mingle with the good and his elders, then on the contrary he appears stupid ((ἀβέλτερος)). He is unseasonably distrustful and he cannot recognize a sound character because he has no such pattern in himself. But since he more often meets with the bad than the good, he seems to himself and to others to be rather wise than foolish (σοφώτερος ἢ ἀμαθέστερος)’. Or again, in connection with ‘the man who thinks that it is wisdom (σοφία) to have learned to know the moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly’ (493d), or of what passes for wisdom in the cave (516c5), or of ‘the so–called wicked but wise’ (τῶν λεγομένων πονηρῶν μέν, σοφῶν δέ, 519a2).
20 In these passages σοφία often has practical connotations, of a kind associated with φρόνησις in Aristotle. In fact Socrates appears to use σοφία and φρόνησις more or less interchangeably, except that when he wants to poke fun he uses σοφία/σοφός. So too Burnet 1925, 126.
21 On philosophy, see Nightingale, Andrea Wilson, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on wisdom, Martin, Richard, ‘The Seven Sages as Performers of Wisdom’, in Dougherty, C. and Kurke, L., Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.
22 ‘or are hardly’: the issue is delicate. See e.g. the attitude of Callicles in the Gorgias, according to which philosophy is acknowledged as patently good for something – just not for grown-ups. It is true that there is the witness given by Adimantus in Rep. VI as to the attitudes of ‘the many’, but one must bear in mind that its target is limited: ‘those who turn to philosophy, not merely touching upon it to complete their education and dropping it while still young, but lingering too long in the study of it’ (487c–d).
23 For a well–known statement of the case see Newman, John Henry, The Idea of a University, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982)Google Scholar, Discourse V. (My thinking in §§2.1–3 is also indebted to Newman, as will be obvious to readers familiar with his work.)
24 I have not mentioned the lies he would have the rulers in his city tell their subjects. As Woolf notes, these lies are conceptualized as a kind of ‘drug’ (φάρμακον). This suggests that, considered in their own right, i.e. apart from the circumstances that make them necessary, they are an evil to be avoided. (Cp. Heinaman, Robert, ‘Plato's Division of Goods in the Republic’, Phronesis 47 (2002), 311–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)
