PART TWO

The Presentation and Substance of Platonic Philosophy

Plato has two distinct ways of presenting or discussing philosophy in the Letters. In reference to the ideal of a regime of philosopher rulers, Plato presents philosophy as the key to humanity’s political salvation, and therefore as a means to a political end. At other times, however, Plato discusses the activity of philosophy as a quest for clarity and understanding, and thus for individual fulfillment, without reference to its political utility. It is helpful to recognize, moreover, that these two aspects of Platonic philosophy as presented in the Letters roughly correspond to Plato’s relationships with Dion and Dionysius, respectively. In our exploration of Plato’s political counsel in the Letters (which focused naturally on Plato’s relationship with Dion), we encountered the first, more political of his presentations of philosophy as reflective of some part of Dion’s political hopes; but we have not yet seen much of Plato’s alternative presentation of philosophy, in which the teaching, learning, practice, and life of philosophy receive more attention, and which generally arises in reference to Plato’s relationship with his erstwhile pupil, Dionysius. As we turn now to a study of the theme of philosophy in the Letters, we must attend to both of its facets, and above all to the relationship between those facets. What compels Plato, in his mission to defend and promote the reputation of philosophy among the Greeks, to alternate between these two different—sometimes even incompatible—portraits? What does the Letters contribute to Plato’s pursuit of that mission? And which of his two portraits of philosophy more closely resembles the truth in Plato’s view?

For the sake of arriving at comprehensive answers to these questions, we will chart the following two-part course through four of the five Platonic letters in which philosophy is explicitly discussed. First, we must briefly revisit the version of Platonic philosophy we have already encountered—the version that Dion especially came to cherish as the key to political happiness—by reconsidering a handful of passages we have touched upon above: the famous autobiographical section of Letter Seven, as well as Letters Ten and Six. This time, however, we will give greater attention to what these passages tell us about Plato’s strategy for promoting philosophy than about his strategy for offering political counsel. Specifically, we will seek to elucidate the sense of Plato’s claim in the Letters that philosophy should be hailed as the solution to our political ills. Having made this beginning, we will quickly see that Letter Six is of particular importance to our understanding of Plato’s presentation of philosophy in the Letters, since it is in Letter Six that Plato most seems to straddle the divide between his two versions of philosophy—and thus shows the contradiction between them. In Letter Six, philosophy is presented as the ideal source of stability and prosperity for a political ruler, but also as a theoretical activity lacking political applicability, to be pursued for its own intrinsic benefits. The first portion of our exploration of the theme of philosophy in the Letters, then, will conclude by showing how Letter Six allegorically represents the dilemma Plato faces in choosing how to portray Platonic philosophy.

From there, we will move on to the second and much longer portion of our study of philosophy in the Letters: a close examination of two passages in which Plato, in discussing his education of Dionysius, most elaborately describes the course of study and subject matter involved in the pursuit of Platonic philosophy (as opposed to its political utility). These passages are, first, his notoriously enigmatic account of “the nature of the first” in Letter Two, and second, the famous “philosophic digression” of Letter Seven. In addition to the basic interpretive task of deciphering what each of these passages teaches about Platonic philosophy, we will especially seek to clarify the connection between the two passages, which is most evident in their parallel treatments of a common theme: in both passages, Plato discusses the difficulties involved in the practice of philosophy, which compel him to write about philosophy only in surprisingly guarded and even dissembling ways. Thus our exploration of the theme of philosophy in the Letters will help us in understanding why Plato has written about philosophy in such a confusing and paradoxical manner.

I

Philosophy as Solution to the Challenge of Politics

The autobiographical section of Letter Seven describes the extinguishing of Plato’s youthful political ambitions and aspirations. This change in Plato is said to have been the result of his examination of politics, which was itself prompted by Athens’ repeated mistreatment of Socrates. Plato’s acknowledgment of the grave difficulty involved in “manag[ing] the political things correctly” came initially with the observation that “one is not able to act without men who are friends and faithful comrades.” But since one cannot hope to find such men where venerable laws and customs are being corrupted, and since he finally concluded that “all of the cities” of his time were “being governed badly,” Plato determined that to cure actual regimes of the pathologies that beset them is beyond the reach of human action (325c5–326a5). We also saw that Plato’s resignation regarding the political efficacy of human endeavor gave rise to his praise of philosophy. Plato took to declaring that only the ascension of philosophers to stations of political rule or the turning of those who rule to philosophy—the latter requiring providential help—can put an end to the evils suffered by humanity by putting the clear apprehension of justice to use in politics (326a5–b4). The lack of trustworthy friendships is the problem that undermines the prospect of effective political action; the rule of philosophers is apparently the solution. But how is the rule of philosophy, even granting philosophy’s exclusive access to the form of justice, to overcome this particular political problem? That is, how can philosophy supply these vanishingly rare friendships, which alone are trustworthy enough to be reliable in the midst of the treachery, slander, and deceit that beset the powerful or ambitious political actor?

Of the two versions of philosophy we find in the Letters, it is the more political version, which Plato consistently presents in connection with his relationship to Dion, that he employs in order to address these questions. We see this exemplified most completely by Letter Ten: Plato tells Dion’s comrade that “the true philosophy” is nothing other than “the steadfast, and faithful, and healthy,” and Plato disparages all other “wisdoms and clevernesses” as forms of refinement or sophistication that miss the mark of philosophy properly understood. Plato presents philosophy as consisting in sound moral character. When we put Letter Ten together with the autobiographical section of Letter Seven, then, we see the implication that friendship as fostered among those who share in philosophy has the strength and stability to withstand the stresses and strains suffered by any bond exposed to the violent flux of political life. Indeed, in Letter Seven we learn that the necessity of acquiring “faithful friends and comrades” was the moral of the great political lesson Plato and Dion were jointly attempting to impart to Dionysius: those (Darius, the Athenians) who acquire such friends build magnificent empires; those who do not (Dionysius the Elder) remain “paltry” by contrast and survive only “with difficulty” (331d6–332c7). Plato even blames Dion’s own downfall on his failure to make philosophy the exclusive foundation of his political partnerships, and on his trusting instead in the protection promised by religious authorities in exchange for pious observance. In this respect, philosophy is presented as offering what even religion only pretends to offer. But if the problem of the trust needed for success in political action is solved by the supreme faithfulness of friendships grounded in philosophy, why is it that the definition of philosophy as “the steadfast, and faithful, and healthy” does not appear in Letter Seven itself, where this problem is articulated?

The presentation of philosophy is a puzzle without a clean solution; Plato cannot display all of its pieces at once without falling into manifest contradiction. The literary form and structure of the Letters, as a collection of letters addressing disparate people and circumstances, is singularly useful in this regard: it allows Plato to present different pieces, or combinations of pieces, of the puzzle concerning the presentation of philosophy in different places. Letter Six is particularly valuable for our understanding of this feature of the Letters. In order properly to appreciate Letter Six, however, we must appreciate its relationship to the rest of the Letters, beginning with the recognition that Letters Five and Six form a pair that must be considered in their juxtaposition. Even their position within the Letters makes them stand out together, as they constitute a digression from the great narrative arc flowing from Letter One through at least Letter Eight. That is, whereas Letters One through Eight otherwise proceed in chronological order and deal exclusively with the Dion-Dionysius affair, Letters Five and Six are unrelated to the politics of the Italian and Sicilian cities and are not clearly located on the timeline of Plato’s Syracusan entanglements. In each one of these two letters, moreover, Plato is in correspondence with the ruler of a Greek city—with Perdiccas of Macedon in Letter Five, and with Hermias of Atarneus in Letter Six—and in both cases, Plato is involved in an exchange of favors: he offers counsel and the services of his associates to the ruler with a view toward benefits the ruler can provide to those same associates in return. (As a point of historical interest at least, we may note that Plato’s greatest student, Aristotle, would benefit from friendly relations with both of these regimes.)

In examining these letters as a pair, we cannot fail to be struck by the following contradiction between them. In Letter Five, Plato sends Euphraeus to help the young Macedonian ruler hold fast to the monarchical “voice” belonging to his regime; Plato thus speaks emphatically as if political expertise belongs to him and to his students. In Letter Six, however, Plato characterizes his students, Erastus and Coriscus, as being virtually devoid of political judgment or expertise on account of their attention in proper measure to Platonic philosophy or, as he puts it, the “beautiful wisdom of the Forms.” As regards this contradiction between Letters Five and Six, it is evident which of the two contrary portraits is the more truthful one: the insinuation of political naivete in Letter Six notwithstanding, Plato’s claim to possess political wisdom and his ability to impart such wisdom to his students are indisputably on display in Letter Five. So why in Letter Six does Plato so emphatically deny such wisdom in his otherwise laudatory description of his two students? The contradiction is best explained by reference to the fact that philosophy goes unmentioned in Letter Five but is thematic in Letter Six. This shows that Plato is willing to highlight his possession and teaching of practical insight into politics, but not in the context of discussion of his teaching of philosophy. The only exception to this principle would be that most memorable and famous Platonic point of contact between philosophy and politics, the doctrine of philosophic rule.

In Letter Six, however, the idea that Plato might be discussing or suggesting philosophic rule is utterly implausible. For how could the ideal political rulers be men as politically inept as Erastus and Coriscus are said to be? In this respect, the presentation of philosophy in Letter Six conflicts with that of Letter Seven (as the only Platonic letter in which the subject of philosopher rulers is explicitly broached): by suggesting that Platonic philosophers lack the ability to perceive and respond to political dangers, Plato undermines the persuasiveness of his claim that philosophers would make ideal rulers. Yet there is also a point of agreement between the presentation of philosophy in Letter Six and the claim in Letter Seven that philosophers are uniquely suited to overcome the perennial obstacles to political action. For what makes Erastus and Coriscus politically inept is also what renders them not only harmless but singularly useful to the ruler Hermias. Unlike Perdiccas, who is in need of guidance on account of his youth (321d2–4), Hermias appears to have the rule of Atarneus well in hand. Plato indicates that he is well supplied in arms, allies, and money, and what is more, Plato judges him to have “acquired . . . both by nature and, through experience, by art” “a certain defensive power” that would allow him to make prudent use of these assets (322e1–323a1). The respect in which Hermias lacks power, according to Plato, is that he is in need of “friends who are steadfast and who have healthy character” (322d3–4). Erastus and Coriscus can provide such friendship for the same reason that allows them to benefit from it in turn. Plato vouches for the trustworthiness of Erastus and Coriscus in overwhelmingly strong terms on the basis of the fact that they have been “occupied with us, who are measured and not bad, for a long part of their life” (322e2–3, 323a2–3). But this same, lifelong occupation is also responsible for their being “inexperienced,” and for their resultant need for “wisdom that guards against the wicked and unjust” (322d6–e1). Their time spent in an activity we are left to assume was the study of philosophy in Plato’s Academy has rendered them perfectly upright but desperately vulnerable; by attending for so long to the attainment of “true wisdom,” they have failed sufficiently to acquire “the human and compulsory” wisdom that would allow them to fend off the “wicked and unjust.” Their trustworthiness makes them ideal friends for Hermias, while their naivete leaves them in need of Hermias’s “defensive power.” This much is in accord with the presentation of philosophy as “the steadfast, and faithful, and healthy” in Letter Ten—which in turn agrees, as we have seen, with Letter Seven’s indication that only philosophy can solve the problem of political action posed by the unavailability of “men who are friends and faithful comrades.”

Thus we can say that the presentation of philosophy in Letter Six in part supports and in part contradicts the “Dionean” view of philosophy in evidence in Letters Seven and Ten. On one hand, Letter Six supports the idea that philosophy is the solution to the problem of trust in political activity; on the other hand, it can do this only at the expense of making philosophers appear politically inept, thereby undermining the appeal or plausibility of philosophic rule. The reasons for Plato’s reluctance to make claims of political wisdom on behalf of philosophy are seen especially by the comparison with Letter Five. Plato may be able to sell the percipient Euphraeus as adviser to the young and inexperienced Perdiccas, but to the seasoned and prosperous Hermias, such a prospective associate would likely appear not only useless but suspicious. Anyone shrewd enough to be a competent adviser could pose a threat if unconstrained by loyalty to the regime or its ruler, and is all the more dangerous if “courageous,” as Euphraeus is said to be (321e7; cf. Xenophon, Hiero 5.1). The fact that Plato feels he must defend himself at the end of Letter Five for possessing political wisdom he never brought to light for the benefit of the Athenians is a reminder that political wisdom is likely to be as much an object of suspicion in a democracy as in a monarchy.

Taken together, Letters Five and Six help us to recognize Plato’s principle of separating discussions of his teaching of true philosophy from his offering of political counsel. Yet our very articulation of this principle makes us aware of its inadequacy as an explanation of Plato’s political philosophic writing in general. For Platonic political philosophy is most famous for its manner of combining philosophy and politics, not least of all in Letter Seven. Precisely the fact that Letter Six undermines the doctrine of philosophic rule (by denying that philosophers are politically savvy) puts us in mind of Letter Seven’s promotion of philosophic rule, which by extension thus affirms what Letter Six denies. How does Plato get away with the doctrine of philosophic rule, given the precariousness of making claims to political wisdom on behalf of philosophy?

