0 

THE ROLE OF MYTH IN PLATO’S REPUBLIC 

 

 

Gabriela Connell Sacco   

Student Number: 551301 

 

PHIL8003: MA Dissertation 

Supervisor: Samantha Vice 

University of the Witwatersrand 

 

This dissertation is submitted to the Faculty of Humanities of the University of 

the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree 

of Master of Arts by Research in the Department of Philosophy. 

The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this 

research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions drawn are 

those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. 

 

30 April 2021 

Johannesburg, South Africa  



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Declaration 

  

Signature: 
 

 

I, Gabriela Connell Sacco (student number 551301), am a student registered for 

the degree of 

Master of Arts by Research in the Department of Philosophy at the University of 

the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in the year 2021. 

I hereby declare the following: 

 I am aware that plagiarism (the use of someone else's work without 

their permission and/or without acknowledging the original source) is 

wrong. 

 I confirm that all the work submitted for assessment for the above 

course is my own unaided work, except where I have explicitly 

indicated otherwise. 

 I have followed the required conventions in referencing the thoughts 

and ideas of others. 

 I understand that the University of the Witwatersrand may take 

disciplinary action against me if there is a belief that this is not my own 

unaided work or that I have failed to acknowledge the source of the 

ideas or words in my writing. 

 
 Date:  29 April 2021 



2 

 

 Acknowledgements 

It has taken a community to raise this thesis. I owe a debt of gratitude to my supervisor, 

Samantha Vice, who has unwaveringly challenged and encouraged me, and without whose 

faith in me this project would not exist. My gratitude is also owed to Dylan Futter, whose love 

of ancient philosophy has proved infectious, and whose hermeneutic orientation has been 

foundational in my education. David van Schoor and Daniel Malamis have been incredibly 

kind and accommodating in helping me grapple with the Ancient Greek, and I am grateful for 

their help. 

 My appreciation of my fellow post-graduate students in the Wits Department of 

Philosophy, with and from whom I have learned to dialogue, is immense: Theresa Blom, Harry 

Moyo, Khondlo Mtshali, Bandile Ngidi, Lerato Posholi, Andre Saldanha, Justine Shear, Shaun 

Stanley, and Ashley Tshabalala, as well as Larissa Johnson and Efthimios Karayiannides, who 

are not strictly members of the department, but are nevertheless fellow students of philosophy. 

Thank you. 

 My experience at the 2017 Collegium Phaenomenologicum molded my conception of 

this project, and my thanks go to my fellow attendees: Elena Bartolini, whose abundant love 

of Aristotle continues to be a source of inspiration in my orientation to my own project, as well 

as Aaron Casley, Mike Chiddo, Delícia Kamens, Zack Sievers, and Shaila Wadhwani, all of 

whom have an enjoyment of and magnanimity in debate that has fostered my enjoyment of and 

belief in this project, which persisted throughout its gestation. I would also like to thank 

Michael Shaw for his kindness and encouragement, as well as Sean Kirkland and Omar Rivera, 

for their openness to disagreement and readiness to engage with my perplexity. 

 To my family – Martin Connell, Tebogo Moroe-Maphosa, and Thérèse Sacco – thank 

you for patiently weathering the chaos of this project and supporting its completion. My thanks 

also go to Heather Jones Petersen, whose patience and dedication in developing my self-

awareness has helped me find my voice. 

 Finally, my deepest gratitude go to the dear friends who have tirelessly and generously 

held my hand through this process: Heather van Niekerk, who opened her home as the safe 

haven in which I could write this thesis; Gary Beck, who has listened to me dig, and helped me 

out of, the many discursive rabbit holes that I created for myself; and Sumayya Mayet, the 

poros in turbulent seas, who has held the lantern as I made this journey. 



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Abstract 

In the Republic, Plato sets out his mistrust of myth and myth-makers, and the dangers 

that they pose to the good city. At the same time, the Republic reveals frequent references to 

myths and figures from traditional Greek mythology. The opposition between what Plato says 

and what he does creates a contradiction, which I seek to understand. My argument is situated 

in the view that Plato’s aim in writing his dialogues is to invite his reader to engage in the 

activity of philosophy. An important aspect of this is aporia, because aporia is the mindset in 

which philosophy begins. I argue that the reason that Plato makes use of myth in the Republic 

is because myths have the ability to induce distance in their audience, and this is an experience 

akin to aporia such that the audience is more open to experience aporia when they have already 

experienced a distance from the self. As such, Plato is able to use myth in his dialogue to further 

the aim of his work. Moreover, the tension between Plato’s stated orientation to myth and his 

actual use of myth has produced just the kind of perplexity that is the starting point of 

philosophy. The tension has produced aporia. 

