one were to try, he would be deposed by the ephors.
PLATO: Well, they have two kings, five ephors and twenty-eight senators. So mathematics tells us that if only fifteen senators, three ephors and one king were to take up philosophy –
SOCRATES: [Laughs.] Yes, Aristocles. I concede. If the rulers of Sparta were to take up our style of philosophy, and were then seriously to embark upon criticizing and reforming their traditions –
PLATO: [Slightly distracted, scribbles, ‘Theorem: a king who’s a philosopher is the same as a philosopher who’s a king. So, what if a philosopher became king?’] Or perhaps it’s more likely that one benevolent king would have seized power –
SOCRATES: Whatever. If they succeeded in such reforms, then their city might indeed evolve into something truly great. But don’t hold your breath.
PLATO: [Scribbles, ‘Socrates says a city with a philosopher king would be truly great.’] I won’t hold my breath. But, in the long run, how shall we teach philosophy to kings, Socrates? [Scribbles, ‘Is the role of philosophers to educate kings?’]
SOCRATES: I’m not sure that philosophy should be the first step in the education of a leader. One must have something to philosophize about. He should know history, and literature, and arithmetic – and, perhaps above all, he should be familiar with the deepest knowledge we have, namely geometry.
PLATO: [Scribbles, ‘Let no one unversed in geometry enter here!’]
CHAEREPHON: Well, I judge a city by how it treats its philosophers.
SOCRATES: [Smiles.] An excellent criterion, Chaerephon, with which I had better not quibble! By the way, Aristocles, I am not in the least modest. And, to prove it, I can tell you that Hermes persuaded me that I am wise after all – at least in one respect that he especially values, namely that I am aware that justified belief is impossible and useless and undesirable.
PLATO: [Scribbles, ‘Socrates is the wisest man in the world because he is the only one who knows he has no knowledge, because genuine knowledge is impossible!’] Wait! Justified belief is impossible? Really? Are you sure?
SOCRATES: [Laughs loudly, while the OTHERS look on, puzzled.] Sorry, but it’s a somewhat perverse question, Aristocles.
PLATO: Oh! I see.
[Smiles ruefully, as do the OTHERS when they realize that Plato has just asked for a justification of the belief that one cannot justify beliefs.]
SOCRATES: No, I am not sure of anything. I never have been. But the god explained to me why that must be so, starting with the fallibility of the human mind and the unreliability of sensory experience.
PLATO: [Scribbles, ‘It’s only knowledge of the material world that’s impossible, useless and undesirable.’]
SOCRATES: He gave me a marvellous perspective on how we perceive the world. Each of your eyes is like a dark little cave, one on whose rear wall some stray shadows fall from outside. You spend your whole life at the back of that cave, able to see nothing but that rear wall, so you cannot see reality directly at all.
PLATO: [Scribbles, ‘It is as if we were prisoners, chained inside a cave and permitted to look only at the rear wall. We can never know the reality outside because we see only fleeting, distorted shadows of it.’]
[Note: Socrates is slightly improving on Hermes, and Plato has been increasingly misinterpreting Socrates.]
SOCRATES: He then went on to explain to me that objective knowledge is indeed possible: it comes from within! It begins as conjecture, and is then corrected by repeated cycles of criticism, including comparison with the evidence on our ‘wall’.
PLATO: [Scribbles, ‘The only true knowledge is that which comes from within. (How? Remembered from a previous life?)’]
SOCRATES: In this way, we frail and fallible humans can come to know objective reality – provided we use philosophically sound methods as I have described (which most people do not).
PLATO: [Scribbles, ‘We can come to know the true world beyond the illusory world of experience. But only by pursuing the kingly art of philosophy.’]
CHAEREPHON: Socrates, I think it was the god speaking to you, for I strongly feel that I have glimpsed a divine truth through you today. It will take me a long time to reorganize my ideas to take account of this new epistemology that he revealed to you. It seems a tremendously far-reaching, and important, subject.
SOCRATES: Indeed. I have some reorganizing to do myself.
PLATO: Socrates, you really ought to write all this down – together with all your other wisdom – for the benefit of the whole world, and posterity.
SOCRATES: No need, Aristocles. Posterity is right here, listening.