In his Letters II and VII, Plato argues that the insights of philosophy “cannot be put into words like other subjects can be.” They are so simple that they appear to be laughable to those who do not take part in the philosophical life or way of living, as it is only through the latter that one finds the “splendour of the simple” (Heidegger). Therefore, what Plato puts into words in his Dialogues is no other thing that the philosophical life itself; furthermore, he attempts at showing what an ideal philosopher (Socrates) would look like and how he would approach philosophy. The question, then, is: What does the figure of Socrates teach us? Among other things, we find that Socrates never gets answers to his questions, for he begins and ends all conversations in a state of aporia; and that Socrates’s life consists in dwelling-with the matter for thought and in discussing it with other people, that is, in thinking-with (them). What Socrates acquires through the endless consideration of other view sand their permanent questioning is understanding, this is to say, an insight (νοῦς, nous) into things which cannot be put into words, but can, nonetheless, be gained by living a philosophical life.
But what does Socrates wish to obtain by reaching an always-partial (since our knowledge is limited, he says) understanding? It is in the question itself that the answer lies: Socrates wishes to…, Socrates desires… Philosophy as an erotic activity, therefore (as desire is called eros in Greek). And, as he shows in the Symposium, Plato is above all interested in thinking the movement of eros towards beauty. Philosophy, we can say following Plato, is a state of in-betweenness, an insatiable desire (which can never fully obtain what it pursues) to “walk in beauty.” Why beauty? Because beauty goes hand in hand with, and gravitates around,the idea of the good. It does so in Greek language from a semantic perspective, to begin with, since the adjective καλῶς (kalos) means not only “beautiful” but also “convenient,” “favourable,” “suitable” or “perfect” for the occasion – and thereby, too, “good.” But what is that which we call “good”? Neither Socrates nor Plato are interested in providing a definition of it. Yet we would like to suggest that the good can be, at least, thought of as a certain kind of overarching (in the sense of making-an-arch-over something) idea that permeates all (forms of) being characterising (them) it thereof. For being is good, and good is being. This had already been seen by Parmenides, whom Plato (as well as later Aristotle) follows in this: being is, non-being is not, and being is obviously preferable over non-being, like life is preferable over death or non-life (as Euripides’s Iphigenia beautifully reminds us), light preferable over darkness (this is the primordial conviction on which all Greek culture stands), and thought preferable over non-thought. In fact, life, light, and thought are inherently related in Ancient Greek culture conceptually and linguistically speaking; and their equation is the very ground on which philosophy – in its Ancient Greek sense at least – is rooted. It follows, then, that Socrates wishes to understand because only in that way he can walk in beauty (which is one with the good that in turn equals being) and in life (which is another name for being). And what does Socrates get a glimpse of while walking in both beauty and life? Truth, but truth in the sense of ἀλήθεια (aletheia) or disclosure rather than norm or correctness. Disclosure of what? Of being itself: of that which brings things to the fore (or into the light, like beauty is also said to shine forth) making them stand (be)(*). Of that which is ever-living, eternal, or sub-sisting under the changing appearances.
Hence, in contrast to the sophists, who were interested in the appearances of things, Socrates is interested in thinking being and hence that which is true. Like with Parmenides, for Plato the philosopher is the one who raises above mere opinions, above the mortal world, to meet with the Goddess Ἀλήθεια (Aletheia), thus reaching the immortal realm of truth. The divine quality of truth follows from its ontological quality: insofar as truth discloses being, and being is that which stands and brings stability to the world, truth is viewed as being divine. Similarly, the Platonic εἴδη (eide, which are commonly translated as “ideas” or “forms”) are divine, since understanding them means to participate in the truth and thereby to connect the mortal and immortal domains. And eros plays a decisive role in making humans want to think being and hence access the truth. As Diotima explains to Socrates in the Symposium, in his quality of δαίμων daimon, eros carries messages between the immortal gods and the mortal humans, as well the latter’s sacrifices to the gods, binding in this way the divine and the mortal together in a whole – thus, eros is also relationality. Moreover, in the Phaedrus Plato suggests that “eros is the being and the logos of the soul” – as Drew Hyland puts it – and the basis of any creativity. And here we can make a final jump by allowing us to think eros as that which constitutes the very core of human nature (and, in fact, any nature). When we talk of a(ny) soul as being erotic: relational in the sense just explained, we mean something not so different perhaps from what Deleuze calls “a life,” that is, a purely-affirmative, if impersonal, life-force; or from what the Ionian philosophers called physis.