 

 

Keywords: Ancient Philosophy, Plato, Myth, The Republic, Hermeneutics, Myth of Er, 

Aporia  

 

 

  



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Table of Contents 

Declaration ............................................................................................................ 1 

Acknowledgements................................................................................................ 2 

Abstract ................................................................................................................. 3 

Table of Contents................................................................................................... 4 

Introduction ........................................................................................................... 6 

Chapter Break-Down ........................................................................................... 11 

Chapter 1: Aporia ................................................................................................ 17 

English Translations of Aporia ......................................................................... 17 

The Mythical Context of Aporia ...................................................................... 20 

Types of Aporia ............................................................................................... 26 

The Philosophical Significance of Aporia ........................................................ 27 

Chapter 2: A Brief Account of Plato’s Philosophical Project ................................ 31 

Introduction ..................................................................................................... 31 

Virtue .............................................................................................................. 33 

Human Wisdom ............................................................................................... 36 

Justice .............................................................................................................. 40 

Plato’s Philosophy ........................................................................................... 43 

Chapter 3: What is Myth? .................................................................................... 47 

Introduction ..................................................................................................... 47 

1. The Ritual Theory of Myth........................................................................... 49 

2. Myths as Stories Involving the Supernatural................................................. 56 

3. Myth as Origin Stories ................................................................................. 59 

4. Myth as Speech ............................................................................................ 59 

5. The Functional Theory of Myth ................................................................... 60 

6. Myth as Distancing ...................................................................................... 63 



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Platonic Myth .................................................................................................. 66 

Platonic Myth: Myth as Speech ........................................................................ 67 

Chapter 4: The Myth of Er ................................................................................... 75 

The Context of the Myth of Er in Book X ........................................................ 78 

Odysseus in the myth of Er .............................................................................. 81 

Socrates the Narrator (614b2-8) ....................................................................... 82 

The Judgment of Souls (614b8-616a) ............................................................... 86 

Journey to the Spindle of Necessity (616b-617d1)............................................ 89 

The Choosing of Life After the Afterlife (617d2-621d) .................................... 90 

Conclusion......................................................................................................... 100 

Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 103 

 

  



6 

 

 

The Role of Myth in Plato’s Republic 

 

Introduction 

My project concerns the role of myth in Plato’s dialogue, the Republic. I argue that 

Plato utilizes myth in his work as a means of inducing aporia. Aporia is the experience of being 

faced with one’s own ignorance and having the desire to overcome this ignorance. It is a state 

of inspired bewilderment. As I will explore in this thesis, aporia is a necessary feature of Plato’s 

philosophical project and is the correct mental state of the philosopher who is actively engaged 

in doing philosophy. This is because philosophers cannot engage in the activity of philosophy, 

or even begin to philosophize, unless they take themselves to be in a position of ignorance. We 

do not inquire when we take ourselves to already know.  

Modern scholarship on Plato positions his work as being antagonistic towards myth. A 

cursory initial reading of the Republic suggests that this view is true: Socrates explicitly states 

in Books II (376e-383c), III (386a-402c), and X (595a-608d) that the storytellers are not to be 

trusted and must be expelled from the city. Poetry and the stories related through poetry are 

dangerous, according to Socrates, because they praise vice as virtue. The examples that Plato 

provides of instances where this takes place are all myths. Epic stories of the time were 

presented in the form of poetry, and often concerned mythical subject-matter, and contained 

mythical allusions.1 In the Book II discussion of the luxurious ideal city, Plato identifies artists 

as imitators (373b5). Poetry is considered to be a kind of art. In poetry, the poet uses words to 

represent to us the world we live in, just as the sculptor shapes marble to depict the world. The 

problem is then that artists have the power to convincingly present what is false as if it were 

true: they can make vice seem to be virtue, and, as a result, praiseworthy. When the gods, who 

are considered to be good and thus worthy of emulation, are depicted as doing harm, then vice 

becomes a justifiable choice, and what is bad is portrayed as being good.2   

                                                

1 Morgan, K. (2000). Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato. Cambridge: University of Cambridge 
Press, pp. 3; 22. 

2 The example that Socrates gives at the beginning of the discussion is of Uranus and Cronus, who attempted to 
destroy (and were later punished by) their children. Here the double wrongs of harming one’s children, and 
those children hubristically punishing their parents for it, are shown to be performed by the gods. See Republic 
377d3-379c4. 



7 

 

The poets such as Homer and Hesiod, says Socrates, produce falsehoods in their works, 

where their tales present “a bad image of what the gods and heroes are like, the way a painter 

does whose picture is not at all like the things he’s trying to paint” (377d9-e2). The word used 

to describe these tellers of tales is, “μυθοποιός,”3 (377b9) the root of which is μῦθος: myth.4 

Grube translates μυθοποιός as “storyteller,”5 and Liddell and Scott render it as “composer of 

fiction.”6 Perhaps “makers of myth” would hold as well. In this multitude of possible 

translations, we see the difficulty in distinguishing between myth-maker, poet, and story-teller. 

Poetry was often the vehicle in which stories were told, and myths often their subject-matter. 

In the words of Kathryn Morgan, “the world of the poets was a world of myth.”7   

The fact that the examples that Plato provides of stories being harmful are all myths8 

indicates, first, that the stories mentioned explicitly by Plato as being a danger to the city are 

ones that are mythical in subject matter. Plato does not explicitly state that it is the mythic 

element of stories that makes them problematic. Indeed, he does not explicitly delineate myth 

as separate from stories or as being a category of stories. There seems to be an underlying 

connection for Plato and his interlocutors between poetry, stories, and myth. Poetry was the 

means by which stories were relayed, and these stories were often mythical in subject matter, 

or at least had mythical elements. This connection is borne out by the philosophical literature 

concerning myth in Plato, where his discussions of the dangers of poetry are taken to be 

relevant to philosophical interrogations of the relationship for Plato between myth and 

                                                

3 Plato. (1903). Republic, Plato. Platonis Opera, Ed Burnet J, Oxford: Oxford University Press (Publication. Perseus 
Digital Library, Tufts: http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit::tlg0059.tlg031.perseus-grc1:24e 
(accessed March 30, 2021) 

4 Liddell, H.G. And Scott, R. (1843). μυθοποιός. ‘Greek-English Lexicon’. On Perseus Digital Library. Crane, G.R. 
(Ed). Tufts University. Available at:  
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=muqopoioi%3Ds&la=greek&can=muqopoioi%3Ds0&prior=toi
=s&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0167:book=2:section=377b&i=1 (accessed 21 April 2021). 