The clue to the answer to this question lies in an observation we have already made regarding the definition of philosophy as “the steadfast, and faithful, and healthy” in Letter Ten. What makes that definition so strange is that philosophy is thus described as a collection of character traits, to the exclusion of any acknowledgment that philosophy is rather a kind of activity. Now, one might wish to respond to this concern about the inadequacy of Letter Ten’s definition of philosophy by reference to the famous Socratic thesis that “virtue is knowledge.” The ostensible meaning of this paradoxical dictum is as follows. If indeed moral excellence, or virtue (aretē), is, as we intuit it to be, the perfection of the human soul (Republic 444d13–445c2), then—since everyone surely desires the greatest good for her or his own soul (see Republic 438a3–4; Philebus 20d1–10)—acts of viciousness, as harmful to the soul of the actor, must signify that the actor is ignorant or confused as to what would truly be beneficial (Apology of Socrates 25c5–26a8, 29d1–30b4; Protagoras 352a1–360d8; Meno 87c11–89d6; Gorgias 476a7–479e9). A virtuous person is one who correctly understands that the greatest good can be obtained only through virtue; a vicious person is one who mistakenly chooses some other, lesser good (such as pleasure) at the expense of virtue, and therefore at the expense of what is genuinely the greater good. Perhaps, then, it may be reasonable to say what Plato says about philosophy in Letter Ten. For if philosophy, by revealing the truth about moral character, illuminates the path all human beings would wish to travel whether they know it or not—namely, the virtuous path toward happiness or fulfillment—then perhaps there is sense in claiming that the ultimate or most important result of philosophy for the philosopher is the perfection of the soul through the attainment of moral virtue. Indeed, something like this claim is crucial to the doctrine of philosophic rule, since it affirms that the philosopher, as an essentially moral or virtuous human being, can be trusted with political power (see Republic 484d5ff.; Letters 326a5–7).

But even to say that philosophy is such knowledge of the virtues as is, rightly understood, identical to the possession of those virtues is to fail to portray philosophy as the quest for that knowledge (consider Symposium 204b4–5). It is precisely the unfinished character of that quest, the uncertain nature of virtue, that makes philosophy what it is in the context of the political community: a restless seeking for understanding that necessarily calls the community’s traditional or doctrinal teachings about virtue before the cold and unwavering tribunal of reason. Indeed, Plato’s Socrates himself readily acknowledges that his equation of virtue with knowledge may be “nobly spoken,” but cannot be taken as gospel (see Meno 89d3ff.; Protagoras 360e6ff.). In order to present philosophy as a potential political panacea, however—what we have called the “Dionean” version of Platonic philosophy—Plato must soften and obscure its volatile or potentially subversive dimension, which goes with its being a dynamic, questioning, seeking activity. Note in this connection that Plato’s presentation of the trial of Socrates in Letter Seven—which belongs to the introduction or explanation of his statement on the need for philosophic rule—mentions the charge of impiety but not that of corrupting the young (325c1–2). Socrates is made innocuous in this portrayal in accordance with the portrayal of philosophy as simple, common decency: Socrates is not said to have been a teacher of philosophy, because philosophy, in this view, is not really something one teaches; Plato says Socrates was pious and just—it would be redundant to add that he was a philosopher. Likewise, to say that the evils plaguing humanity cannot be dispelled until the philosophers and the rulers are one and the same is merely to say what is totally uncontroversial: the best rule would be the rule of the perfectly wise and perfectly just. This indeed is the point of the Platonic doctrine of philosophic rule, and this is why Plato says that belief in the truth of this doctrine is equivalent to the belief of those who have been “justly reared and educated in the ways of pious ruling men” (335d6–e1).

The doctrine of philosophic rule, violating as it does the Platonic principle of separating discussions of philosophy from those of politics, is possible only if philosophy is presented in a drastically truncated form. The “Dionean” understanding of Platonic political philosophy involves a distortion of Platonic philosophy, because it fails to recognize philosophy as an ongoing activity of critical inquiry and questioning. Letter Six is a bridge between this drastically truncated presentation of philosophy and the correction of that distortion. While Letter Six upholds the notion of philosophy as the basis of trustworthy friendship, it also acknowledges, as we will now see, its essentially dynamic and transpolitical character. And it is especially when Plato presents philosophy in its distinctive activity as a quest for coherent knowledge that he must hold it at a distance from political activity and politically active understanding.

We have said that the definition of philosophy as “the steadfast, and faithful, and healthy” in Letter Ten indicates the manner in which philosophy can be presented as the solution to the political problem identified in the autobiographical section of Letter Seven: the need for friends one can trust in politics. Yet as we have also stressed, Plato does not present that solution in Letter Seven. Even if he there implies that trustworthy friendships must be grounded in philosophy (333e7–334b7), he gives no indication of how philosophy brings about such friendships. For to do this would be to discuss something of the meaning of philosophy or of what it is to philosophize, and Plato is evidently averse to entering on such a discussion in the vicinity of his claims that the philosopher possesses significant political wisdom. It is rather in Letter Six, where it is implied that philosophers are oblivious to political affairs, that Plato appears to indicate how philosophy can produce genuinely trustworthy bonds of friendship.

The first mention of philosophy in Letter Six is in reference to Plato’s goal of forging a mutually beneficial friendship between, on one hand, his longtime pupils Erastus and Coriscus, who now live in faraway Ionia, and, on the other hand, Hermias, who rules the Ionian city of Atarneus. Plato urges the three of them to “hold fast” to one another so as to bind themselves in “a single braid of friendship” (323a5–b1). Referring to his whole account of the “friendship and community” to be initiated by this letter as an oracular pronouncement, Plato claims that his prophecy of good things to come from his proposed arrangement will be fulfilled, “whenever we all—both we and you—shall philosophize insofar as we are capable and as is appropriate to each of us” (323c1–3)—“if,” he finally adds, “a god should be willing” (323c5). The religious cast Plato gives to philosophy here—for neither the first nor the last time in the Letters—comes to define the letter’s closing lines, in which he indicates the nature of the wisdom to be gained through philosophy. He concludes by assuring his addressees that if all of them “really philosophize,” they will all come to know, “as clearly as is within the power of happy human beings,” “the god who is leader of all the things that are and the things that will be, sovereign father of the leader and cause” (323d2–6).

Plato portrays philosophy here as the activity that illuminates the divine origin of and rule over the entirety of existence, revealing, to the extent it can be revealed to human beings, the great god after whom we naturally seek: a paternal ruler attentive to our relationships to other human beings, including our oaths—for Plato enjoins his addressees to swear oaths by this god in their consultation of this letter as a “compact and sovereign law” governing their friendship (323c8–d4). The revelation thus available to us through philosophy fulfills us in the sense that it makes us into “happy human beings”—presumably because it assures us of our place as spiritual beings within the vast cosmic order in which we find ourselves. Indeed, Plato presents himself not only as having obtained this rare and powerful wisdom, but as having gained access through it to a source of further, divinely revealed, oracular or prophetic revelations—note that he opens the letter with the words “To me some one of the gods appears” (Emoi phainetai theōn tis; 322c4). Moreover, it would seem that the attainment of direct knowledge of the divine through philosophy brings us into communion with others who have done likewise. It is in this way—by being grounded on shared knowledge of and reverence for the true cosmic divinity—that the joint activity of philosophy has the capacity to forge powerful and thus dependable friendships strong enough to remedy the lack of steadfastness that is otherwise endemic in human nature.

Having seen these astounding promises that Plato makes on behalf of philosophy, we may now intensify our scrutiny of his undertaking in Letter Six. For, although Plato insists on delivering only “good prophecy,” passing over in silence what might turn out if the parties do not philosophize adequately, he nevertheless spends a good portion of the letter detailing the procedure to be followed if one member of the triumvirate determines “to dissolve” their “single braid of friendship” (323b2–c1). Indeed, the danger posed by this possibility must be great: the lack of steadfastness in all that is human is to be counteracted by the parties’ philosophizing; but until they have sufficiently philosophized, the danger of human inconstancy looms over the undertaking. What assurance can there be that the previously unphilosophic ruler Hermias in particular will hold to the required regimen of philosophizing? Note, furthermore, that Plato first allows that his prophecy will be realized if each of them philosophizes “insofar as [they] are capable and as is appropriate to each”; but the apprehension of the cosmic deity, which seems to hold the key to philosophy’s ability to bind these men together, will only be attained if they “really philosophize” (emphasis added). We may recall here that, in Plato’s major statement on his doctrine of philosophic rule in Letter Seven, he refers to the possibility that “those who are in power in the cities [might], by some divine fate, really philosophize” (326b2–4; emphasis added). Hermias’s limited capacity for philosophy may prove a critical hindrance to the effectiveness of the plan Plato proposes in Letter Six.

Protecting the Philosophers

The procedures Plato puts in place to deal with possible threats to the friendship between his students and Hermias in Letter Six make manifest his basic strategy: Plato will try to manage their joint affairs himself, directly and indirectly, as much as possible. The centerpiece of this strategy is Plato’s injunction that his three addressees collectively “use” or “consult” this very letter “as a compact and sovereign law, which is just” (323c6–d1). In the event of a prospective breach of the friendship, Plato directs the offended parties to send a “letter of accusation” to him and his associates in Athens; in response, Plato will send “speeches” that he claims will be able to restore the damaged partnership “by justice and by awe”—unless, that is, “the dissolution happens to have been great” (323b2–c1). As lawgiver for this community of three, then, Plato intends to be, if not quite present, at least available to his subjects as an arbitrator for the settling of disputes.

Consider how different this is from the Platonic Dion’s attempt, in Letter Eight, to set up a ruling triumvirate in Syracuse: Dion there failed to recognize the importance of the lawgiver who would establish the regime, and gave the task of establishing the triple-kingship to the very Syracusans over whom the kings would subsequently rule. Moreover, Dion’s nominations to the kingship were the leaders of parties at present engaged in fierce and open hostilities. Plato, in attempting to bring together three men much less hatefully disposed to one another, still finds it crucially necessary not only to establish protocols for preventing or repairing rifts between the parties, but even to remain himself active as the overseeing and adjudicating legislator. As Plato says in Letter Eleven, a founder is gravely mistaken who supposes that, “by the giving of any laws whatsoever, a city would ever be well established without the existence of some sovereign authority caring for the daily regimen” or “arbitration” (diatēs) in the city (359a2–7). Even the description of the cosmic deity with which Letter Six concludes seems to reflect this necessity. For that god is said not only to be the “leader of all the things that are and the things that will be,” but also “sovereign father of the leader and cause” (323d2–4; emphasis added). The perfect legislator must not only set down the established order and set its activity in motion, but must also remain as a sovereign authority or “lord” (kurion) over the order he has created.

The parallel between the attempt to legislate the triple-friendship in Letter Six and the proposal of a triple-kingship in Letter Eight is compelling. But we must stress yet again that the arrangement of Letter Six is not presented as a proposal for political rule. Plato never suggests that the bond to be formed here will provide Hermias with any specifically political advantage, despite Plato’s claim that friendship with Erastus and Coriscus will provide him with the greatest available increase in power “in all things.” We are impelled to guess that this “power” will consist in or derive from the apprehension through philosophy of the cosmic deity. Unlike the complementary suggestions of Letters Seven (that firm friendship is the key to political achievement) and Ten (that philosophy is nothing but the firmness of character requisite for such friendship), Letter Six indicates that the friendship produced by communal philosophizing produces its own, nonpolitical, mystical-philosophic benefits. And this, of course, accords with the depiction of Erastus and Coriscus as artless theoreticians, lost in their arcane “wisdom of the Forms,” and hence defenseless against the “wicked and unjust” of the world. Indeed, if the benefit to Hermias of this arrangement is left rather vague, Plato specifies the good he is seeking for Erastus and Coriscus with notable clarity: his goal is to find a safe haven for his longtime pupils, where they can attend to “the true wisdom” in proper measure, without being hectored by “the wicked and unjust” into spending inordinate time cultivating “the human and compulsory” wisdom.

This feature of Letter Six—the preference of Erastus and Coriscus to spend their time in contemplation—casts Letter Five in a new and different light. In Letter Five (where philosophy was not mentioned) the only justifications given for Plato’s failure to serve as political adviser to the Athenians were the incapacity of the demos to recognize and to heed sage counsel and its propensity to mistreat the counselor. Without for a moment gainsaying the probable truth of that circumstance, we see in Letter Six (where philosophy is mentioned) an alternative or additional explanation: on account of his dedication to transpolitical, cosmic, and divine studies, the philosopher does not wish to spend time in, or even think about, the practical requirements of political activity. Now, the content of Letter Five itself—its affirmation that students of Platonic philosophy may be useful political counselors—suggests that the ineptitude of Erastus and Coriscus in Letter Six may be overstated. Letter Six would then not so much deviate from Letter Five as complement it: it is not that Plato and his pupils cannot serve as political counselors; it is that they would rather not. And we may now add that there are some indications in Letter Six, too, to that effect. The concern is not that Erastus and Coriscus should be compelled to attend to the “human and compulsory” wisdom at all, but only “more than they need to” (emphasis added). This implies that there has been some need for them to seek this wisdom already. Moreover, Plato’s own recognition in this letter that “the human is not altogether steadfast” involves some glimmer, at least, of “human wisdom.” And it is this insight into human nature that impels Plato to an act of lawgiving—in that he calls on his addressees to treat this letter as a “sovereign law”—perhaps the highest political activity, or at least the political activity requiring the most extensive and profound grasp of “human wisdom.”

