Volume 44, Issue 4

It is also worth investigating how time is related to the soul, and for what reason it is that time is thought to be in everything – on earth and in the sea and in the heavens. Is it that it is a property or a state of change, being the number [of it], and all these things are changeable, since they are all in place, and time and change are together both in potentiality and in actual operation? One might find it a difficult question, whether if there were no soul there would be time or not. For if it is impossible that there should be something to do the counting, it is also impossible that anything should be countable, so that it is clear that there would be no number either, for number is either that which has been counted or that which can be. But if there is nothing that has it in its nature to count except soul, and of soul [the part which is] intellect, then it is impossible that there should be time if there is no soul, except that there could be that X which time is, whatever X makes it what it is; as, for example, if it is possible for there to be change without soul. The before and after are in change, and time is these qua countable. (223 a 16–29)

In this paper, I argue against the claim that in Plato's Republic the most important distinguishing feature between the philosopher and non-philosopher is that the philosopher has knowledge while the non-philosopher has, at best, true opinion. This claim is, in fact, inconsistent with statements Plato makes in later books of the Republic . I submit that the important distinction Plato makes concerns the type of knowledge possessed by the philosopher-ruler. As a result, we need to amend widely held scholarly interpretations of important passages in the Republic ; most notably the passages containing the Sun, Line, and Cave. I consider the views of a number of important scholars and suggest a proposal that avoids this inconsistency with the text. An important consequence of my argument is that Philosophers are indeed not the only ones with knowledge in the Kallipolis .

This paper offers a new reading of the method of hypothesis in the Divided Line of Plato's Republic that preserves a clear distinction between the objects of that method and dialectic. Properties, or Forms, are hypothesized when they are predicated of particulars whose character is to be investigated, as in the ekthesis of a construction based geometric proof. Hypothesis is the basis for rigorous proof of general theorems, expressed entirely in terms of particulars, such as geometric figures. Only in dialectic, centered on the ‘What is F?’ question, do we come to investigate universal properties directly.

J. B. Kennedy recently proposed a radical new interpretation of the Platonic dialogues, arguing that their stichometric structure is based in a Greek twelve-tone musical scale. We explore to what extent such an interpretation might be borne out historically by Greek music-theoretical traditions: the concept of scale, the significance of number 12 (on which Kennedy's theory is anchored), conceptual differences between Harmonicists and Pythagoreans, and the applicability of Kennedy's scale within the context of Plato's thought. While the statistical correlations Kennedy notes are intriguing, their foundation in Greek music-theoretical traditions proves problematic.