5 Plato. (1992). Republic. Grube, G.M.A. (Trans.). In Cooper, J.M. (Ed.). Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: 
Hackett Publishing Company, p. 1016. 

6 Liddell, H.G. And Scott, R. (1843). μυθοποιός. ‘Greek-English Lexicon’. On Perseus Digital Library. Crane, G.R. 
(Ed). Tufts University. Available at: 
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=muqopoioi%3Ds&la=greek&can=muqopoioi%3Ds0&prior=toi
=s&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0167:book=2:section=377b&i=1 (accessed 21 April 2021). 

7 Morgan, ‘Myth and Philosophy’, p. 3. 

8 For example, in the Book II discussion about supervising the storytellers (also referenced above), Socrates refers 
to Homer’s “falsehood” of depicting Uranus and Cronus as attempting to destroy their children (377e5-378a2). 
He also mentions Homer’s reference to Zeus behaving badly in the Iliad (379d) and to Athena and Zeus inciting 
oath breaking, and Themis and Zeus instigating conflict on Olympus (379e3-5).  

http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit::tlg0059.tlg031.perseus-grc1:24e
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=muqopoioi%3Ds&la=greek&can=muqopoioi%3Ds0&prior=toi=s&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0167:book=2:section=377b&i=1
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=muqopoioi%3Ds&la=greek&can=muqopoioi%3Ds0&prior=toi=s&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0167:book=2:section=377b&i=1
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=muqopoioi%3Ds&la=greek&can=muqopoioi%3Ds0&prior=toi=s&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0167:book=2:section=377b&i=1
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=muqopoioi%3Ds&la=greek&can=muqopoioi%3Ds0&prior=toi=s&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0167:book=2:section=377b&i=1


8 

 

philosophy. As Kathryn Morgan points out, myths often provided the subject matter for the 

storytellers of the period,9 but the fact that it is mythical stories that Plato picks out as dangerous 

reveals that it is myths that are of primary concern in this discussion. Second, the expulsion of 

the storytellers indicates that myths have a power that is equal, or near-equal, to philosophy. If 

this were not so, they would not pose such a great danger to the rule of philosophy in the city 

that they have to be banished. 

The cursory reading that takes note of the banishment of the poets from the city and 

concludes that Plato does not value myth is mistaken for three reasons. First, it does not take 

seriously the contradiction between what is said – that storytellers are not to be trusted and that 

their myths are dangerous – and what is done. Plato makes frequent reference to, and even 

invents, myths in almost all of his dialogues including the Republic.10 Contradiction and irony 

are an important feature of Plato’s works, not least because they have the ability to induce in 

the deeply engaged reader a state of aporia. This incongruity can be seen as a specific instance 

of a more general feature of Plato’s works: his use of contradiction and incongruity and irony 

to induce aporia in a deeply engaged reader. As Jacob Klein has pointed out, contradiction and 

irony in Plato serve the function of keeping what Plato sees as the dead written word an obstacle 

to the activity of philosophy alive such that philosophy can take place even in the absence of 

spoken conversation.11 Second, in taking the expulsion of the poets at face-value and not 

engaging more deeply with the discussion of myth, the reader has taken herself to know what 

Plato’s position on myth is. When she does so, she ceases to inquire, and hence ceases to 

philosophize. Third, as Plato’s philosophical project involves inducing his audience to 

philosophize, and as this requires the reader not to take herself to be in a position of epistemic 

authority, cursory readings of the text amount to failures to read the text. However, despite the 

expulsion of the poets, the conversations in the Republic, and in other of Plato’s works, 

extensively utilize and reference myth. This is the contradiction on which my project focuses. 

The question I ask is, “Given his stated distrust of myth, why does Plato reference and create 

myth in the Republic?” 

                                                

9  Morgan, ‘Myth and Philosophy’, pp. 3;22. 

10 Some examples of myths that he invents include, although these are not exhaustive: Aristophanes’ myth 
explaining the origin of Eros in the Symposium (189d-193d), the myth about the soul in the Phaedrus (246a-
249d), the myth of judgment in the Gorgias (523a-527a). 

11 Klein, J. (1965). A Commentary on Plato's Meno. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, pp. 6-13. 



9 

 

This question applies to many dialogues, but my attention will be primarily on the 

Republic. I have chosen the Republic for the following reasons: 

1.It is the dialogue where Plato explicitly sets out his distrust of mythmakers. 

2. It contains a rich variety of references to myth. In it, despite his explicit disavowal 

of myth (in this dialogue itself), Plato references no fewer than three of his own invented myths: 

the myth of The Ring of the Ancestor of Gyges, the Allegory of the Cave, and The Myth of Er. 