Obviously, Letter Six does not constitute a “real” act of lawgiving, and not only because the letter as a whole is likely a fiction. To have access to this letter’s real significance as a piece of Platonic writing, we must appreciate its allegorical character. Plato here pretends to attempt, by an act of lawgiving, to form an alliance between political power (Hermias) and philosophy (Plato’s two students). Plato’s purpose in so doing is to safeguard philosophy, which is by nature beset by political dangers, and so in need of political protection. The arrangement hoped for in Letter Six is something like the philosopher’s ideal situation: the friendship and protection of a powerful ruler under which the philosophers can be free to pursue lives of contemplation. Letter Six speaks allegorically of a regime in which the lawgiver has encouraged religious reverence for philosophy, and in which the rulers are by divine law and oaths bound to friendship with the philosophers.

The real lesson of the letter, however, is the demonstration of the practical infeasibility of this ideal arrangement. Let us begin by recalling why Plato’s “legislation” of this friendship was required in the first place. If Plato cannot offer his associates as political counselors for the reasons we have outlined, his offer to Hermias must be based on the great benefit Plato promises is available in philosophy itself. But Hermias’s capacity for philosophy is likely to be extremely limited, and therefore the friendship Plato wishes to set up will be necessarily and dangerously unstable. Now, Plato asserts that he will personally oversee the relationship’s stability by hearing and adjudicating any case brought by one member against another. Here, however, the trouble intensifies. Most obviously, Plato’s great distance from Atarneus will impede his ability to respond nimbly and effectively to problems on the ground. He must remain at a distance because his real business is at Athens: his journeys to Syracuse are the exception in the Letters; as a rule, he declines invitations to travel for political purposes. The philosopher-legislator is, to say the least, unlikely to be present to oversee the regime he has founded.

Perhaps this explains why Plato delegates responsibility for interpreting his legislation to his trio of subjects. In instructing them to consult the letter as their law, Plato tells the three of them that they must read this letter, “most of all as a group, but otherwise in twos—in common as often as, within [their] power, [they] are able . . ., swearing with seriousness that is not unmusical, and at the same time, with the playfulness that is a sister of seriousness” (323c6–d1). This encouragement to playful musicality in swearing to make use of Letter Six as a “just” and “sovereign law,” this liberation from and caution against unqualified “seriousness” or rigidity, indicates that Plato’s letter—which he claims to have written with divine inspiration—is to be approached rather as one would approach a poem, a product of the Muses. Yet the procedure mandated by this “legislation” includes a critical safeguard against harmful misinterpretation: the exceedingly small community founded by this compact, the tiny readership to which Plato intends to restrict this piece of writing, is one in which the philosophers outnumber the nonphilosophers. Thus Plato’s insistence that the letter be read “most of all as a group, but otherwise in twos” ensures that the “sovereign law” is always interpreted in the presence of at least one of the philosophers. Erastus and Coriscus may read the letter in the absence of Hermias, but Hermias is never to read it without at least one of those two present.

It is significant that there is no question of Hermias being overpowered by the philosophers on account of their greater numbers. The arrangement of Letter Six does nothing to change the fact that, as far as might is concerned, the philosopher must be at the mercy of the ruler. Even the legislator Plato is bound by this necessity. His plan to induce an offending party to fall in line “by justice and by awe” is reminiscent of his counsel to the Syracusans in Letter Seven to compel the intransigent “to be subject to the laws by a means of a pair of compulsions, awe and fear” (337a3–5). But Plato cannot compel by means of fear because he can muster no threat of force against the powerful Hermias. The philosopher must operate through persuasion, and Plato tries to take advantage of the philosophers’ majority in this community to keep Hermias persuaded of an appropriate interpretation of Letter Six. This will be all the more important given the likelihood that Hermias will encounter frustration with the pursuit of philosophy to which he is being directed, an eventuality that Plato explicitly refuses to discuss (323c2–3). But when we consider the broader meaning of Letter Six, we must realize that its solution to the philosopher’s need for protection is inappropriate in any real circumstances, since the philosophers must always constitute a tiny minority of the political community.

Letter Six thus indicates the inadequacy of its own strategy for defending philosophy. In doing so, however, it brings our attention to the key difficulties to which Plato’s actual strategy must attend. To see this, we must first expand our view of Letter Six’s relationship to the other letters, in which Plato is compelled to speak more seriously to the issue he treats only allegorically in Letter Six. Letter Six is the first in the Letters to be addressed to more than one recipient, a feature it shares only with its immediate sequels, Letters Seven and Eight. But whereas Letter Six restricts its readership to a small community unnaturally populated by a majority of philosophers, Letter Seven is effectively an “open” letter. And as we have already seen, Plato’s activity in Syracuse generally, and above all his promotion of the doctrine of philosophic rule, was largely in service of the reputation of philosophy for the sake of his philosophic friends (consider 347e6–7). The fact that Letter Six sketches a strategy for defending philosophy that is both generally impracticable and incompatible with the doctrine of philosophic rule (because it reflects the disinclination of philosophers to be involved in politics), helps us to see how some of that doctrine’s features are necessary responses (as well as pointers) to the real circumstances in which philosophy finds itself.

For example, Plato avoids arousing Hermias’s suspicion of Erastus and Coriscus by presenting them as virtually devoid of political acuity, but this means that Plato can offer nothing more to the ruler than an unlikely promise of philosophic enlightenment. Such a strategy might be viable if there could always be a philosopher on hand to attend personally to the concerns and frustrations that will develop over the course of the ruler’s studies, to assuage any doubts or fears that the promised philosophic enlightenment may never be achieved. In practice, however, Plato cannot get away with presenting the philosopher as useless to the political community as such. The doctrine of philosophic rule solves this problem by presenting the philosopher as the possessor of transformative political wisdom, albeit at the cost of distorting the real subject matter with which philosophy, as an ongoing critical activity, is essentially concerned. But then, how is Plato to absolve the philosopher of the charge he brings up in Letter Five, that the philosopher fails to discharge the obligation he has to employ his political wisdom in and for his fatherland (cf. 358a2–4)? Letter Six stresses that philosophers, unable to defend themselves by force (or “fear”), must instead make their defense in terms of justice—compulsion “by justice and by awe” rather than “awe and fear.” The success of the doctrine of philosophic rule depends on Plato’s ability to establish the philosopher’s perfect justice and to inspire awe or reverence for philosophy.

The presentation of philosophy in Letter Six, then, serves a number of purposes. As a piece of writing addressed to multiple recipients, including philosophers and rulers, seeking protection for philosophy by bringing these readers into a harmonious partnership, this letter serves as an introduction to the central political challenge of Plato’s political-philosophic writings. It allows us to see why the doctrine of philosophic rule must distort the nature of philosophy by giving it a truncated presentation. Put another way, Letter Six helps us begin to see why the doctrine of philosophic rule is necessarily mythical. For Letter Six indicates that true philosophic friendship emerges from the shared possession of wisdom concerning the “cause” and “leader of all the things that are and the things that will be,” a kind of sharing and hence friendship that do not help to solve the political problem concerning the need for trust that turned Plato away from politics in the first place. Once we recognize, on the basis of Letter Six, the reasons for the inadequacy of philosophic friendship to this purpose, we can better see, even in Letter Seven, how Plato calls into question the political efficacy of philosophy. Recall that Plato gave Darius’s and the Athenians’ building of their respective empires as examples to persuade Dionysius that the success of political undertakings depends on one’s possession of faithful friends, concluding that “there is no greater sign of virtue and vice than this, whether one is bereft of such men or not” (332c4–6). Yet, when we consider these empires and their origins, it comes to seem rather doubtful whether their histories give us reason to think that philosophy must be the ground of politically useful friendships.

But if Letter Six gets us closer to an undistorted view of philosophy, it takes only the first steps in that direction. This is not only because Plato here dresses up philosophy in mystical and religious garb—as a matter of fact, the further we get from the “Dionean” distortion of philosophy in Letter Seven with its denial that philosophy is a distinctive activity of critical questioning, the more Plato stresses such garb. The presentation of philosophy in Letter Six is especially problematic in that it conceals how enormously difficult an activity genuine philosophizing is. From Letter Six, one might infer that one need only give philosophy one’s best effort in order to enjoy its fruits. The two most famous and elaborate presentations of philosophy in the Letters, to which we will turn next, make clear that this is far from the case.

II

The Philosophic Riddles of Letter Two

Though one might well argue that the theme of philosophy permeates the Letters from its opening words, the first explicit reference to and discussion of philosophy occurs in Letter Two. It is noteworthy that the first appearance of the word comes in an expression of Plato’s concern for the reputation of philosophy, together with a defense of its piety; indeed, once he has concluded his discussion of how he and Dionysius can together best serve the pious cause of philosophy, Plato leaves off using the word “philosophy” altogether until the end of Letter Six. And yet it is just after the midway point of Letter Two, at which the word “philosophy” abruptly disappears from the text, that Plato presents a tantalizingly enigmatic discussion of the highest themes of his philosophic education. We begin, then, with that enigmatic discussion, as we turn next to our exploration of the actively critical and theoretical dimension of philosophy as presented in Plato’s Letters.

The second half of Letter Two begins with an abrupt change of subject. Plato turns from the question of whether or under what general terms he and Dionysius should carry on their philosophic course of study as teacher and student to a rather specific question that has arisen for Dionysius in his studies: “The little sphere is not in the correct condition,” Plato suddenly and mysteriously declares; “Archedemus will clarify this for you when he comes” (312d2–3). This is the first indication in the Letters of what Plato’s education of the tyrant Dionysius may have contained. We are here given to understand that the instruction included some geometrical or astronomical subject, an instruction that continues with the help of their go-between, Archedemus. That an education of this kind might be valuable to a ruler is certainly conceivable; the example of Anaxagoras and Pericles, listed among many others earlier in the letter (311a5–6), provides a useful starting point for our thinking about the reciprocal benefits that such an education might bring. By the brief mention of the “little sphere,” then, we are made to think of an education in the mathematical necessities underlying reality as we know it, which has the power of liberating the student from superstition by suggesting the possibility of a comprehensive causal account of the cosmos that is naturalistic or does not have recourse to suprarational divinities or other supernatural elements.

We immediately learn, however, that, whatever the subject of the “little sphere,” it is not the matter to which Plato accords the highest rank. He turns next to a matter still “more honored and more divine,” in which it seems that the go-between Archedemus is also well versed. Plato refers to this more honored and divine subject matter as “the nature of the first,” and reveals now that Dionysius had been prompted to send Archedemus to Plato in the first place because Dionysius was perplexed and seeking greater clarity on this point (312d3–7). It is Plato’s response—the only place in any extant writing in which Plato endeavors directly to explain to his reader the meaning of his philosophy—that makes Letter Two so important for us in our attempt to find a correction to the distorted presentation of Platonic philosophy seized upon by Dion and those like him. But Plato refuses to clarify the matter openly in this letter. He says that he must “explain” his answer “through enigmas” or “riddles” (ainigmōn) so that any unintended reader of the letter will not be able to understand its contents (312d7–e1). Hence, we as readers are lifted momentarily out of the drama of the letter—or rather, we become a part of it—by the realization that we ourselves are just such unintended recipients as Plato describes. His presentation here of “the nature of the first” has been conveyed in such a way as to prevent precisely us from understanding it. Inevitably, and perhaps by design, the very fact that Plato says he is hiding his meaning only heightens the reader’s curiosity; eager Platonists have hardly been discouraged from seeking here some communication, some clarification that comes directly from the mouth of Plato and not through his mouthpieces, which might confirm their various interpretations of the philosophic riddles of the dialogues. Indeed, Platonic interpreters over the millennia have espoused such a great variety of unprovable hypotheses regarding the identity of Plato’s “king of all things” as should make us wary of offering yet another attempt at deciphering the enigmas. We will do best to stick closely to what is clear from the text and not to presume the possibility of matching the account here in Letter Two to anything else known or supposed about Plato’s thought.

Plato’s enigmatic account of “the nature of the first” refers to “the king of all things,” “a second,” and “a third” as comprising what seems to be a three-part hierarchical cosmic ordering structure (312e1–4). All that is said about the latter two principles is that the “second things are around a second, and the third things around a third.” While there is a suggestion, then, of a tripartition of all existing beings, the cleanness of that partition is undermined by Plato’s saying that “all things,” not just the “first” ones, “are around the king of all things” (312e1–2; emphasis added). Whatever the essential character and place of the second and third in this account, they are certainly subordinate in existence and power to the “king.” What is more, “all things are for the sake of him,” and that is “responsible for” or the “cause of” “all the noble things.” In this account, then, the totality of the cosmic whole in which we find ourselves (i.e., “all things”) is oriented by or toward a universal ruler; by describing this ruler as a “king,” Plato invites Dionysius, as well as us, to understand that “all things” are governed by a wise and beneficent ruler, by a king as opposed to a tyrant. Most important of all is the single reference Plato makes to any particular class of beings: the “noble” or “beautiful” things are explicitly said to have been caused by the highest and “first” entity in the cosmos. This portrayal of the cosmos, then, is one in which the entity to which every other being owes its existence or its purpose—either directly or, as it seems, mediately, through the “second” and “third”—is distinguished above all by its special, causal relationship to the beautiful or noble things. It is a cosmos in which the wellspring of beauty, that element of human experience that most powerfully announces the existence of a spiritual depth in the world to which our own souls are attuned, is to be found at the most exalted level of a natural, universal hierarchy of principles or causes. Beauty, in this account, is not in the eye of the beholder, but has objective reality beyond any merely human vantage point; beauty is no epiphenomenal outgrowth of a fundamentally material or subhuman organic process, but belongs to the fundamental dimension of reality. In short, Plato here describes a world in which our most profound longing to be at home in the whole is fundamentally satisfied.

