Disclaimer: This post was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by GPT-5.2.
Book VI of The Republic first explores the question of the philosopher.
In Book V, while discussing the various classes of the ideal polis, it had already touched on the role of philosophers in the ideal polis. Socrates believes that unless philosophers become the kings of the ideal polis—namely “philosopher-kings”—the ideal polis or ideal state has no way to be established. What is called a philosopher, in Socrates’ view, refers to those who can grasp what is eternal and unchanging; they are by nature endowed with a kind of “knowledge of seeing eternal entities that are not affected by the process of coming-to-be and passing-away.” We say that the ideal state is established according to the ideas of the philosopher-king, or in other words, Socrates is precisely this “philosopher-king,” so since philosophers, whether on questions of the divine or the human, always pursue wholeness and completeness, and pursue the eternal “One,” then the previous books’ discussion of the single, absolute image of the divine is here thereby readily resolved. Book VI deepens the discussion of the philosopher question on this basis:
First is the question of the philosopher’s basic qualities. Socrates holds that a philosopher should by nature possess a good memory, be broad-minded and magnanimous, gentle and refined, and love and be akin to such qualities as truth, justice, courage, and moderation. In Book IV it was already pointed out that truth (wisdom), justice, courage, and moderation are characteristics an ideal polis ought to have, and likewise are qualities an ideal personality ought to have. From this it can be seen that the ideal polis and the philosopher-king correspond in these four qualities. This is also why philosophers can rule and govern the ideal polis. Conversely, “the reason I blame the existing political systems is precisely that none of them is suited to a philosophical nature.”
Second is the reason why the ideal state must be ruled by philosophers. Looking across Book V, Socrates in fact did not give a direct, affirmative answer to this question, but rather an indirect, negative one. He offered an analogy: “When a person is sick, whether he is poor or rich, he should go to the doctor’s door to find the doctor; anyone who asks to be governed should themselves go and invite the person capable of governing them to govern them.” The philosopher is the “doctor” who governs the state, so the people, in thought, should welcome the philosopher to serve as the king of their country; only thus can the ideal state possibly appear. Of course, this analogy first involves the question of the analogy’s validity, and second whether it conforms to reality. The first question is in fact not discussable; the discussions that follow by Socrates are all aimed at the second question, just as he himself realized: “If philosophers were respected, that would be the truly astonishing thing!”
Why are philosophers not respected? Socrates believes that the emergence of such a situation is not the philosophers’ responsibility, but is due to the appearance of pseudo-philosophers—those who claim to do philosophy and presume themselves to be philosophers. These people by nature lack the qualities of philosophers who truly do philosophy; thus their so-called philosophy is in fact a kind of pandering or misguidance. What they have are only opinions, far from knowledge. “As for the truth of these opinions and demands—what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is good and what is evil, what is just and what is unjust—they know nothing at all.” The reason they can be liked by audiences, to the point of replacing the position of true philosophers, is that they know how to cater to the audiences’ opinions, and these opinions are far from truth. In other words, they change their doctrines according to the listeners’ preferences, completely unconcerned with whether their doctrines are true or false. Philosophy’s reputation has been corrupted in their hands. As for the true philosophers, when they see this situation, aware of the madness and lack of education of the masses, they “know that in current polis affairs there is nothing that can be called healthy, and that there is no one who can be an ally of a fighter for justice… so philosophers all keep silent, attending only to their own affairs.” Philosophers do not have the conditions to implement their management of philosophy, which creates a vicious circle—politics continually degenerates and deteriorates, and philosophy’s reputation also continually declines.
Even so, Socrates still has confidence in the possibility of the ideal polis’s existence; for example, he says, “the constitution we have conceived has been realized, or is being realized, or will be realized, so long as the philosophic goddess is in control of the state.” And this requires a critical point, or the appearance of “some necessity” that forces true philosophers to come out to take charge of the polis (whether voluntarily or not), while all citizens obey their governance; or else, the reigning kings and their governing class are suddenly moved by the divine and truly fall in love with true philosophy—only then “can city, state, and individual alike reach perfection.” So long as this critical point or necessity exists, then once philosophers become the rulers of some polis, their foremost task will be to remake the national character. After the national character is remade, the whole citizenry will look in one direction toward absolute justice, beauty, and moderation. Of course, whether such an operation is actually possible is another matter. For example, Socrates says: “It is enough for such a person to appear in a single instance; if there is one polis that obeys him, and he can implement his entire ideal constitution here—even though at present no one believes in this constitution.”