It is the Myth of Er that will be the focus of this project, against which I test my assertions. 

3. Given the abundant engagement with myth in the dialogues, a project of this size 

needs a narrow focal point, which the Myth of Er provides. 

As I have said above, my thesis question is, “Why does Plato create, reference, and 

engage myth when he is elsewhere explicitly mistrustful of myth makers?” In order to answer 

the question, I need to answer several smaller questions. These questions are: 

1. What is “myth”? 

2. What is Plato’s philosophical project? 

3. What is aporia? 

In the remainder of this section, I explain the relevance of these questions. An answer 

to the first question is necessary because in order to answer a question about why Plato employs 

myth in his dialogues, I need to have some sense of what myth is. The question “what is myth?” 

is the question I investigate in Chapter 3. 

Plato has a specific aim in writing his dialogues, and this aim is relevant to unpacking 

my thesis question. The question, “what is Plato’s philosophical project?” is therefore one of 

the questions that I need to engage before I can arrive at an answer to my thesis question. My 

answer proceeds from the viewpoint that Platonic philosophy is concerned with care of the 

soul. By care of the soul I mean self-reflection and self-inquiry aimed at locating ignorance in 

the self, and attempting to become less ignorant.12  I also proceed from the assumption that 

Plato’s philosophical project is aimed at drawing his readers towards philosophy, towards 

caring for their souls; and that his philosophical works are an invitation and inducement to 

                                                

12 If the philosopher is the lover of, the pursuer of, wisdom, then the attempt to become less ignorant is patently 
important. For Plato, it is only through philosophy that we can interrogate what the good is, and thus choose 
the good over the bad and make good decisions. It is through our ignorant mistaking of the bad for the good 
that we harm ourselves and others. Care of the soul as self-inquiry is thus of grave importance. 



10 

 

philosophize. This is something that I will deal with in more detail in my project. It is a 

viewpoint that is shared by Pierre Hadot, Jacob Klein, and Lawrence Bloom, among others. In 

light of this position, my answer to the question of why Plato references myth so often involves 

the observation that myth is a form of story-telling familiar to his contemporary audience.  

This is where the question, “what is aporia?” becomes important. Plato utilizes myth 

to induce aporia. Aporia, which I will discuss in depth in the dissertation, provokes the 

sensation of deep puzzlement and the desire to escape it. Inquiry only begins when we take 

ourselves as not-knowing, or in other words, inquiry begins in a state of aporia. Aporia is the 

correct mindset from which philosophy proceeds and in which the philosopher undertakes the 

process of philosophizing. Since Plato’s project is to encourage his audience into philosophy, 

inducing aporia in his audience is an important feature of that project. He wants his readers to 

recognize their ignorance and have the desire to escape it. In other words, he wants his audience 

to feel compelled to engage philosophically. The discussion of aporia takes place in Chapter 1 

of this project.  

My position is that Platonic myth induces aporia. Myth encourages Plato’s audience 

into the mindset from which they can begin to philosophize. Plato’s philosophical discussions, 

which utilize contradiction and irony to induce aporia, can be difficult for the novice 

philosopher to consistently engage; the philosophical discussions that have the effect of 

inducing aporia are not easy, and so the aporia they aim to induce is not always accessible. 

They can be convoluted and, in their difficulty, off-putting to his reader. Myth as a paradigm 

familiar to his contemporary audience had the ability to induce aporia without deterring 

engagement in a way that aporia created through difficult philosophical discussion cannot. On 

this point of familiarity, Kathryn Morgan makes the observation that ancient philosophers made 

use of poetic devices so as to make their philosophical works accessible, in a cultural context 

where poets had authority, and where poetic works were far more readily engaged by audiences 

than philosophical ones.13 It was myth, not philosophy, that was seen to communicate 

important facts and ideas about reality.14 I see Platonic myth as not only often providing 

dialectical support to an argument, but as an important feature of Plato’s philosophical project. 

I think that Platonic myth is an important means by which Plato pursues his philosophical 

                                                

13 Morgan, ‘Myth and Philosophy’, p. 4. 

14 Ibid, p. 36. 



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project of enabling his audience to engage philosophically. Aporia is the experience that 

initiates inquiry, and Platonic myth has the ability to induce aporia.   

Chapter Break-Down 

This thesis is made up of four chapters, “Chapter 1: Understanding Aporia,” “Chapter 

2: A Brief Account of Plato’s Philosophical Project, and Platonic Concepts Important To It,” 

“Chapter 3: Definitions of Myth,” and “Chapter 4: The Myth of Er.” I briefly describe these 

chapters below. 

I. Chapter 1: Understanding Aporia  

● In this chapter, I unpack the concept of aporia. It is usually translated 

as “impasse.” This definition is not strictly incorrect, but it is an 

oversimplification of a complex idea, which would have had a much 

more nuanced meaning to Plato and his contemporaries than is 

communicated by the word “impasse.” Aporia can be understood as 

the recognition of an epistemic deficiency and thus a form of self-

knowledge: “I know that I do not know.” The Republic itself ends in 

aporia.15 I discuss aporia in the first chapter because aporia is 

important to Plato’s philosophical project, as I understand it. And 

moreover, I understand the reason that Plato utilizes myth so much in 

his dialogues to be that myths have the ability to help induce aporia. 