Up to this point, the presentation of philosophy in Letter Two accords rather well with what we have seen in Letter Six. The implicit promise in this cryptic statement on “the nature of the first” is akin to what Plato suggests to Hermias in saying that, by philosophizing, he can come to know god, a “sovereign father of the leader and cause,” insofar as this knowledge is within the grasp of “happy human beings.” But there is a question as to the precise extent of the “riddles” or “enigmas” here presented concerning “the nature of the first.” It is perhaps likely to be the reader’s first impression, and at any rate it is least troubling to assume or to conclude, that the enigmas consist only in the terse, Delphic statements on the “king,” “second,” and “third” we have already discussed. Perhaps, however, those statements serve only to provide the setting for the more substantial—though occasionally just as cryptic—discussion that follows, of the human soul’s quest to learn about the triumvirate of governing principles Plato has just described. Plato’s teaching on “the nature of the first” would then refer to, or rest upon, or at least include, a fundamental understanding of human nature, of the soul’s characteristic hopes and longings regarding the whole of which it is a part. It may be noted that every other use of a word related to phusis (“nature”) in Letter Two refers in one manner or another to specifically human nature. “Human wisdom,” wisdom about the human, plays a greater role in Platonic philosophy than is suggested in Letter Six.

Plato’s description of the human quest to learn about the governing or ordering cosmic principles he has so cryptically described, while hardly straightforward, is nonetheless dramatic and poignant. The human soul seeks this understanding not in any dispassionate or disinterested way, but rather “reaches out” or “yearns” to learn about these cosmic principles by “looking to the things akin to itself” (312e3–5). This amounts to a claim about the natural starting point or disposition of the human soul in its quest for wisdom about the first principles of the order in which it finds itself. The soul yearns to see itself reflected in some way at the highest or deepest level of reality; it wishes to confirm that the world the human soul experiences is in fact the world as such; the human soul needs to know that its own highest concerns and ideas are, or at least can be, the concerns and ideas as recognized by the highest cosmic power. Somehow, however, the human soul determines that nothing akin to it could ever be “sufficient” to occupy this highest place in the cosmic order (312e5–313a1). Perhaps the difficulty lies in the attempt to attribute to a fundamentally caused being, such as the human soul, the ultimate or first cause of reality as we know it. In any case, the problem quickly deepens after this, for Plato immediately and enigmatically adds, “Indeed, about the king and the things of which I spoke, there is no such thing” (313a1–2). The status of the hospitable cosmos Plato has only just sketched is suddenly thrown into uncertainty. Is there a known cosmic king or not? Is the first cause of the whole we know identifiable, or in our searching for it do we merely gaze into unfathomable depths?

Plato says that the soul comes next to a questioning as to what indeed, if it is not the humanoid cosmic king, is the character of the originating or ordering principle of the whole as we know it: “Well then, but what sort of thing?” (313a3). Plato gives pointed emphasis to this question by here referring to Dionysius as “child of Dionysius and Doris” in explaining that one can never hit upon the truth if one has not been relieved of “the labor pains coming to be in the soul” about it—pains that he says are “responsible for all evils” (313a3–6). It seems likely, then, that it is in one way or another this question, or the “labor pains” regarding it—the painful challenge of deducing and affirming, from one’s own observations and premises, a difficult truth—with which Dionysius is now struggling and on account of which he has reached out to Plato for philosophic guidance. But, as we now learn, this crisis has developed as something of a delayed reaction to what was Plato’s original discussion with Dionysius about these matters. That first discussion, which had taken place while Plato was in Syracuse, had left the tyrant underwhelmed. He had claimed to have already “thought of this” and that it was his own “discovery.” It has evidently been only since then that Dionysius has come to be troubled by what Plato had said to him about “the nature of the first” (313a6–b1).

Plato’s description of the manner in which Dionysius’s initial reaction gave way to subsequent doubt provides some clarification of what exactly it was that Dionysius claimed already to have discovered. Wrongly supposing that he had “firmly” grasped the “demonstrations” or “proofs” regarding “the nature of the first,” Dionysius failed to “tie them down,” so that now, as Plato explains, they “dart about . . . around the imagined thing, but there is no such thing” (313b6–c1). Plato’s need to repeat the phrase “there is no such thing” points to Dionysius’s mistake: his thinking is still guided by his hopes concerning the character of the cosmic “king,” which he believes he sees or “imagines” giving order to the whole. He had initially been underwhelmed with Plato’s description of a first cause, but only more recently has come to feel the sting of doubt or uncertainty as to its essence or fathomability. Dionysius has written to Plato because he now sees—after having entertained some rival accounts, theories, or modes of inquiry (312c3)—that no one but Plato points in the direction of worthy answers to the most urgent fundamental questions. Plato’s offer to help Dionysius through his difficulty is grounded in his insistence that the tyrant is only going through the same experience that everyone has upon beginning his studies with Plato (313c1–5). And so it is with an apparent promise to relieve Dionysius of his confusion and dismay through education that Plato claims he can at last answer conclusively the question that prompted Dionysius to write to him in the first place: the question of how the two men should be disposed toward one another (313c5–7).

This is the third and final time in Letter Two that Plato refers to the reason Dionysius wrote him the letter to which Letter Two is a response. This third indication is similar to the first, though not identical. In both cases, Plato speaks of how the two men are to deal with one another; in the first case, one could think it was a question of how each one would act most prudently toward the other (312b2–3); in the last, Plato appears to speak in terms of a necessity or obligation that governs the two of them as a pair. Accordingly: in the first case, Plato left it open whether Dionysius would or should pursue his education under him, and advanced considerations regarding the manner in which each of them would be benefited or harmed by honors conferred or withheld on each side; now, by contrast, he points the way unambiguously toward Dionysius’s prospective advancement along the path toward initiation into the truths of Platonic philosophy. We can say that this shift is explained by the intervention of the second reference to the reason for Dionysius’s writing (312d3–7), in which we learn that what prompted Dionysius was at once his concern for how the two of them must be disposed toward one another and his perplexity regarding “the nature of the first.” If this letter should inspire Dionysius to believe that Plato can help him resolve his philosophic problem, Plato will be in a better position to dictate the future terms of their relationship and thereby to manage the problems he identified in the letter’s first half.

In this, too, Letter Two corroborates what we had gathered from Letter Six. Philosophy—that is, true philosophy, Platonic philosophy as opposed to the alternatives in which Dionysius has been dabbling—can transform a relationship based merely on contingent exchange of benefits into one in which the parties genuinely share some stable common ground. It is to participation in a bond of this latter kind that Plato invites Dionysius. If, Plato proposes, Dionysius should continue his process of “testing” and “comparing” the various accounts to which he has been and continues to be exposed, then, “if the test is true,” Plato’s teaching will take root in him and naturally grow, making Dionysius “an intimate” both to the teachings and to Plato’s unspecified “us” (313c7–d3). The Platonic education is thus presented as the true education, as the education by nature. Those who partake of this education gain an intimate familiarity with one another, a bond of kinship, rooted in their shared experience of fulfillment through the development of true understanding within themselves, which derives its stability from the stability of the fixed natural necessity revealed and grasped through common investigation.

Unlike the account in Letter Six, however, it is clear from what Plato says in this letter that there are considerable obstacles to joining in such a bond. The philosophic activity of investigation into the first principles of nature, as it turns out, is necessarily a painful one on account of its requirement that one challenge one’s most stubborn hopes and beliefs. Moreover, as opposed to the promise of Letter Six that Hermias and the others would, by devoting themselves to philosophy, come to know the great, providential cosmic deity, Plato here leaves it much less clear whether such a being exists. The path he urges Dionysius to follow in the passage succeeding the enigmas is therefore a long and uncertain one, and Plato must do what he can to make it seem less daunting. He recommends that the two of them continue to discuss Dionysius’s perplexities (aporiai) through letters ferried back and forth by Archedemus. After “two or three” such exchanges, Plato suggests, if Dionysius can “test” Plato’s writings adequately, the matters perplexing him should begin to change their aspect substantially (313d4–e2). Plato further heightens Dionysius’s anticipation of immanently achieving resolution and clarity by saying that the “cargo” being transported by Archedemus is “nobler and dearer to the gods” than anything he will ever carry (313e3–314a1).

Clearly, however, there is no guarantee that Dionysius will in fact succeed in achieving this resolution in the “two or three” exchanges Plato proposes as a kind of minimum. Everyone, Plato has already said, encounters such problems as Dionysius is now facing when embarking on an education in Platonic philosophy; “almost no one has few” problems (313c2–5). It is apparently not common, without considerable training at least, to be able to “test” Plato’s correspondences in the requisite way. As Plato explains, some have been hearing such things from him for as many as thirty years—people who, by any ordinary measure, are intelligent, discerning students—who only now, at their advanced age, are experiencing the shift in perspective Plato unrealistically proposed might come to Dionysius on the basis of “two or three” more letters (314a8–b5). It seems we must acknowledge the significant possibility that, if Dionysius decides to continue as a student of Plato in the manner Plato recommends—including by making a public display of honoring Plato and his philosophy (312b6–d1)—he may well remain in a kind of intellectual limbo of partial understanding for the rest of his life. A great deal hinges upon the enigmatic process of “testing,” which Plato has set out as the means, or obstacle, to Dionysius’s enlightenment.

The Question of Philosophic Writing in Letter Two

The ambiguity regarding the length and difficulty of the Platonic education standing between Dionysius and the clarity he seeks is an instance of one of Letter Two’s most puzzling themes: the letter is highly paradoxical regarding Plato’s pedagogical approach in general. The most glaring example of this paradox concerns the question whether Letter Two actually contains Plato’s understanding of “the nature of the first” at all. On one hand, Plato has explicitly said that he has written the letter in such a way that its contents would be indecipherable without the oral key, or explanation, to be supplied by its original carrier, Archedemus (312d4–e1). On the other hand, once he has gone through his enigmatic account and directed Dionysius as to how they should proceed, he counsels the tyrant to “beware . . . lest these things ever be exposed to uneducated human beings” (314a1–2), and again, to “beware in examining these things lest you come someday to regret their having been unworthily exposed now” (314b5–7). Dramatically, Plato at last tells Dionysius that he should read the letter “many times” and then “burn it up” (314c5–6). But what could be the great danger in “exposing” the contents of this letter to others if it has intentionally been written in such a way as to make it indecipherable to anyone but Dionysius (with Archedemus’s help)?

We may begin our approach to this question by taking note of the various curious effects of Plato’s injunction to burn the letter. Most immediately, it draws our attention again to the fact that the letter is now in our possession, which tells us that Plato’s directive must have gone unheeded. Indeed, it is unsurprising that Dionysius would have wanted to keep a copy. The very fact that Plato ostensibly wants the letter burned intensifies the reader’s curiosity—a curiosity that has already been stoked by Plato’s indication that it is “precious cargo” to be carefully protected, that it is “dear to the gods” and thus promises something approaching divine revelation. Perhaps, then, Plato had no expectation that the letter would be burned; perhaps his telling Dionysius to do so was only the first step in a long-term strategy to intrigue him, arouse his hopes, and draw him into the decades-long challenge of contemplating the Platonic mysteries. All of this points cohesively and neatly to the suggestion that Letter Two does not contain a genuine attempt on Plato’s part to communicate his understanding of “the nature of the first.” His expressions of concern about the guarding of the letter would then be only lures intended to pique Dionysius’s interest. Let us state this as a provisional interpretive hypothesis about Letter Two: Plato’s apparent attempt to educate Dionysius in this letter is merely apparent, not a true example of Platonic pedagogy but rather of the Platonic rhetoric by means of which Plato attracts potential long-term students and followers.

This hypothesis receives support from what Plato says more generally about writing in Letter Two. In warning Dionysius to “beware in examining these things” of “exposing” them to others in a way he might later consider unworthy, he advises that it is better “to learn by heart” than to write things down, “for it is not possible for things written not to be exposed” (314b7–c1; emphasis added). Plato’s earlier poetic flourish, then, in which he explained that his account of “the nature of the first” must be written in riddles in case something should happen to the letter “in the folds of sea or earth” (312d8), understated his evaluation of the likelihood of that possibility. Plato always assumed his writings would be exposed to people apart from his intended readers; he would therefore never commit anything to writing if he earnestly wished to keep it a secret. The urgency of Plato’s desire for this letter to be burned, then, is certainly feigned. But this implies that Plato deliberately writes Letter Two in such a way as to deceive Dionysius. For if the letter only pretends to contain the wisdom and understanding Dionysius seeks, why write it at all? Why not just send Archedemus to serve as Platonic tutor to the tyrant? Moreover, if Plato is willing to be deceptive regarding his willingness to convey his teaching on these matters, how are we to know whether it was ever his intention to educate Dionysius?