Let’s then say that eros is physis: the desire to raise up from darkness (non-light) and be. Therefore, a Platonic philosopher, in light of her/his own life-force, is interested in thinking what moves her/himself, in thinking what makes her/him and everything alive, by which s/he aspires to fully participate in being(**). S/he is attentive to the process of the shining-forth itself, to the coming-into-the-light of things. In other words, s/he is interested in the apparition (φαίνεσθαι, phainesthai) of being and of her/himself. Consequently, Socrates cannot be satisfied with answers, but only with questions, with the very process of questioning, of dwelling-with the matter for thought and its coming forth into the horizon of thinking. Consequently, too, Plato can only write on the mysterious (that is to say, non-discursive and non-thematisable) nous in its quality of sudden vision: as an apparition of truth/being which cannot be put into words given that it is an instantaneous process, or the divine inspiration in which pure thought consists. How can this inspiration be reached? Although being is not discursive, we can approach it through a discursive process capable of giving us a partial knowledge of it, which, in turn, may open for us the possibility of a non-discursive event, a flash of light, an insight (nous) into being. And this lightening will show that which is(***).
A Platonic philosophy and, as we want to argue here, any true philosophy, then, cannot be dogmatic, as it is adverse to any form of staticity. Philosophical thought is the process of thinking, like eros and physis are the process of being; and they establish what is, what comes-forth in the becoming of being. Thus, thinking and being are the same, like Parmenides said.
Socrates, then, is beautiful and walks in beauty, as he desires (eros), following his own nature, to bring into the light (truth) what stands (being) so as to walk in the shining-forth (beauty) which is good.
Further reading: Drew A. Hyland, Plato and the Question of Beauty.
(*) The equivalence physis = being = light = beauty = truth = life = thought, is elegantly examined by Heidegger in his 1943 seminar on Heraclitus. Commenting on the latter’s relation to the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, into which, according to Diogenes Laertius, the philosopher brought a copy of his writing, Heidegger writes: “Artemis is the goddess of φύσις [physis]. . . . This word names the self-opening coming-forth and emerging ‘up’ and upwards into an unconcealed standing-there [= being] and rising . . . Artemis appears with torches in both hands. She is called φωσφόρος – the Light Bringer. The essence of light (φάος [phaos], φῶς [phos]) is the illumination that first lets something appear and thus lets the unconcealed coming forth from out of concealment. But the essence of φύσις is at the same time the emerging and self-expanding into the open and lightened. φῶς and φάος (light) and φύσις (emerging), as well as φαίνω [phaino] (to shine and appear [which are central to Aphrodite’s, hence to beauty’s nature]) are all rooted in one and the same essence . . . The clearing in the sense of the illuminating and opening sheltering is the inceptual hidden essence of ἀλήθεια [= truth]. . . . [E]merging [and] self-illuminating mark [too] the essence of ζωή [zoe], ‘life,’ and of ζῷον [zoon], ‘the living.’ . . . The word of Heraclitus [and thereby his thought] stands under the protection of Artemis” (Heidegger, Heraclitus: The Inception of Occidental Thinking, pp. 14-16).
(**) Hence, perhaps, the famous Platonic phrase: ”An unexamined life is not worth living.” Considering the fact that language separates us from being (according to Plato himself) and pure thought unites us with it (although partly, as human knowledge is limited), the phrase begs a question: Do humans fully live if they do not philosophically think being?
(***) Cf. Heraclitus, Frag. 64: “Everything is steered by the lightening.”
Our invented Plato’s octogram shows the interconnected notions with which we play in this post. The terms do not define but co-imply themselves and interrogate each other. Furthermore, they lead to one another, so that one can travel through them all regardless of where one starts to move from.