The concept is thus crucial to my answer to the question I pose in this 

thesis, “Given his stated distrust of myth, why does Plato reference 

and create myth in the Republic?” This means that the concept of 

aporia is central to my project.  

II. Chapter 2: A Brief Account of Plato’s Philosophical Project, and Platonic 

Concepts Important To It 

● In order to engage my thesis question, it is necessary to set out what I 

understand Plato’s philosophical project to involve. Given the size of 

this project, the discussion here will not be as long and as complex as 

                                                

15 Halliwell, F.S. (2007).’ The Life-and-Death Journey of the Soul: Interpreting the Myth of Er’. In Ferrari, G.  (Ed.). 
The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 471. 



12 

 

Plato’s works deserve. Simply put, I take the view that Plato’s aim in 

writing his dialogues – his philosophical project – is to invite his reader 

to participate in philosophia. Plato’s conception of philosophy is 

fundamental to this project, and to his motivation in drawing his 

audience into philosophical engagement. As I will discuss in this 

chapter, Plato sees philosophy – the pursuit of wisdom – as care of the 

soul. Care of the soul is an attempt to overcome deficiencies in our 

knowledge that hinder us in making good decisions and cultivating a 

virtuous way of life. In order to get to the point at which one is caring 

for the soul, one has to recognize one’s various deficiencies. This 

recognition is none other than aporia. Hence the function of many of 

Plato’s dialogues is to provoke aporia. 

III. Chapter 3: Definitions of Myth  

● Engaging the question, “why does Plato reference and create myth in 

the Republic?” requires arriving at some understanding of what myth 

is. In order to investigate a concept’s relation to another, we need to 

have some idea of what the initial concept is. In the case of myth, this 

is no small task. As I mention above, there is no scholarly consensus 

on a definition of myth. In Chapter 3, I look at six different general 

categories of myth, and then I discuss those that are useful in defining 

Platonic myth. The answer I arrive at is that a myth is a traditional 

narrative with fantastical elements that carries secondary meaning and 

induces distance. In Platonic myths the secondary meaning is relevant 

to the philosophical discussion in which the myth is situated, and Plato 

uses the distance induced by myth to create a sensation of aporia.  

IV. Chapter 4: The Myth of Er 

The Myth of Er is an invention of Plato’s, though it does make 

use of  traditional Greek elements of myth, such as in the mythical 

figures of Odysseus and Ajax, and the supernatural beings of the Fates 

and the Sirens. The Myth of Er concludes Plato’s argument that justice 

is always better than injustice. Aporia is induced at various points in the 

myth. The explicit conclusion of the myth is that it is only in cultivating 



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the virtue of Justice in herself that the individual can be able to retain 

that justice in her soul in the afterlife such that she can choose the best 

life in which to be reborn. This explicit conclusion, though, is 

undermined by the myth itself. The myth seems also to suggest that there 

is in fact no way of avoiding injustice. I will discuss both this 

contradiction and others apparent in the Myth of Er in Chapter 4, with a 

view to the fact that they induce aporia in the reader. 

It must be noted that Plato explicitly states that the relating of myths is permissible if it 

is done under the purview of philosophers (377c); when guided by the philosopher teacher, 

myth is not dangerous, but is rather an important means of facilitating education. In the ideal 

city, myth can be profitably used, by philosophy, as part of education. Under these 

circumstances myths and stories are not dangerous to the city and its inhabitants. I think, 

however, that there is more to the importance of myth than this. It is not only in irony and 

contradiction that Plato offers a multiplicity of meanings, nor only in the case of irony that he 

has reasons for saying what he says exactly where he says it. More important than myth’s 

ability to relate complex ideas to a child, myth has the capacity to induce aporia in the student 

of philosophy. The philosopher-teacher uses myth to help the philosopher engage in the activity 

of philosophy. Myths are used in the dialogues for the purpose of enabling and encouraging 

that mindset from which philosophy begins – aporia. 

The dialogue of the Republic is aimed at answering the question, “What is Justice?” 

While the dialogue does answer this question, and in Chapter 2 of this thesis I discuss this 

definition, two further questions raised by the dialogue are perhaps not so definitively 

answered. These are the question of 1) whether justice is valuable both in itself and for what it 

brings about, and 2) whether achieving complete justice in the soul is possible. In Republic II, 

Glaucon classifies good things into three categories: things that we value as being good in 

themselves (that is, things that are intrinsically good. An example that Glaucon give of such a 

good is joy (357b 7-8). Joy is pursued for the sake of itself, and not because it brings about 

something else that is valuable), things that we value for themselves as well as for what they 

bring about, and things that we value only for what they bring about (that is, things that are 

extrinsically good) (357b3-c). In the first category of kinds of good, he gives the example of 

joy, and in the third category, he gives the example of medical treatment. The second category 

of goods – those that are good in themselves and for what they bring about – is the best. Socrates 



14 

 

argues that Justice belongs in this middle category: Justice is both intrinsically and extrinsically 

valuable.  

It is this assertion of Socrates’ that provokes the discursive construction of the good 

city, an endeavour with which the next eight-and-a-half books of the Republic are preoccupied. 