Indeed, it is not only Plato’s attempt to educate Dionysius through his writings that comes into question here; what Plato says about writing in Letter Two has implications that reach far beyond Letter Two itself: “I have never written anything at all about these things,” Plato famously declares, apparently referring to “the nature of the first,” “nor are there written works of Plato, nor will there be any at all, but those now spoken of are of a Socrates become beautiful and new” (314c1–4). Plato indeed claims that none of the writings he has produced—he leaves us no room to exclude either the Letters in general or Letter Two in particular from this claim—contain genuine expressions of his own thought on the highest philosophic questions. Letter Two thus comes to sight as a model of Plato’s manner of writing in general. Plato’s writings, which he intended for broad dissemination and hence for many readers besides those to whom he was keenest to communicate, must have been composed in such a way as to be indecipherable on their own. The correct interpretation of Plato’s writings requires the guided instruction of someone like Archedemus, who already understands Plato’s meaning. Moreover, the statements of the Platonic Socrates must above all not be mistaken for Plato’s own thoughts.

Surely Plato must have known that the majority of his readers would assume the contrary of all this: that the Platonic Socrates was merely a mouthpiece for Plato himself, and that the Platonic dialogues contain a full education in Platonic philosophy. Just as Plato deliberately deceives Dionysius by feigning willingness to educate the tyrant, then, he also deliberately misrepresents himself through his dialogues, misleading his readers into believing that he means to convey to them his genuine understanding. Indeed, the dialogues contain equally misleading portrayals of Socrates; Plato has effectively admitted that the Socrates of the dialogues, to whom those dialogues “belong,” is in some significant part a Platonic fiction. In light of Plato’s statements on writing in Letter Two, then, we have been led to a dramatic broadening of our provisional interpretive hypothesis: Plato’s feigned willingness to educate Dionysius in that letter is only one instance of a deceptive appearance belonging to all his writings. The perplexity we encountered as to why Plato would have bothered to write and send Letter Two to Dionysius is therefore only a special case of a much broader perplexity to which these passages have given rise. For we must now consider the question, Why did Plato write the dialogues at all? Why devote his whole literary career, the greater part of his life, to the creation and elevation of this fictive “Socrates,” based on a historical Socrates who was so manifestly important to Plato himself, and yet a fictive character from whom Plato now distances himself most surprisingly? For Plato’s attribution of the dialogues to his beautified Socrates is also his denial that those same works are “of Plato.”

If we are to make sense of Plato’s immense dedication to the production of his literary oeuvre and to its hero, the Platonic Socrates, we will have to refine our provisional hypothesis that Plato’s writings are not genuinely meant as didactic guides to his true thought on the greatest matters. Let us continue to take Letter Two as our model. Plato makes it clear in this letter that he does not want to “expose” his thought regarding “the nature of the first” indiscriminately. But why not? Plato follows his warning to Dionysius against exposing the contents of the letter by explaining the impression his written teachings make on two distinct audiences: for “the many,” there are “almost no more ridiculous things to be heard than these,” whereas for “those of good natures,” there are none “more amazing and more inspired” (314a2–5). The majority of people will be derisive of the Platonic account contained in this letter. Is it against this derision, then, that Plato wishes to guard? That cannot be quite right: since Plato believes that it is impossible for things written not to be exposed (and therefore wrote about “the nature of the first” in Letter Two only in “riddles” or “enigmas”), we can be sure that he expected this letter to be read and received with precisely the kind of derision he describes. This helps to clarify for us that it is not Plato’s actual view of “the nature of the first” that will incur the ridicule of the many, but the riddle he poses about “the nature of the first” in this letter.

Our analysis deepens when we recognize that the other group of readers Plato mentions, “those of good natures,” themselves face a considerable interpretive challenge in studying Plato’s writings. For they, like the many, will not be presented straightforwardly with Plato’s view—Plato never stated that view frankly in writing—but with his riddle concerning that view. To say that the readers with good natures are “amazed” and “inspired” by these passages is not yet to say that they have correctly understood them—in fact, it would seem that both “the many” and “the good-natured” belong to the “uneducated” readers with whom Plato’s warning to Dionysius not to expose the contents of the letter is concerned. Plato has already said that everyone, upon first hearing him, is in the same state of perplexity as Dionysius, “and though one has more problems and another has fewer, they are rid of them only with difficulty—and almost no one has few” (313c2–5). The path that lies ahead even for those with “good natures” (whoever they are) is very long. “Being spoken often and for many years,” says Plato, these Platonic speeches “are with difficulty, like gold, purified with much diligent activity” (314a5–7). Plato’s written presentation of his philosophic view is designed to be relatively opaque to most readers; its enigmatic contents will strike most as ridiculous and others as awesome. But this is not to say that they must remain opaque. Contained within these riddles somehow is the “gold” of Plato’s true view. The misleading impressions with which that truth is mixed must be cleared away by reflecting upon Plato’s formulations diligently over a long period of time.

That Dionysius was originally among “the many” in his reaction to Platonic philosophy is clear from the dismissive manner in which he first responded to it (313a6–b1). But Plato continues to invite him to the prolonged study that could ultimately produce genuine understanding in the tyrant. Plato does not insist, then, that it is only “those of good natures” who will succeed in being educated by him in the long run. At any rate, there is something suspect about those “old” human beings, of whom there are “plenty,” who have just now begun fundamentally to change their views after more than three decades of listening to Plato. For Plato does not quite say that these have come to see the truth or that they are philosophers, and their being so numerous speaks against the likelihood of their being genuinely wise. For that matter, it must be said in fairness that not even Erastus and Coriscus in Letter Six are called philosophers by Plato. Our attention is drawn, rather, to an extremely small group that Plato nearly passes over altogether. “Almost no one has few” problems in following through the Platonic education; but this means that there are some who, although their problems are great and their “labor pains” surely intense, nonetheless move through the key developments of the Platonic education in a relatively short time—fewer, we may imagine, than thirty years.

We have now a reasonable resolution to the paradox concerning Platonic education and writing in Letter Two. The urgency with which Plato warns Dionysius against exposing the contents of this letter contains a kind of comical irony. For he knows his writing will be exposed, and has taken measures to ensure that what he wishes to conceal from the many about his genuine view is not visible on the page. He has written in such a way as to seem ridiculous to some and inspired to others, but he will be transparent to no one. This does not mean, however, that this writing does not contain a genuine Platonic education at all. It must be considered carefully and at great length, but a certain very few readers may eventually come to see what within it constitutes real Platonic wisdom. There is every reason to think, then, that this is true also of the dialogues featuring the Platonic Socrates, for it is even clearer in their case than in the Letters that Plato intended for them to be published and broadly distributed. What Letter Two helps us to see is that Plato may have been most interested in educating a small contingent of readers other than the ones to whom his writings are obviously addressed.

As for Dionysius, we have already noted how the whole conceit of this letter communicates to us his failure to heed Plato’s caution: the letter has not been burned. As it turns out, however, we have evidence of a further transgression to this effect on Dionysius’s part. For the sister passage to the one we have been considering, the philosophic digression of Letter Seven, is motivated by Plato’s need to respond to rumors that Dionysius has himself produced a text that he claims contains the full Platonic understanding of philosophy. The philosophic digression of Letter Seven, then, responds to the failure of Letter Two to contain or to control Dionysius’s influence on the manner in which Platonic philosophy is promulgated. Taken together, these two most elaborate discussions of philosophy in the Letters provide a thorough treatment of the question Plato faced in presenting his philosophy to the world and to Dionysius in particular: How to handle the proliferation of misinterpretations of Platonic philosophy, which Plato not only knew would arise but even intended to stimulate?

As much as the discussions of philosophy in Letters Two and Seven are linked by their common purpose in dealing with the dangers of Plato’s attempt to educate Dionysius, however, these passages will ultimately be found to complement each other even more profoundly in regard to their substantive teaching on the nature of Platonic philosophy itself. While the digression in Letter Seven appears to clarify some central problems of Platonic metaphysics much more fully than anything Plato says in Letter Two, it is only in Letter Two that Plato provides an honest acknowledgment of the “labor pains” brought about by the deepest philosophic questioning. Between Letter Two’s indication of the psychological obstacles to the pursuit of Platonic philosophy and Letter Seven’s discussion of the technical challenges of that same pursuit, we have as rich and full a discussion of the central problems of Platonic philosophy as Plato ever wrote. But we are still far from establishing the complementarity of these two passages, which might after all be taken to be incompatible or even contradictory. Let us prepare our examination of Letter Seven’s philosophic digression, then, by examining its clearest echo of the philosophic passage in Letter Two—namely, Plato’s statement in Letter Seven on the problem of philosophic writing. Having considered this clearest point of connection between Letters Two and Seven, we will be better positioned to take up a full interpretive analysis of Letter Seven’s philosophic digression and to understand how that passage fits together with what we have just learned from Letter Two.

The Problem of Writing in Letter Seven

Letter Seven’s philosophic digression comes about in the following way. Having concluded his “counsel to the intimates and comrades close to Dion,” Plato opens the second half of the letter (and thus of the Letters) by addressing those readers who are “repeatedly asking” about why he went yet again to Syracuse—his third and final journey—and especially those who wonder whether the journey “came to pass at once appropriately and harmoniously” (330c6–7, 337e4–338a2). The story of Dionysius’s renewed invitations and Plato’s eventual decision to return is driven by the fact that, according to accounts reaching Plato from several sources, Dionysius was said at last to have come around to a genuine and ardent interest in philosophy (338b5–7, 339b2–4; d1–4). When eventually he arrived back in Syracuse, Plato’s goal was to test the veracity of the reports that claimed Dionysius had “been kindled by philosophy as by a fire” (340b1–4). His means of ascertaining this, as he explains, was one particularly “fitting for tyrants, especially those filled with misunderstandings,” as Dionysius was (340b4–7). The test is administered by laying out “the whole problem” of philosophy and all the “toil” it requires: the many difficult subjects of learning to be mastered, all the puzzles to be solved, and all of the discipline that is required to remain sharp in the pursuit of understanding. If the hearer “should really be a philosopher,” he will turn his whole life toward this challenge; Dionysius, by contrast, dealt with his inability to follow the path of philosophy by pretending already to have mastered “the greatest things” through “hearsay from others” (340b7–341b3).

This test is well suited to tyrants because the hearer cannot blame the teacher for his own inability or unwillingness to strain himself along the path the speaker has laid out (341a3–7). Yet Plato’s examination of Dionysius was not without further consequence. For Plato now reports—and here the philosophic digression really begins—that Dionysius is said to have later produced his own writing, based upon what he heard from Plato on that occasion, but presented it “as though it were his own,” without attribution to Plato (341b3–5). It is to counteract the effect of such writings—whether the rumors about Dionysius’s publication are true or false, Plato notes that “others have written about these same things” (341b5–6)—that Plato will now enter into a discussion of his philosophic views. For anyone who writes of the things Plato “takes seriously” and claims to know about them, he contends, are lacking in knowledge both of themselves and of “the problem” at issue (341b6–c4). Plato thus sets out to explain why any writing claiming to expound Plato’s thought regarding the most serious philosophic questions must be dismissed as the writing of someone who has necessarily misunderstood Platonic philosophy.

Here we have the overarching interpretive puzzle of this whole portion of text. For it is surely strange that this so-called philosophic digression, which has garnered more attention than any other passage in the Letters on account of its unusually clear presentation of Platonic metaphysics and epistemology, should be introduced as an explanation of the reasons for which Plato would never attempt to clarify the deepest points of his philosophy in writing. If the discussion that follows here is not an attempt to clarify Plato’s view of these matters, what is it?

The problem is helpfully illuminated by comparing the present passage to the parallel sections of Letter Two. There is here in Letter Seven an echo of Plato’s statement from Letter Two to the effect that “there are no written works of Plato.” But the restatement in this context moves in a slightly different direction. In Letter Two, Plato flattered Dionysius by insisting that this writing was for his eyes only and must not be “unworthily exposed” to “uneducated human beings.” In Letter Seven, Plato’s claim that there is not, “nor will there ever come to be,” any writing about the things he “takes seriously” leads him instead to emphasize the total impossibility of communicating his knowledge of these things through speech of any kind: “It is in no way speakable as are the other subjects of learning, but rather, from the coming to be of much intercourse concerning the problem itself and living together, suddenly, as from a jumping fire, a light is kindled, and, having come to be in the soul, it straightaway nourishes itself” (341c5–d2). Could there ever have been any real hope for Dionysius, then, to come to an understanding of “the nature of the first” through any amount of correspondence with Plato? The presentation here makes it seem rather that philosophy is not so much taught as it is transmitted, somewhat mysteriously and even mystically, from one philosopher to the next through a process that can be encouraged by the arrangement of favorable circumstances but not totally controlled. In any case, there is little in this passage to suggest any hope that the “spark” of philosophy might have leapt from Plato to Dionysius across the Ionian Sea. Were it possible to communicate his understanding in this way, Plato suggests, he could have done nothing “nobler” than to produce the “great benefit for human beings” of “lead[ing] nature forth into the light for all” (314d6–e1).

