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The Distinction between Philosophers and Sight-Lovers: Socrates’ First Line of Argument in Rep. V 476a1–d6.

  • Thanassis Gkatzaras EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 31, 2024
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Abstract

In this paper I examine Socrates’ argument that presupposes an audience familiar with Forms and explains why the sight-lovers are not philosophers. It is divided into three parts: the first part (476a1–6) shows why each Form is one in number; the second part (476a6–9) distinguishes Forms from their sensible appearances; and the third part (476a10–d6) draws an analogy between philosophers – people being awake and sight-lovers – people being asleep. Remarkably, the argument works only for opposites, which are mistakenly identified by the sight-lovers with sensible things. Also in this paper I suggest an alternative interpretation of the so-called ‘Two Worlds Theory’ which is based on the distinction between the objects of knowledge and opinion.


Corresponding author: Thanassis Gkatzaras, Research Centre for Greek Philosophy, Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Alexander Nehamas for his detailed and helpful comments, oral and written. I would also like to thank Christos Kyriacou, Vassilis Livanios, Christos Panayides and Pantazis Tselemanis for their remarks on an earlier draft of this paper, as well as the two anonymous referees for their comments on the final version of it.

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Published Online: 2024-07-31
Published in Print: 2024-08-27

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