Socrates’ interlocutors agree that justice is extrinsically good, but exhort him to prove that it is 

also good in itself (358a3-367e5). Of their four arguments in praise of injustice, two of them 

are based on the perceived relationship between injustice and the good life qua the life that is 

happy: Glaucon argues that the life of an unjust person is always more rewarding than the life 

of an unjust one (360e-362c); Adeimantus argues that the unjust person who is seen to be just 

is happier than the person who is actually just (363e3-365d5). Socrates responds to their 

arguments by suggesting that before he and his interlocutors can identify what justice is in a 

human being, they might better be able to identify what it looks like in an ideal city (368e2-

369a2). In order to satisfactorily argue that it is not the case that the unjust person is happier 

than the just, Socrates proposes imagining an ideal city, and what justice would look like there. 

This involves imagining the education system for those who are to rule the city. Their education 

requires the censorship of the kinds of poetry that they can hear. This is because storytelling is 

the starting point of a child’s education, and this is when their minds are pliable (377a-b8). 

They must therefore only hear stories that depict the gods as being good (379a7-b1). Socrates 

and Adeimantus agree that a god is truly good, and the cause of all that is good (but not the 

cause of what is bad) (379b-c6). Depicting them as otherwise would invite a dangerous 

falsehood into the souls of the young. 

Socrates does not actually respond in Book II to Glaucon and Adeimantus’ arguments 

that unjust people are happy. It is only in Book IX that Socrates returns to this particular 

discussion and offers three arguments for why it is that just people are always happier than 

those who are unjust. It is also shortly after this, in the beginning of Book X, that he returns to 

the issue of censorship of the poets. Poets do not know what truth is (599a6-b10) but can 

produce only images of it in their poetry (598e4-599a4). In both cases, the issue of whether it 

is the just or the unjust person who is happy is soon followed by the arguments for the 

censorship of the poets. I do not know if the textual adjacence of these ideas16 is philosophically 

significant. I will point out that the focus of the dialogue concerns the nature of justice. The 

                                                

16 That is, the ideas of the possible intrinsic and extrinsic good of justice and the untrustworthiness of poetry. 



15 

 

question of justice’s always being better than injustice – that is, whether or not justice is 

valuable both intrinsically and extrinsically – is thus important, and is connected by the flow 

of the text to the arguments around poetry’s place in the city. This connection suggests that the 

questions around the benefits to education as well as the dangers posed by poetry are likewise 

important. Socrates argues justice is both valuable in itself and for what it brings about. Poetry, 

however, seems to be only extrinsically valuable: it can bring about pleasure in its audience17 

and it can be deployed, under the direction of the philosopher-kings, as a tool in the education 

of the young future city rulers.18 

The Republic concludes with two partially answered questions of the dialogue relating 

to the definition of justice: is justice valuable both in itself and for what it brings about? And, 

is achieving complete justice in the soul even possible? While it is the case that Socrates has 

offered a complete account of both the intrinsic and extrinsic value of justice, it is not clear that 

he has succeeded in convincing his interlocutors of this fact. Glaucon agrees that justice is good 

for the soul (612b5), and that people who are seen to be just accrue extrinsic rewards for it in 

their life (613c5). However, the myth of Er amounts to Socrates’ argument for the eternal good 

of justice in the immortal soul, and as we are not privy to Glaucon’s response to it, it remains 

unseen whether he is convinced. Perhaps this is pedantic; Glaucon at least seems to be on board 

with the notion that justice is not only valuable for the things that it brings about. The more 

important question, the one that remains unanswered, is whether complete justice in the soul is 

possible. I will discuss in Chapter 2 how justice is cultivated in the soul, but the question is 

whether a soul can become truly just, rather than always being in the process of becoming just. 

This is the question that the myth of Er attempts to answer, and, as I discuss in Chapter 4, it is 

not clear that it succeeds in doing so. The myth of Er, then, is the myth I have chosen to analyze 

in this project, not only because it is a beautiful example of a Platonic myth, but because it has 

deep philosophical relevance to the dialogue as a whole. 

In order to engage this question of why Plato both rejects and utilizes myth, one must 

examine what myth is. This is a difficult concept to define and there is no scholarly agreement 

                                                

17 In Book III, Socrates describes imitative poets as “pleasure-giving” (398a-b3); in Book X, Socrates says that if 
the “poetry that aims at pleasure and imitation” can be demonstrated to be worthy of being permitted into the 
city, then it would be allowed, because “we’d certainly profit if poetry were shown to be not only pleasant but 
also beneficial” (606e-607d). 

18 In Book II, poetry is described as having the capacity to “shape…children’s souls,” and being the beginning 
point of the education of the young citizens (376e6-377c4). 



16 

 

on the definition. Anthologists, classicists, and historians have tried to define myth, but there 

is no substantial agreement on the nature of myth in these disciplines, and no single definition 

of myth has been set out in the field of philosophy. In brief, I consider two aspects of the 

prevailing definitions to be important: First, myth distances the audience from their reality, and 

offers a situation that is so discordant, jarring, and unreal that the engaged reader finds herself 

feeling uncomfortable. Even those myths that are familiar to their audience nevertheless 

involve fantastical impossibilities that, when the audience is immersed, have the effect of 

inducing distance. As I will discuss, the discomfort generated by the incongruity between a 

reader’s reality and the reality related in myth, is a kind of distance, and distance is an aspect 

of the experience of aporia. Second, myths convey information through symbolism and 

metaphor. Thus, myths can have multiple meanings, just as Platonic irony plays with multiple, 

often discordant, meanings. The suggestion that a philosophical work can relate multiple levels 

of sometimes opposing meanings might make some modern philosophers uncomfortable. 