The apparent difference between the statements in Letters Two and Seven, then, is as follows. Despite his paradoxical pleas for Dionysius to burn the letter lest it be exposed to the unworthy, Plato says in Letter Two that the “speeches” (including his writings) containing his ultimate teaching can only be understood by means of a long process of “purification,” whereby the “gold” of his true meaning can be extracted. In Letter Seven, he explicitly claims that the most important things cannot be communicated through writing. But there are reasons to think that the statements in Letter Two are more to be believed. To begin with, Plato’s denial of ever having written anything concerning the matters in question in Letter Two (314c1–4) contains a qualification not present in Letter Seven (341c4–5): the admission that there are writings said to be “of Plato” but belonging in truth to “a Socrates become beautiful and new.” Admittedly, this qualification hardly amounts to more than a puzzle, which we have already identified and to which we will yet return more than once: if not simply to communicate his understanding of philosophy, why did Plato write the Socratic dialogues? But there is also a more straightforward piece of evidence in Letter Seven itself. Plato concludes the introduction to the philosophic digression by saying that he holds the attempt to communicate the things about which he is most serious not to be “good for human beings unless for some few—however many are themselves capable of finding them out through a small indication” (341e1–3; emphasis added). That is to say, there is a way of writing about the highest questions regarding nature—including, presumably, “the nature of the first”—but such a writing will only communicate its message successfully to supremely astute readers, who are extraordinarily rare and need only small, if crucial, help.

But the publication of such writings would not be good, according to Plato, for the vast majority of readers. These writings “would fill some” of them, “in no way harmoniously, with incorrect disdain, and others with a lofty and empty hope as though they had learned some august things” (341e3–342a1). To be sure, this is presented here as Plato’s rationale for refusing to publish such writings as he is describing—and this, despite the facts that, as Plato boasts, “in being written or said by [Plato], these things would be said best” and that, “if they were written badly, it would pain [him] not least” (341d2–4). But the two reactions Plato says would be produced by erroneous interpretations of his writings intended for the few sharpest readers—the “incorrect disdain” and the “lofty and empty hope”—bear a striking resemblance to the two reactions of the “uneducated,” which he described in Letter Two, to the speeches containing the hidden “gold” of his genuine teaching: “the many,” he said, would find the writings “ridiculous,” and “the good-natured” would find them “amazing” and “inspired.” Viewed in the light of Letter Two, then, Plato’s protestations in Letter Seven, to the effect that he could not and therefore did not attempt to write about the things he took “seriously,” become an explanation of just how he did write about those very things. His writings are intended to convey their deepest meaning by “small indications” to those readers capable of profiting from such, despite the problematic effects these writings may have on the two types of readers bound to misunderstand.

The Argument against Writing from the Structure of Being

It is with this insight into the character of Platonic writing that we turn to the next section of the digression, in which Plato proposes “to speak at still greater length” about the things he takes seriously so that they might “be clearer once they have been stated” (342a1–3). He says he will present “a certain true speech,” which “has often been said by [him] before,” and which “opposes him who has dared to write of such things at all” (342a3–5). It must be said that this is not a promise to explain what Plato thinks about the things he takes seriously. Plato has said that no one possessing a full understanding of his thought—which would include, crucially, both self-knowledge and knowledge of “the problem” here in question—would attempt to present that thought in writing. What follows is to be a true argument against such writing, but he does not say it is the argument articulating the full Platonic understanding. Yet he has also promised that the latter might be “clearer” on the basis of what follows. We must be ready for that clarity to be available only on the basis of “a small indication.”

The account Plato unfolds here is presented as a complete ontology—a scheme that purports to describe the correct classification and structure of all the beings or types of being that together make up existence—but gives special emphasis to the status and grounds of scientific knowledge (epistēmē). For “each of the beings” (342a7), says Plato, there are five things that can be said to be “of” it, that is, to pertain or belong to it. The first three are grouped together as the three things “through which,” in the case of any given being, scientific knowledge about it comes to be: (1) name, (2) logos (i.e., “definition” or some other “account” given in rational speech), and (3) image—as we shall learn, an “image” of a given “being” is an instance of it, which we apprehend by means of sense perception and, crucially, which is subject to generation and corruption in the manner of all material beings (342b1–3, c1–2). Speaking generally, then, scientific knowledge of a being comes about through sense perception, as each of “the three” is essentially located “in sounds” (i.e., the words that make up the names and logoi) or “bodies” (342c6). Scientific knowledge itself is the fourth thing that may be said to be “of” any of the beings. Finally, Plato adds that “there is need to set down as fifth the very thing that is knowable and is truly a being” (342a8–b1). Altogether, then, we have the thing itself (“the fifth”), scientific knowledge of it (“the fourth”), and the three things through which that knowledge comes to be. The distinction between the first three (which make up the whole of the material, perceptible world) and “the fifth” is critical and characteristically Platonic: it is the thing that is “knowable,” not the perceptible “images” of it, that “is truly a being.” The apple one holds in one’s hand is not “truly a being”; it is merely, at best, an image of a true being, through which image, in part, one can come to scientific knowledge of the true being. The knowable is more real than the perceptible—the Platonic ontology is hierarchical in the sense that it contains gradations of “being.”

For all that “the fifth” occupies the highest rank in this Platonic ontology, however, it is posited with a note of reservation. Plato says that one “needs” to set this down as fifth, whereas he did not speak in that way of any of the other four. The existence of name, rational account, image, and scientific knowledge is immediately manifest in our basic experience of the world; the same cannot be said of “the fifth.” To see what is meant by the “need” to posit “the fifth,” let us consider the example Plato uses, on the basis of which we are to “think . . . about all things”: the circle (342b3–4). It is from our experience with its name (and synonyms), its logos, and instances of circles “drawn and erased,” “turned on a lathe and destroyed,” that we come to possess scientific knowledge of the circle. Now, it is obvious that the logos Plato provides, “that which is everywhere equally distant from the extremes to the middle,” will never precisely apply to any image of a circle; such geometrical exactness does not exist in material bodies (343a5–9). But this means that the knowledge obtained through “the three,” though it must be knowledge of something, is of something never actually perceived. To begin with, then, there is something like a grammatical necessity to posit the circle itself as fifth, the “knowable” thing, since there is nothing else for our knowledge to be “of.” But this grammatical necessity, while indicative, is relatively superficial, as we can see by considering what it would mean not to posit the circle itself as truly being. One might wish, for example, to entertain a materialist hypothesis, according to which only the perceptible “are truly beings.” But if “the fifth,” the circle itself, is not a being, then it will be meaningless to say that any shape “drawn” or “turned on a lathe” is an image of a circle, for this would be to say that it is an image of something that does not exist. We would thus be hindered from saying what seems immediately obvious. For the reality of “the fifth” as its own being is what makes it possible to say that the objects of our experience belong objectively and really to species or classes.

We must consider this in more cases than just that of the circle, as Plato has instructed us to carry our thinking from the case of the circle to “all things,” including, for example, “every animal” (342b4, d7). If there is no “dog” itself, no “fifth” pertaining to dogs, then can we ever hope meaningfully to make the claim that this and that object of our experience are both dogs, speaking objectively of what is independent of human perception and cognition? Moreover, Plato says the same account will hold for “every body” including those “having come to be according to nature (fire, water, and all such things)” (342d6–7). But this amounts to a far-reaching critique of any thoroughgoing materialism. For if “the fifth” does not exist for any of the beings, then we are also prevented from identifying physical elements—whether fire and water, or carbon and oxygen, or photon and electron—on the basis of which to attempt a reductionist explanatory system of what we experience. Indeed, could we even say that this and that were both “bodies” in the first place? At most, we might hope to say that one experience reminds us of another. But this is to leave ourselves well short of what we surely wish to be able to say, which is that there is a kinship between these two things in fact—they are both bodies, both fires, both good people, or whatever—and that this kinship has some reality independent of the impressions they make on our conscious perception. Thus Plato indicates that scientific knowledge as such is of “the fifth” (342d8–e2). For such knowledge does not refer especially to particular bodies or phenomena, but rather to the categories to which we believe the bodies belong. If those categories are not objectively real—if the phenomena are not “images” of the things themselves, as Plato puts it, and if our definitions are not of beings that truly are—then we cannot have scientific knowledge that pertains to the objects of our experience. For there will then be no grounds upon which to assert any special connection between our impressions of our experiences—of the relationships we speculate may exist between them—and their underlying truth.

When Plato speaks of the “need” to posit the existence of “the fifth,” then, he may be referring to a sine qua non, not only of any scientific knowledge, but for even our most basic impression of the phenomenal world to be anything more than a fiction produced (in part, at least) by the perceiving human consciousness. Our problems in this regard, however, are not simply solved even by the positing of “the fifth” as what truly is. The puzzle we encounter here is one well known to beset the Platonic doctrine of the Forms or Ideas and related passages: How are we to understand the relationship between the perceptible, changeable “three” and the fundamentally “different,” imperceptible but knowable “fifth,” which “suffers nothing” (342c2–4)? To say that a perceptible object is an “image” of something imperceptible hardly does more than beg the question. Now, Plato is famous for giving “participation” as the solution to this problem: “If something other than the beautiful itself [or “the noble itself”] is beautiful, it is beautiful on account of not a single thing other than because it participates in that beautiful [i.e., in the beautiful itself]” (Phaedo 100c4–6; emphasis added). But participation cannot amount to any useful answer here, as the following considerations make clear. First, as much as Platonists through history may have relied on participation to clarify the doctrine of the Ideas, Plato’s own work does not consistently stress this solution. Aside from the passage in the Phaedo to which we have just referred, no other Platonic presentation of the Ideas makes use of it (see, e.g., Republic 509b2–10, 509d1–510b1). The exception to this might seem to be the Parmenides, where a young Socrates presents the theory of the Forms, with participation as a critical feature, as his solution to the paradoxes of Zeno and thus as an alternative to the philosophy of Zeno’s teacher, Parmenides (128e6–131a2). But the Parmenides is a dialogue about what is wrong with the theory of the Forms in general and of the doctrine of participation in particular. Parmenides there advances a number of trenchant critiques that Plato never attempts to refute in any of his writings (cf. Timaeus 51a1–52d1; see also Aristotle, Metaphysics A.9). And the problem upon which we have focused, that of the interaction or relationship between the perceptible phenomena and the imperceptible, knowable true beings, is stressed by the Platonic Parmenides as jeopardizing the possibility of philosophy as such (Parmenides 133b4–135c5).

Plato knew, then, that, while positing “the fifth” as that which “is truly a being” may suffice to address some epistemological and ontological challenges, it opens up a set of new ones at least as difficult and as numerous. But here in the philosophic digression of Letter Seven, it is apparently not his concern to articulate or to address those challenges. The only mention of “participation” in this passage points us, in fact, to a related but different problem. Plato concludes that “someone who did not somehow or other get hold of the four will never completely be a participant in scientific knowledge of the fifth” (342d8–e2; emphasis added). This brings to our attention the fact that it is not only the relationship between the first three and “the fifth” that is in need of explanation, but also our own relationship to “the fifth.” By what human capacity or part of human nature does it become possible for a human being to recognize the kinship between an object of sensory experience and an independently existent, imperceptible being of which the object is an image? We could again look elsewhere in the Platonic corpus for help—to the Platonic notion of “recollection,” for instance (see, e.g., Phaedrus 247c3ff.)—but again we must appreciate Plato’s singular unwillingness in Letter Seven to advance any such doctrine or myth. He leaves the problem unsolved.

We should, however, take up the further puzzle present in the passage just quoted regarding the participation of human beings “in scientific knowledge of the fifth.” For what can Plato mean by saying that participation “in scientific knowledge of the fifth” is impossible unless one should “get hold of the four”? Was scientific knowledge itself not “the fourth?” How can this be anything but the incoherent or circular claim that attainment of some scientific knowledge is a prerequisite to attainment of that same scientific knowledge? The only available answer lies in the fact that Plato has by this point expanded the category of “the fourth”: “scientific knowledge and mind and true opinion” are “set down . . . as one, being not in sounds, nor in shapes of bodies, but within souls, by which it is clear that it is different from both the nature of the circle and from the three” (342c4–d1). It seems Plato’s initial statement, that scientific knowledge is obtained through names, logoi, and images, has been amended to say that scientific knowledge is obtained through those three together with some combination or subset of true opinion, mind, and such forms of intellectual apprehension as exist essentially in souls. Hence, “scientific knowledge” would seem to have been elevated as the highest version of intellectual achievement with respect to a given being, possible only by way of other, lower forms, such as true opinion.