The good is another important issue discussed in this book.
The question of the good is raised by the topic of cultivating the guardians. Socrates believes that virtues such as justice are not the ultimate virtue; behind them there is something even more grand and basic, namely the good. He says: “The idea of the good is the greatest object of knowledge; knowledge about justice and the like is useful and beneficial only insofar as it is derived from it… if we do not know it, then no matter how much other knowledge we have, it is of no benefit to us.” But as to what the good is and how to define the good, Socrates cannot give a complete answer. What he can give is only vague and rough description; he is only approaching the answer: “I conjecture that no one can know justice and beauty sufficiently before knowing the good.” The only two points he is certain of are: ① the good is a single idea, not “many.” But in Socrates’ theory, an idea is “an object of thought, not an object of sight.” ② the good is higher than truth and beauty. “Truth and knowledge are beautiful, but the idea of the good is more beautiful than these two.” Here Socrates again offers an analogy. He believes that just as the sun generates light, and light enables the human eye to see visible things, so too the good makes the objects of knowledge knowable, existent, and real. So as for the good itself, although it “is not being, it is superior to being in rank and power.” Of course, such a claim is unverifiable, because concepts such as truth, good, and beauty are empty rather than real. The effectiveness of any such argument by Socrates is very limited. For example, we could use the same analogy and analogize “truth” to the “sun,” and we would conclude that “truth” is higher than all real things. In fact, Socrates’ analogy itself is not valid.
This involves the last major question of this book, namely the distinction between the visible world and the intelligible world.
When discussing these two worlds, Socrates used very abstract metaphors, whose essence is all descriptive. He first holds that the visible world can be divided into two parts: the first part is the influence of the second part, and the second part is the physical things of the first part—that is, the animals around us and all natural things and all artifacts. In other words, in the visible world, besides directly visible, already-existing beings, there is also a portion that is the shadows of these beings, or the images reflected in water or on smooth solid surfaces and similar things. As for the intelligible world, Socrates also divides it into two. “In the first part, the soul takes as images those physical things in the visible world which themselves also have their own images; inquiry can only proceed from hypotheses, not rising from hypotheses to a principle, but descending from hypotheses to a conclusion; in the second part, the soul, on the contrary, rises from hypotheses to a principle higher than hypotheses; unlike in the previous part, it does not use images, but uses only ideas, conducting inquiry entirely by means of ideas.”
The two parts of the intelligible world in fact embody two modes of logical thinking. One is to use known hypotheses and presuppositions to understand the intelligible world—that is, to treat these hypotheses and presuppositions, at least temporarily, as true for application; and as for these hypotheses and presuppositions themselves, they require neither proof nor explanation, because they are self-evident. The other is to question these hypotheses and presuppositions, attempting from the starting point to advance toward a more basic, more explanatory consensus; but this consensus itself will immediately become another kind of hypothesis and presupposition. In Socrates’ words: “Here hypotheses are not used as principles, but only as hypotheses, that is, as the starting point of a certain stage, so as to rise from this starting point all the way up to a world higher than hypotheses, rising to absolute truth; and after reaching absolute truth, to turn back and grasp those things put forward on the basis of absolute truth, and finally to descend to the conclusion.”
Socrates’ description of the visible world—especially the intelligible world—profoundly manifests Western logocentrism. Later, Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm proposed in The Structure of Science is in fact also an extension of Socrates’ exposition of the intelligible world. Science starts from hypotheses and establishes a paradigm; science has an automatic error-correction capacity—once it finds that the explanatory power of the old paradigm is limited, or that the new paradigm has stronger explanatory power, it will turn back and overthrow the old paradigm, establish a new paradigm, and so on. The second part of the intelligible world is in fact a kind of endless pushing forward, pushing on until truth self-revelation occurs. As for whether truth will ultimately self-reveal, that may be a matter of faith.
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