However, that a philosophical text can simultaneously convey two seemingly opposing ideas 

is a familiar suggestion for readers familiar with the workings of Platonic irony.  

 

  



17 

 

Chapter 1: Aporia 

I have, in my introduction, made the claim that Plato utilizes myth in his dialogues as a 

means of inducing aporia. Aporia, I have said, is the correct orientation of the philosopher. It 

is the sensation of perplexity accompanied by a desire to overcome it. That is, aporia is the 

awareness of oneself as not knowing, an awareness from which inquiry begins. In this chapter, 

I aim to discuss the concept of aporia from a Platonic perspective – that is, what it meant to 

Plato and his contemporaries.  

English Translations of Aporia 

“For this is an experience which is characteristic of a philosopher,” Plato has Socrates 

say to Theaetetus in the Theaetetus, “this wondering: this is where philosophy begins and 

nowhere else” (155d2-4). Aporia, a term which is often translated as “impasse,” is a kind of 

wondering. A one-to-one translation though, of aporia as “impasse,’ while not inaccurate, does 

not communicate the complexity and nuance that the word carries in the original Ancient 

Greek. Due to this multifariousness, aporia is a word that has multiple possible English 

language equivalents. In G.M.A. Grube’s translation of the Meno, for instance, it is translated 

as “perplexity” (80a2). In her paper ‘Beyond Aporia?’ Sarah Kofman points out the trouble 

inherent in one-to-one translations of the word aporia, a term which has so many complex 

layers of meaning that even the attempt itself to translate the word thrusts the translator into a 

state of aporia.19  

The word ‘aporia’ is made up of the terms ‘a-’ and ‘poros’.  The first, the alpha 

privatum ‘a-’ can be translated as ‘without.’ As a prefix it indicates absence in the root that it 

describes, in this case ‘poros.’20 The second, ‘poros’ is less simple to translate as it has multiple 

possible meanings. It can mean, as Kofman translates it, way or way out; a path or trail; it can 

mean “expediency.”21 Poros derives from the verb πείρω, meaning “to perforate, pierce, 

pervade.”22 Πείρω descends from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘*per-’ meaning “to cross” or 

                                                

19 Kofman, S. (1988). ‘Beyond Aporia?’ Macey, D. (Trans.). In Benjamin, A. (Ed.). Post-Structuralist Classics. 
London: Routledge, p. 9. 

20 Beekes, R. and van Beek, L. (2009). ἀ. In Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Leiden: Brill, p. 1.  

21 Kofman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’, p. 9. 

22 Beekes, R. and van Beek, L. (2009). πείρω. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Leiden: Brill, p. 1163. 



18 

 

“pass through.”23 It can also mean “passage, ford, narrowing, journey, road, way; means, way 

out.”24 A-poria, then, is the absence of a path or of a way, it is the want of a solution.   

Aporia is also related to the word “apeiras,” which is translated by Kofman as meaning 

“indeterminacy.” The word apeiras comes from the noun πεῖραρ, meaning “end, boundary, 

outcome, goal, decision.”25 Πεῖραρ descends, like πείρω, from the Proto-Indo-Eruopean root 

‘*per-’.26 The terms aporia and apeiras share this Proto-Indo-European etymological root, and 

are not semantically dissimilar in the Greek.27 If poros can be translated as passage, ford, or 

road, (which are all means of going), as well as way out and means (as in, ability to accomplish 

or bring about an end), then this word is conceptually linked to the parent word of apeiras: 

πεῖραρ, meaning goal as well as boundary. Kofman translates the root peiras, as “limit,” 

“boundary,” or “end.”28 Apeiras then is without an end, without a boundary; limitless. As such, 

“ἄπειρος” which in M.J. Levitt’s translation of the Theaetetus is translated as “puzzle” (155c), 

is in Grube’s translation of the Republic rendered as “endless” (373d)29; it can also mean 

“boundless” and “infinite.”30 The word aporia, then, would have had a richer meaning to 

Plato’s contemporaries than is communicated by the simple “impasse,” or any attempt to 

communicate it through a one to one, direct translation.   

In her unpacking of the philosophical content of the word aporia, Kofman likens aporia 

to the boundless directionless-ness of the sea. A poros, she asserts, is not just any kind of path; 

it is a sea-route, or a river passage. A poros is,  

                                                

23 Beekes, R. and van Beek, L. (2009). πείρω. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Leiden: Brill, p. 1163. 

24 Ibid, p. 1163. 

25 Ibid, p. 1163. 

26 Ibid, p. 1163. 

27 As discussed in conversation with Dr. David van Schoor and Mr. Daniel Malamis. 

28 Koffman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’ p. 9. 

29 John Burnet ed. Perseus database. 

 http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0059.tlg006.perseus-grc1:155c (accessed 30 March 2021). 

30 Liddell, H.G. And Scott, R. (1843). ἄπειρος. ‘Greek-English Lexicon’. On Perseus Digital Library. Crane, G.R. (Ed). 
Tufts University. Available at: 
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a%29%2Fpeiros&la=greek&can=a%29%2Fpeiros0&prior=ou)k
&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0171:text=Theaet.:section=155c&i=1 (accessed 30 March 2021). 