Yet among the constituent elements of “the fourth,” Plato most of all extols not scientific knowledge but mind: “Of these, mind has approached most nearly in kinship and similarity to the fifth, while the others are more distant” (342d1–3). In the question of how the human being “participates” in “scientific knowledge of the fifth,” or generally of the connection between human being and imperceptible “fifth,” mind occupies a place of central importance—to be sure, at any rate, there can be no scientific knowledge without mind. For, as Plato here indicates, it is the human mind that seems to have the capacity to reflect or to grasp “the fifth,” to recognize imperceptible beings of which the names, logoi, and objects of sensory experience properly belong. And, as he seems to say, a mind that is actively holding some being steadily in its focus, a being that is in that moment nothing perceptible or material, is the closest thing in our experience to what “the fifth” itself would have to be—a pure concept, without any perceptible or material qualities. What is more, it is mind that brings us to the necessity of positing “the fifth” in the first place because of the manner in which the mind experiences perceptible objects (including artificial objects, 342d5) as members of classes. Or rather, it is our need to explain how it is that the world as experienced by the human mind exists independently of the human mind that brings us to the necessity of positing “the fifth.” Without an understanding of the nature of mind, then, and of its relationship to the rest of existence, we can never answer the question whether our sense of the articulation of the whole and of the nature of the beings that make it up has validity beyond or prior to our conscious human awareness. More specifically, we cannot insist upon “the fifth” being that which truly is until we can speak clearly on the metaphysical status of mind. We would need to determine whether human minds are only instances of their own “fifth,” of which the nature is such that mind is the apprehender of the true beings, including itself.

But the acquisition of such an understanding represents a profound difficulty because the mind cannot be known in the same manner as the other beings of which scientific knowledge is possible. Plato’s list of things that are like the circle does not include anything listed under the heading of “the fourth.” Nothing about mind is perceived with the senses; it is known to us as the inner matrix of our perceptions, opinions, and thoughts. All this makes it very unclear, however, how we could ever ascertain whether a mind belongs to a “fifth” of its own. If Plato’s account describes our acquisition of scientific knowledge of “each of the beings,” what can it mean that mind does not appear on the list of genera covered by his account? Is mind, then, not a being? This line of inquiry leads us to the third and perhaps most glaring omission from the philosophic digression. Just as this passage is without discussion of participation or recollection, it also lacks any reference to a cosmic mind or deity, knowledge of which is made out to be the goal of philosophy in Letters Two and Six. Scientific knowledge of such an entity could do much to assuage our epistemological concerns. Among other reasons, it would confirm the existence in the cosmos, even the primacy therein, not only of immaterial being as such (which in itself is a lot), but of immaterial mind specifically, of which the nature includes apprehension of the world as composed of distinct physical and spiritual entities and processes, each characterized by kinship to immaterial classes or categories. It is only a small step to see that, when we consider the category of the noble things in particular (342d4–5), the preceding considerations greatly illuminate Plato’s account of the soul’s search for “the first” in Letter Two.

Having surveyed the problems raised by this passage in this way, and having noted Plato’s consistent silence regarding the various solutions he proposes in other places, we can now try to characterize the sense and aim of the passage as a whole. The purpose is evidently not to provide a complete, explanatory, metaphysical account of the whole of existence and our relationship thereto. For Plato nowhere here answers the great questions (of which we know him to have been aware) that beset the account he articulates. Rather, Plato here indicates the basic features—and some of their implications—of our intuitive belief that we know, or can come to know through sense perception together with mind, about the beings that make up the whole. We have attempted to put our finger on the points in this presentation where some further metaphysical apparatus would be needed to make up a complete explanatory picture. We may therefore speculate that the passages to which we have referred in passing—for example, in the Republic and Phaedrus—are (in addition to whatever else they may be) Platonic intimations of what a fully elaborated scheme would have to look like in order sufficiently to address the basic requirements and problems indicated here in the philosophic digression of Letter Seven—tailored, of course, to the specific purposes they are designed to serve in their respective dramatic contexts.

The Limit of Human Knowledge

We should be careful not to lose sight of the stated purpose of this passage: to argue against anyone who would “dare to write” of the things Plato takes seriously (342a3–6). It is on this note that Plato concludes the section we have just finished discussing (343a1–3). In the course of that conclusion, however, Plato introduces a new argument, different from the one he has been sketching so far. He now submits that all things other than “the fifth” “undertake to make clear the ‘of what sort’ about each thing no less than the being of each, because of the weakness of the speeches” (342e2–343a1). It is only with the addition of this rather opaque proclamation that Plato concludes by at last reaffirming what it was to be the purpose of this section to demonstrate: that no one who understood Platonic philosophy would “dare” to try to communicate that philosophy through speech, and especially in “something unchangeable . . . which indeed happens with what has been written in engraved writing” (343a3–4).

The next section of the philosophic digression begins as a further clarification of this concluding point, which, Plato says, “one needs to learn again” (343a4–5). In this renewed attempt, the problem of the “of what sort” and the “what,” which Plato has just introduced, is said to be only one—albeit the “greatest”—of the myriad arguments that may be adduced to show that “each of the four . . . is unclear” (343b6–8). Of this myriad, two other such arguments are specified, each making use once more of the example of the circle. The first is that every material image “is full of the opposite of the fifth,” just as an image of a circle “everywhere touches the straight” (343a5–7); the second is that names (and therefore logoi, which are composed of names) are “unstable,” since “there is nothing to prevent the things now called round from being called straight,” and so on (343a8–b6). These arguments, then, are aimed at denigrating the first three by showing why none of them can attain to the purity of “the fifth” to which they refer—they are indicative of it, but cannot be identical to it. In this way, these arguments are meant to establish the incommunicability of the truth concerning the true beings. Yet it must be said that they accomplish this only partially, at best. Plato has already said that scientific knowledge of “the fifth” is to be obtained through the first three (together, perhaps, with opinion and mind). Why would a capable teacher not at least attempt to instruct his pupil or reader by means of “the three,” simply stressing in addition the merely illustrative character or lack of exactness of his geometrical diagrams or images, as well as the need to take care over the precise intended meanings of his words (especially for non-Greek readers or Greek readers in the distant future)? Would this attempt not be worthwhile, whatever obstacles to correct understanding might remain for the student? In short, how do these arguments establish that no one “with a mind” would “dare” to commit his thoughts to the “unchangeable” characters of written text?

But maybe it is unfair to press Plato on these “lesser” arguments against the “unclarity” of “the three,” when he has himself identified what he claims to be the “greatest” argument of this kind. This argument takes aim at the “unclarity” not just of the first three but, as we have noted, of each of the first four. Whenever any soul seeks the “what” or the “being” of something, says Plato, “each of the four” instead “hold[s] out to the soul,” whether in “speech” or in “deed,” merely the “of what sort” (343b7–c4). That is, whereas “the fifth” contains only what belongs purely and essentially to a given being without reference to the material “images” of it that pass into and out of existence, each one of “the four” communicates about it by reference to the accidental qualities of just those material images. An image of a flower—whether we mean by this a single, particular flower, or, for example, a painting of a flower—is of, so to speak, a specific flower, of such and such color, and shape, and proportion, none of which is essential to the imperceptible “flower” in itself. If one tries to articulate that by which one knows a flower upon perceiving it—namely, that which all those objects of our experience share that happen to be flowers—one will inevitably describe the qualities shared by flowers as such. Yet if we reduce the meaning of “flower” to a set of perceptible qualities, we are again saying no more than that two or more objects of our experience reminded us of one another by the manner in which they struck our perceiving minds. Moreover, since any two flowers, however similar, also differ in many aspects, it becomes a question whether the classification unifying some of them as members, say, of some one species, or all of them as flowers, truly possesses greater objective validity, or is truly less arbitrary, than some alternative classification that would separate, say, the largest from the smaller instances of a given species, or those of most vibrant color from the paler. The definition can do no more than to separate off from a larger class or genus some species or subset by reference to some distinctive qualities or attributes: a circle is a sort of shape, a flower is a sort of plant, a virtue is a sort of character in souls, and so forth. To give only the “of what sort,” the poion ti, of a being, then, as opposed to its “being” or “what,” its on or ti, is to be mired in the world of images and instances known through sense perception, and thus to fail to capture the trans-sensory, metaphysical being, which, by somehow inhabiting each instance, gives it its membership in the objective category to which it belongs.

We cannot fail at this point to be struck by Plato’s sudden demotion of “the fourth.” At first, it seemed that scientific knowledge, originally identified as “fourth,” would be the central focus of this passage; “the fifth,” by contrast, was added almost as an afterthought. The category of “the fourth,” soon expanded to include true opinion and mind, was favorably distinguished from the first three by its immateriality, and mind in particular was singled out as the closest approach to “the fifth” of which we are capable. With the argument about the “what” and “of what sort,” however, “the fourth” is lumped together with the sensible objects and speeches from which it is derived, and all are denigrated equally for their failure to provide that which the soul is really seeking in its quest for knowledge. While Plato at first appeared to hold out some hope that the human mind, in possession of scientific knowledge, could extricate itself from the shadowy, imperfect, material world known to us through the senses, it now seems that all of our intellectual experience, including scientific knowledge, is confined to that imperfect sensible world. Even without being explicitly discussed, the problem of participation rears its head. The true beings and their alleged images are separated by an unbridgeable chasm, and our knowledge of the beings, grounded as it is in the sensible, is stuck on the wrong side of the divide. Plato leaves us here at a total impasse. He has indicated no avenue along which we might still hope to find access to the “what” of the beings, to any direct grasp of “the fifth” itself. Nor in any of what follows is there any resuscitation of the hope that human beings might somehow come into contact with “the fifth.” But this must prompt to us to consider how well we have understood the Platonic prohibition against writing, which this whole passage is meant to support. Plato had given the impression that speech and writing are too subject to the weakness and flux of the sensible world to be able to capture the eternally fixed truths contained in his wisdom of “the fifth.” At this point, however, it is completely unclear in what such wisdom would consist, or in what way Plato could claim to have any direct grasp of “the fifth.”

Yet the digression does build from this point to a major statement on the understanding available at “the utmost extent of human power” (344b7–c1). The movement that culminates in that conclusion begins with Plato’s otherwise unexpected turn to a discussion of refutation. At first, Plato distinguishes two ways in which “the four,” on account of their natural weakness, can be refuted. The difference between the two ways hinges on whether the questioner, with regard to the matter at hand, has been “habituated” by the proper rearing “to seek the truth.” If the questioner has not been so habituated, then, though the questioner may yet be perfectly capable of “tossing around and refuting the four,” nonetheless those being questioned do not “become ridiculous . . . to the questioners,” since neither party imagines anything that would be more satisfactory than the images being refuted (343c5–d2). Plato here puts us in mind of a kind of playful, eristic activity, in which the questioner’s willingness to refute any imaginable claim is grounded in and reflects the view that no claims at all are solid or true (see Philebus 15d4–16a3; Euthydemus 275e4–6, 276e5, 303d6–e4). If, on the other hand, the questioner knows to “compel” the questioned party “to answer and to clarify the fifth,” that is, the “what” as opposed to the “of what sort,” he is able to “confute” his interlocutor, and thus to make him seem ignorant “of the things about which he is undertaking to write or speak” (343d3–6). Seen in contrast to the previous type of refutation, this one could easily make us think of the refutations of the Platonic Socrates, which are framed around “What is?” questions, and in which the interlocutor is frequently tripped up by Socrates’s insistence that he identify that which gives to all instances their common character (e.g., Theaetetus 146c7–147c6; Greater Hippias 289a8–e6; Euthyphro 6d1–e7). Yet Plato adds about this type of refutation that, though those who hear it may be unaware of it, it is not in fact “the soul of him who has written or spoken that is refuted, but the nature of each of the four, being naturally poor” (343d6–e1). It might well change our understanding of the Socratic refutations if this were meant as a description of them (cf. Alcibiades 112c10–113c4; Theaetetus 154c7–d7; Republic 349a6–3, 350e1–9; Protagoras 359c5–d1).

It transpires, however, that Plato ascends one rung further to describe a third and highest form of refutation, albeit only in passing. We are able to say that it is the highest version because it is described as an element in what appears to be Plato’s description of the greatest attainment of knowledge possible for human beings (343e1–344c1). What is totally unexpected about this description, however, which also makes us think even more of the Platonic Socrates’s characteristic refutations, is that Plato suddenly narrows his focus from the acquisition of scientific knowledge generally to the knowledge of virtue specifically. This knowledge, which Plato first describes as “scientific knowledge of the good-natured,” is available only to those who are, by nature and rearing,“akin to the matter” of the scientific knowledge being sought, in that they possess the uncorrupted elements of a “good nature” themselves (342e2–344a2). Plato indicates that this kinship does not refer to the intellectual virtues—“goodness at learning” and a good memory—though these too are necessary to a student’s success. Rather, being “akin” to the matter means possession of appropriate traits of moral “character.” These latter, however, are identified not as the moral virtues themselves, but rather as “kinship” with “the just things” and everything else “noble” (344a2–8). This is in keeping with the Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge, in the sense that the seeker after knowledge of virtue cannot yet be said to possess that virtue. In other words, the philosopher, whose love of knowledge indicates that the knowledge in question remains unattained (cf. Symposium 204b4–5 with Republic 485a10–b3), is as such not yet in possession of virtue but seeking it—the philosopher should rather be said to possess a “kinship” with the virtues (cf. Republic 487a4–5).

