Nick Skog
Philosophy 110.6
Professor Michael Poellet
December 2nd, 2010

Ignorance, Apathy, and the pursuit of the Good.

Plato’s book The Republic concerning Socrates’ dialogues on Morality, Justice, and the Good is one of the most influential literary works of all time and one that has surely stood the test of time. The Republic is a dialogue which has influenced Political Science and Intellectual inquiry for centuries because it attempts to answer the most fundamental questions regarding the nature of things rather than simply the consequences. It raises questions such as “Is Justice better than Injustice”, “Will an unjust person fare better than a just person”, and “What is the essential form or eidos of the good.” These are questions which have continued to be relevant throughout time and will continue to be until adequate and valid answers are defined regardless of whether or not the cultural climate encourages or discourages these kinds of inquiries and philosophical thought. In particular, I will be examining Chapter IX of the text entitled “The Supremacy of the Good” (167-173) which deals with the themes of the appropriateness of admitting one’s own ignorance, the apathy which dominates a community in regards to the pursuit of the good, and the simile of the sun in relation to the good.

“Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure, it is in decay”
-Jiddu Krishnamurti – Philosopher/Public Speaker

Throughout The Republic, and also in Socrates’ other dialogues, a frequent position of Socrates is his claim that he “does not know.” Glaucon makes it clear to Socrates that he doesn’t think it’s right for Socrates to constantly be discrediting other people’s opinions but yet never to state an opinion of his own. Socrates then reaffirms that it would be much worse to talk as if he knew what he did not know. (169) The reason why I find this particularly relevant is because of people’s propensity today to always have an opinion of what something “is”, and often claim to know the truth even in matters which are beyond our current knowledge and understanding. Socrates encounters these viewpoints frequently in The Republic in the dialogues with Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymarchus, who all claim to know the eidos of justice and the good, but all of their viewpoints failing to hold up under stronger scrutiny and examination. Socrates’ position that he “does not know” what the eidos of justice and the good are, but his desire to define the good and acquire new knowledge through dialectic seems to be the most truthful and noble way to live one’s life. As Socrates has pointed out, that is the life of a Philosopher and this notion seems to be extremely critical because Socrates also points out that the most ideal city-state or community will only ever come about when Philosophers become Kings, or those now called Kings genuinely become Philosophers.

It seems as if very few of us living in today’s world follow the life of a Philosopher. We all seem to have our beliefs, biases, and prejudices and we all claim to know what the truth is, or at the very least will almost always take a position on a particular matter rather than admit ignorance or a lack of knowledge. Even in matters as grandiose as the existence of a god, gods, or a deity, we all seem to have an opinion. Although paradigms have shifted since Ancient Greece and some of the more famous gods from that time period are now simply regarded as fairytales or references in literary works, most of us still seem to be connected to a belief about gods, or the lack of gods. Perhaps the notion of “faith” which popular opinion has taught us all our lives to be a virtuous thing is not so virtuous after all. Perhaps beliefs such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Atheism, Paganism, and all other views of how the world came about are all in fact, ironically, impious and rather it is agnosticism – the view that the truth value of claims either for or against the belief of god(s) or the supernatural is unknowable – is actually a philosophical viewpoint while other beliefs, religious or otherwise, are based on tradition and convention rather than truth. In this case, a philosophical viewpoint is that we simply do not, and can not know at the present time what the nature of our reality is.

As difficult as it may be to attain, I believe that logically, the pursuit of the eidos of the good is essential for our progression as a species. It is impossible to define what “the good” is at the present time, but as long as we live in a world dominated by war, aggression, poverty, hunger, and preventable disease it can be concluded that humanity has not reached the good. We have not yet reached the capacity (nor have we reached an understanding of its importance) to care and provide for each other as an extended community, and if we examine Socrates’ claim that “the community is the soul writ large,” then each day that passes by that we continue to live in a pathological community we are doing further damage to our soul. Socrates is often seen as a philosopher discrediting people’s pre-conceived beliefs, opinions, and biases as well as the traditions and conventions of Athenian society, and I see a strong resemblance to certain people in our modern society who also seek to discredit the dominant beliefs, opinions, and biases of our own society through dialogue and reasoning, as opposed to existing traditions or playing to one’s emotions as the “modern day sophists” do.

In relation to the pursuit of the good, Socrates states that laziness and apathy are “completely inappropriate feelings for a guardian of a community to have.” (168) If we assume once again that we are talking about an extended community, (this could either be a city, a country, a geopolitical region, or the planet as whole) then the “guardians” of the community can be considered to be our political, economical, and religious leaders, most of which if not all are placed there to uphold the prevailing traditions, conventions, and beliefs of its era. In order to not disrupt the order of things, these “guardians” are placed on “guard duty” so to speak to keep things running exactly the same regardless of whether or not, these conventions are aligned with the eidos (or essence) of the good, or the care of one’s soul. As documentary filmmaker Peter Joseph states in his film Zeitgeist: Addendum, “Politicians are not put in power to change anything; they are put in power to keep things exactly the same.” If the guardians of our communities are lazy, apathetic, or perhaps simply uninterested and unwilling to attempt to discover the eidos of justice or the good, and would rather stick with the convention and dominating beliefs of the community they inherited, then it becomes unlikely that many citizens of the community would lead the life of a philosopher and attempt to define the eidos of the good. This seems to be the case because we are influenced by our cultural climate, and the types of values which we are surrounded by in our modern world are that of a pathological community in which apathy dominates and the thinking mind is ostracized.

