Summary:

This chapter has our discussors debate the nature of philosophers and the difference between belief and knowlesge. The guardians need the ability to see things as they really are to guide safeguard their community. However since true philosophers are so rare the feasibility of realising this community becomes very small. Society restricts, corrupts and punishes those who seek the truth as it inevitiably clashes with convention.

It is decided that the moral man they are searching will be living as close as possible to morality, but they will not be a perfect image of it. Things are bound to have less contract with truth than theory. Plato's conception of the world as a derivative of the world of forms which is true reality. Hence thought can come closer to truth than things.

Socrates states that only if rulers become philosophers (or vice versa) can a moral community appear.

Who is a philosopher? Does any branch of knowledge qualify? Lovers of a thing wants all of it they can get. True lovers appreciate the whole rather than a specific aspect. This analogy is applied to distinguish sightseers and seekers of truth. The difference is between those who love beautiful things and those who love beauty itself. The former sense beauty but cannot see the common aspect of the things they love. The former love the impressions of the fallible senses while the latter love reality itself from thought. Belief versus knowledge.

What is the difference between belief and knowledge? Knowledge is the field of the real which belief cannot be. But belief is also not total ignorance and must then lie inbetween. «In Symposium love is characterized as inbetween ignorance and knowledge. Yet love is a search for truth that would mean that belief leads to truth which clashes here.» Both knowledge and belief are human faculties.

Things we describe as beautiful (in belief) are only seen in comparison to others. What is ugly in one context becomes beautiful in another. Then it serves that the things do not actually have these qualities, as they change. This instability comes from belief while what is truly beautiful always is.

The nature of seeing reality is a quality that the guardians need to protect their community in soul and body. «Since philosophers are closer to reality by definition you could say any occupation requires their abilities to fulfill its purpose. The baker needs to see reality as it is to bake the perfect loaf every time in service to their community. Though the demands of metacognition on a societal level does put the guardians a bit closer to the philosophers than most jobs.»

Philosophers love reality as a whole and will despise falsehood, material things like money will have little effect on them. Their broad vision on life makes them unable to fear death.

But why are philosophers so weird and useless currently in society then? Because society corrupts them with lacking or no education. When they show themselves useful they are lead astray with money or other devices which make them focused on the material rather than reality. Society encourages them at every turn to master flattery of society or be punished. Only divine intervention could save a persom from corruption here. «Why was this specifically pointed out? Is there a precedence in ancient greece for miracle philosophers rising out of vile circumstances?» Sophists are flatterers of the crowds.

Education cannot change people's moral character. «Any education or just the education of the sophists. The problem of making people more virtous is a common topic in socratic dialogues.»

Those who do retain their nature as philosophers are either exiled or recluses without influence on society. Few seriously engage with philosophy outside their youth.

Observations:

I think we see here the seeds of elitism and enligthened despotism. The ideas here can clearly be used to justify giving absolute power to a supposed virtous individual to reform society to become more ideal.