Recalling the Socratic thesis positing the identity of virtue and knowledge is crucial also for resolving the following paradox. Plato says kinship with the noble things is necessary for a student who will obtain this “scientific knowledge of the good-natured,” “for it does not come to be to begin with in dispositions alien to” the matter sought (344a4). Yet he appears to specify the content of this knowledge as “the truth of virtue” and “of vice,” “to the extent” that these can be learned; to gain knowledge of one is to gain knowledge of the other along with it, “for it is necessary to learn them simultaneously” (344b1). Now, if this refers simply to the fact that, when one learns anything true one also learns that everything contradicting it is false, one might think on this basis that it could be equally possible for one whose soul bears a kinship to vice to learn first of vice and thereby necessarily also of virtue—sneaking in, as it were, through the back door. But since virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance, a kinship to vice points not in the direction of learning but of complacency or worse. One must long to perfect one’s soul through virtue, and thus to have some original sense or divination of that for which one longs and is in need, in order to set out and remain on the path toward knowledge of that perfection (cf. 340c1–6). Knowledge of this perfect or perfecting virtue naturally brings with it, as a corollary or counterpart, knowledge of the associated imperfection, which is to say knowledge of vice, or knowledge of ignorance. Moreover, since it is necessarily the good-natured soul that obtains knowledge of the good-natured, this knowledge is necessarily self-knowledge.

There is a critical ambiguity, however, in the scope Plato gives to this knowledge. For just after saying that one must learn of virtue and vice “simultaneously” (to the extent it is possible to do so), he adds, “and the false and true of the whole of being simultaneously” (344b2). The ambiguity lies in the following detail. In each case, “simultaneously” (hama) would seem to refer to the fact that one learns the two contraries at once. But it is difficult not to see a reading of the common “hama . . .hama . . .” construction as indicating that learning the truth of virtue and vice brings with it, “simultaneously,” knowledge of “the false and true of the whole of being.” Would the apparent correspondence of “false” with “virtue” and “true” with “vice” then indicate that the “whole of being” is characterized more truly by the imperfection of what is bad than the perfection of what is good? The implausibility of these readings almost requires that we reject them. And yet one cannot deny that little if anything has prepared us for the narrowing of Plato’s focus from beings generally to virtue in particular, nor that it is only with this turn that Plato gives us anything like a portrait of the culmination of the quest for knowledge.

That portrait has something like the following features. If one possesses such a nature and rearing as Plato has described, there is a “way leading through all” of “the four,” “shifting up and down to each one,” which “does with difficulty give birth” to scientific knowledge of virtue (343e1–e3). The difficulty of this process, the fact that it requires “total occupation and a great deal of time” (343b2–3), combined with the rare concatenation of character traits the student must possess, necessarily makes the acquisition of this knowledge extremely uncommon. The “occupation” (tribēs) required of the student proceeds by a “rub[bing] (tribomena) against one another” of the “names and definitions, sights and perceptions,” that is, of “the three,” as well as by “kindly refutations” in which “questions and answers” are employed “without envy” (344b3–6). Plato thus describes a kind of dialectical examination, proceeding through a process of refutation, of the “images” of virtue of which we have experience and to which our speech refers. The image of rubbing these together recalls the passage in Plato’s Republic where Socrates clarifies the procedure by which he will seek knowledge of justice with his interlocutors:

We supposed that if we undertook to contemplate [justice] in some bigger thing of those that have justice, we would more easily catch sight of what it is like in one human being. And this bigger thing seemed to us to be a city, and we founded the best one we could, knowing well that [justice] would be in the good [city], at least. What appeared to us there, let us now carry up to the individual, and if they agree, it holds nobly; but if something else should appear in the individual, we will go back up to the city and test it, and perhaps by examining and rubbing them against one another, we would make justice shine out as from a fire; and when it has become manifest, we will confirm among ourselves that it is stable (bebaiōsometha). (434d6–435a3)

To obtain the Platonic “scientific knowledge of the good-natured,” then, or to “learn the truth of virtue to the extent possible” and “of vice,” one must clarify and compare the various opinions as to the meanings of justice and of the rest of the virtues with a view to ascertaining what the virtues themselves must be. Justice, for example, comes to sight as the ordering principle of a political community, to which each member must submit, subordinating and even sacrificing individual happiness to the common good; but justice also comes to sight as the moral excellence of soul that perfects and even makes happy the individual human being. How is this contradiction in common opinion to be resolved or overcome? One must submit oneself to refutation in order to clarify and bring into coherence one’s own opinions, or to become aware of the reason for their incoherence and its implications.

Plato’s focus on justice in particular, and on virtue in general, makes us aware that the question of the “what” and the “of what sort” has a dimension—when what is sought is virtue—that we have not yet considered. For instance, in the Republic, Plato’s Socrates draws attention to the problematic tendency to attempt to say whether justice is something good, that is, to say what sort of thing it is—whether it is a virtue or a vice, a kind of wisdom or a kind of ignorance, and whether it is good or bad for human beings—before determining what it is (354a13–c3). The reason, however, for thus losing sight of the quest for the “being” of justice does not seem to be especially that “the nature of each of the four” is “poor.” Rather, the reason is the initial belief of the seekers in the great inherent value of what is being sought, and the strength of their hope to find that justice is of such great value, that most appears to direct (or misdirect) their efforts (336e7–9, 347d8–348a6). Where justice and the rest of virtue are concerned, we are not such dispassionate investigators as we are in the case of the circle. Yet we must also remind ourselves of the fact that Plato holds out, as the culmination of the good-natured student’s quest for truth, nothing more than “scientific knowledge.” That is, Plato says nothing about the fact that this knowledge, as an instance of “the fourth,” must itself be “naturally poor” and therefore inadequate for providing the “what,” the “being,” “the fifth” of virtue. He does not explain how it will release us from “every perplexity and unclarity” of which, he has said, “the four” “fills every man” (343c4–5). Still, this is not to say that the acquisition of this knowledge is worthless. It produces “practical wisdom . . . as well as mind, straining to the utmost extent of human power” (344b8–c1). On one hand, then, one gains, not wisdom as such, that is, theoretical wisdom (sophia), but “practical wisdom” or “prudence” (phronēsis) concerning the virtues, which is of no small importance or worth. And, on the other hand, one gains “mind” or “intelligence” (nous), which Plato has said is the closest approach a human being can make to “the fifth.” This, as he says, is as far as human nature can reach in its quest for justice and virtue, and indeed for the “false and true of the whole of being.”

Platonic Philosophy and Platonic Writing

As we must continue to remind ourselves, Plato is compelled to provide the philosophic digression of Letter Seven in order to prove that if indeed “either Dionysius or someone lesser or greater wrote something of the highest and first things concerning nature, he had in no way heard or learned soundly the things of which he wrote” (344d4–6). Plato himself refers to this section of the letter as a “tale” or “myth” and a “wandering” (344d3). To reiterate, then, it must not be taken for a straightforward exposition of the “highest and first things concerning nature,” much as it may seem to be such a thing. It may perhaps teach about such things “through a small indication,” as myths sometimes do. But the myth is largely misleading in the following way. Plato gives the impression that he has access to “the fifth,” and that it is in this that his wisdom regarding the “highest and first things concerning nature” consists. Yet his explanation of why this cannot be set down in writing effectively indicates that human beings cannot truly access “the fifth.” Indeed, the matter of its genuine existence must for that reason remain a question. Paradoxically, then, the “wandering” digression through which Plato has just led us may after all convey as solid a conclusion as can be conveyed about the “true beings.”

By the end of the passage, however—and therefore, in that part of the passage that directly produces and explains his final denouncement of writing—Plato is no longer speaking of “the fifth” at all. He has returned at this point to a vignette of teacher and student that recalls his account of the transmission of Platonic philosophy at the beginning of the digression. In that earlier account, Plato claimed that what he “takes seriously” is “in no way speakable,” but is rather like a “light . . . kindled” in the student “as from a jumping fire” after “much intercourse” between teacher and student “concerning the problem itself” and a period of “living together.” Now, in the later passage, some details are filled in. The “intercourse” of teacher and student proceeds by “making use of questions and answers . . . without envy.” The “light” that is kindled is “practical wisdom” and “mind,” and it is produced by the dialectical examination, the “rubbing together,” of accounts and images of justice and the other noble things. Writing cannot provide the most far-reaching education because the writer will not be present with the reader to spend time in refutation through questions and answers (see Phaedrus 275c5–276a9).

Refutation as a requirement of education—as opposed to refutation’s other manifestations and uses, which Plato has also mentioned—appears in this account only once justice and the rest of virtue have become the focus (as opposed, say, to the example of the circle). This suggests that the deficiency of writing is made most acute by the challenge inherent in the investigation of those subjects in particular. It is not in Letter Seven, however, but in Letter Two that Plato most vividly describes the nature of the challenge inherent in investigating the ontological status of the noble things. Dionysius’s perplexity and urgent need for Plato’s help are likened there to labor pains, which Plato says are “responsible for all evils.” And it seems that this pain must be connected to the fact that the investigation into “the nature of the first” raises questions as to the character and even the existence of the divine principle underlying existence in general and, especially, the existence of the noble or beautiful things. Indeed, Plato has suggested that it is by submitting one’s opinions about the noble things, or about “virtue and vice,” to refutation that one might ultimately settle the vexing questions concerning “the whole of being” with which Dionysius is concerned in Letter Two. At any rate, when Plato bids us to learn about “all things” by considering the example of the circle, he obscures the profound difference between this geometric example and the cases of the noble, the good, and the just. Not that we should doubt that the question of “the fifth” as it pertains to geometry would be of considerable interest to Plato; but as it turns out, it is not an immediately illuminating case regarding the reasons why he chose not to write about that which he took “most seriously.” It is difficult to see why anyone would forgo writing a geometrical treatise out of concern that what is here and now called “round” may in some other time or place be called “straight.” It is more easily imaginable how variations in the meaning of the word “justice” could cause a problem for the political philosopher.

Unlike the philosophic digression’s introductory section, Plato’s last words about his abstention from writing about “the serious beings” do not mention the impossibility of such writing. Rather, he speaks of his refusal to “cast them down amid the envy and perplexity of human beings” (344c2–3) or to “cast them out into dissonance and unseemliness” (344d8–9). There is a doubt or “perplexity” (aporia) involved in philosophy that is generally ill suited to the human constitution. It results from the chasm, which we cannot traverse, between the natural poverty of “the three,” and hence of “the fourth” that emerges from them—the highest form of understanding to which the human mind can attain—and the purity and perfection of “the fifth,” which exists nowhere in our experience, but which is needed for our initial understanding of science and of “the whole of being” to cohere. It is the juxtaposition of the passages in Letters Two and Seven, which Plato clearly invites, that directs us to the question of what this great disjunction means for us as beings concerned with “the nature of the first.”

What, then, are we to make of the writings that Plato did “cast out” among human beings? The Socratic dialogues contain refutations, but not of the highest kind described here. That is, they never portray Socrates engaged over time with a good-natured pupil who comes to “learn the truth of virtue” and “of vice,” and “the false and true of the whole of being.” But this means that, if we are to deduce from the Socratic dialogues what would be of the highest importance for our own Platonic education, we must infer from the dialogues conclusions and implications that go beyond those emphasized by the Platonic Socrates himself. The Socratic refutations can help us to recognize the natural poverty of “the four,” which results in each thing being such and such in one sense but not in another, and in the difficulty of tracing the lines that separate the objects of our experience into natural classes—which would allow us “to carve up” the world “by forms, by joints where they are naturally” (Phaedrus 265e1–2). They can help us to see, with respect to the good, the noble, and the just, the speeches and images that must be set against one another in dialectical examination. But they leave to us the task of determining the import of those insights for the opinions and aspirations with which we first set out on our investigation.

Plato concludes that “every man who is serious about the serious beings” will necessarily refrain from producing writings about these things (344c1–3). If there has been any lawgiver who was also “serious,” then the laws he wrote “were not the most serious things” to him (344c4–7). The only alternative is that the writer had been driven out of his senses during the time of his writing, perhaps by a desire for honor (344e1–2)—Plato knows that the Homeric heroes were wrong to attribute such madness to the gods (344d1–2). Strictly speaking, then, there are three possible explanations for the Platonic writings, including the Letters. The first is that, as Plato maintains, they do not contain his thought about the things he took most seriously. The second is that at least some of the writings do contain his thoughts on these matters, but that he was not altogether in his senses when he wrote them. The third is that he is not a “serious man.” Now, Plato himself dedicated no small time and attention to at least one extensive piece of writing that largely takes the form of legislation and which, of course, is called the Laws. Plato appears to tell us here that we should not take that work so seriously, for he, at any rate, did not. He also claims to engage in an act of lawgiving in the Letters itself, namely, in Letter Six, the whole of which he bids his addressees to treat as a “sovereign law, which is just.” He also, however, instructs those addressees to swear by the letter, or law, “with seriousness that is not unmusical, and at the same time, with the playfulness that is a sister of seriousness.” The question of how “seriously” we are to take Plato’s writings on laws and regimes would seem to be bound up with the question of the proper relationship between seriousness and playfulness. For if, in Plato’s considered philosophic judgment, even the most solemnly serious matters deserve after all to be treated with a measure of playfulness, then perhaps we do not denigrate his political works so much by suggesting that those works—and even Plato himself—are less than fully “serious.” We should at least be wary of becoming enthralled by the mistaken view belonging to those of Plato’s “good-natured” readers and followers who, like Dion, swell “with a lofty and empty hope as though they had learned some august things.”