When Socrates professes himself incapable of defining goodness, he moves on to a new method of trying to understand the eidos of goodness from a different perspective and from there creates the “Simile of the Sun.” He makes a connection between the sun being responsible for our eyesight in the same way as goodness is responsible for our knowledge and truth. (170) Socrates claims that sight and the visible world are deficient without that crucial piece of the puzzle, which in this case is the light that comes from the sun. “So the sun is not to be identified with sight, but is responsible for sight and is itself within the visible realm, right?” (170) Socrates asks Glaucon, to which Glaucon agrees. Socrates’s simile of the sun as the essential form of the visible world, as goodness is the essential form of the intelligible world is an effective simile in my opinion because the sun has proved to be the essential part of our existence, as well as other animal and plant life on Earth. The sun’s importance in the daily affairs and continued perseverance of humanity throughout time is something which humanity has been aware of for a long time. Many early religions were based around the worship of the sun because humanity has always been able to witness the sun’s positive influence in their lives and livelihood. Humanity recognized the importance of the sun which gave their eyes the ability to see, and warmth to give them shelter, and grow the crops.

Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, The Aztecs, The Indus Valley people, and countless other civilizations have worshipped a sun deity and these traditions have also passed on through the ages to the world’s most popular modern religious belief – Christianity. There are many connections between sun worship and Christianity such as the similarities and wordplay associated between “God’s Sun” and God’s Son”, as well as “Sun Worship” and the common Christian notion of “Sunday Worship.” Another observation is the striking similarities between the lengthening of days and Jesus’ supposed birth. In pre-Christian Rome, it was required that on the 25th of December, that the birth of the “New Sun” (New Son?) was celebrated, when after the winter solstice, the days began to lengthen after a 3 day period where the length of the days did not increase but rather stayed constant, and dead before resurrection and a rebirth. Furthermore, the traditional date of Jesus’ birth was on January 6th but in order to combat the sun god’s popularly, Roman emperor Constantius II changed the celebration of Jesus’ birth to December 25th and incorporated elements of Sun worship into modern Christianity. A deeper look into the symbolism found in the bible unveils much more striking correlations between the two including the fact that many of the characters which appear in the Old Testament were actually personified stars, planets, and constellations.

However, getting back to Socrates’ sun analogy, it seems clear to me as to why the sun received so much religious and cultural attention as an eidos of sight. The sun, in and of itself, is the cause of light and is also within the visible realm. Socrates’ concept of goodness being the primary eidos for other secondary eidos which falls beneath the eidos of the good such as the” knowledge” and “truth” works quite well when one looks at the sun as a metaphor to try to understand the truth value of Socrates’ claim about the good. Another quote from Socrates which I believe is important to this discussion is: “It’s good which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge. It is responsible for knowledge and truth, and you should think of it as being within the intelligible realm, but you shouldn’t identify it with knowledge and truth, otherwise you’ll be wrong: for all it’s value it is even more valuable. In the other realm, it is right to regard light and sight as resembling the sun; so in this realm it is right to regard knowledge and truth as resembling goodness, but not to identify either of them with goodness which should be rated even more highly.” (171)

I believe that Socrates’ pursuit of the eidos of the “good” and “justice” is a pursuit that is just as relevant today as it was in 380BCE when Plato wrote The Republic. Today, just as ever I would imagine, there seems to be a much higher propensity to see “goodness as pleasure” or “goodness as knowledge” and that is precisely what it “appears” to be, but not necessarily what it “is”. It is perfectly natural to reach these conclusions at first glance because when one first starts to look for the essence of the good, the first thing that comes to mind is the consequences of the good. Knowledge and Pleasure are simply symptoms of the good in the fact that they are good consequences but they do not represent the essence or eidos of goodness. The fact that we have not reached a consensus of the eidos of the good itself proves the difficulty of defining a term as universal as “the good.” Metaphorically speaking, Goodness is responsible for knowledge and truth, just as the sun is responsible for our sight and the location of our sight – the eye, but a metaphor although helping with our understanding of the eidos of the good, will not give us a clear definition of the good.

In the spirit of this paper (and to not contradict myself of my prior claim that the best possible position to take in matters which are beyond current human comprehension is the admitting of one’s own ignorance rather than claiming an unattainable knowledge) ,I will say that in relation to the eidos of the good, I am completely ignorant and the pursuit of the knowledge I have attempted to attain within the process of writing this paper has proved to me nothing but the understanding of the depths of my ignorance regarding the eidos of the good. If Socrates is correct in that knowledge of non-knowledge is in fact knowledge, then this ignorance I am professing seems to be a step in the right direction. It is natural to have a belief or opinion on these subject matters but beliefs and opinions are based on convention and tradition rather than the truth.