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a%29%2Fpeiros&la=greek&can=a%29%2Fpeiros0&prior=ou)k
http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0059.tlg006.perseus-grc1:155c
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a%29%2Fpeiros&la=greek&can=a%29%2Fpeiros0&prior=ou)k
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a%29%2Fpeiros&la=greek&can=a%29%2Fpeiros0&prior=ou


19 

 

a passage opened up across a chaotic expanse which it transforms into an ordered, qualified 

space by introducing differentiated routes, making visible the various directions of space, by 

giving direction to an expanse which was initially devoid of all contours, of all landmarks.31  

A poros then is not simply a well-trod means of finding one’s way, a poros is traversed 

over unknowable, chaotic terrain upon which it projects some kind of order. A poros is a means 

of introducing order where there is none, of making sense of that which is so vast or chaotic or 

directionless that it is not entirely knowable. Kofman observes that in this way, the sea onto 

which the poros is projected is not unlike Tartarus, the lowest depths of the underworld.  

Tartarus is a realm of wild swirling squalls where there are no directions, no left and no right, 

no up and no down, where there are no fixed directions, where one can find no landmarks, 

no bearings to travel by. In this infernal, chaotic confusion, the poros is the way out, the last 

resort of sailors and navigators, the stratagem which allows them to escape the impasse and 

the attendant anxiety.32 

In Tartarus where there are no directions, a person is lost in a way that she is not lost on dry 

land; at least then she would have a sense of direction, of the sky being above, and the sun 

moving through it from East to West. The chaos of Tartarus is so complete as to leave the lost 

soul bereft of not only direction, but even of her own position – she cannot know which way 

she is oriented with reference to anything else. The poros that Kofman describes is the only 

possible salvation from this absolute, unmitigated confusion; the well-travelled path will not 

be the means of escape where there is no direction or position of the self. A poros then must 

be adaptable to the chaos that it navigates, just as no one sea-route is ever the same as another, 

even one navigated by the same captain, on the same ship, repeating a journey. When the 

philosopher is in a state of aporia, she is without a path, and must cunningly forge her own 

poros. 

Thus we see that the meaning of the word in Ancient Greek has far more nuance than 

can be communicated by “impasse.” A poros is a path, a solution. Being without a poros, 

finding oneself in a landscape of utter epistemic chaos,  is the state of aporia. Aporia is deeper 

than simple confusion – it is a state of confusion in the soul. It is a confusion deeper than an 

impasse; it is to be lost in such a way that the pathway out is out of sight. Philosophically, 

aporia is the position from which inquiry can begin. It is through the process of inquiry that a 

                                                

31 Kofman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’ p. 10. 

32 Kofman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’ p. 10. 



20 

 

poros is found. Thus the two aspects of aporia are deep bewilderment and self-awareness. To 

be in a state of aporia is to be thoroughly lost, and to be aware that one is lost. I will in Chapter 

2 discuss the relationship of aporia to Plato’s philosophy in more detail. In Chapter 3, the 

aspect of self-awareness is picked up in terms of distance. I argue there that myth has the 

capacity to induce distance in its audience. This distance is a kind of self-awareness, which is 

an important aspect of aporia. 

The Mythical Context of Aporia 

Kofman observes that in the Philebus, Plato likens aporia to a “‘storm of difficulties’ 

which has to be faced at one or another moment in a dialogue.”33 In the passage to which she 

is referring, as translated by Dorothea Frede, Protarchus says in reply to Socrates, referring to 

“storm-battered sailors” (29a10) who see land, “[w]e are indeed battered by difficulties in our 

discussion” (29b). The word “ἀπορίας” is translated as “difficulties.”34 Protarchus is, in his 

perplexity in this passage, identifying with the sailors that are at the mercy of the violence and 

fickleness of the sea. And Socrates subtly likens the account that he gives (which is the answer 

to the problem) to the sailor’s longed-for sighting of land. Nevertheless, the discursive 

difficulties that they are working through, the aporia in which they find themselves, are not 

taken as insurmountable obstacles to philosophical engagement: the dialogue continues for a 

further thirty-eight passages.   

Given the complexity of the concept of aporia, belied by the casual translation of it into 

English as “impasse,” it will, I think, be illuminating to look at it in the cultural context of 

myth. In order to unpack the mythical context of the word aporia for Plato and his 

contemporaries, I will look beyond the Republic, at others of Plato’s dialogues. Given the 

importance of aporia in Plato’s philosophia, and that  philosophia is the love of wisdom, I now 

turn to Plato’s dialogue on the nature of Love, the Symposium. The relationship between love 

and wisdom as set out in the myths of the Symposium will involve looking at a third concept 

that has relevance to the discussion of aporia: mêtis, cunning. In the Symposium, Poros is 

presented as the personification of resourcefulness, and together with Penia (poverty) is the 

                                                

33 Kofman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’ p. 11. 

34 Plato. Platonis Opera, ed. John Burnet. Oxford University Press. 1903. Available at 
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0173%3Atext%3DPhileb.%3Asec
tion%3D29b (accessed 30 March 2021). 

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a%29pori%2Fas&la=greek&can=a%29pori%2Fas0&prior=u(p'
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0173%3Atext%3DPhileb.%3Asection%3D29b
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0173%3Atext%3DPhileb.%3Asection%3D29b


21 

 

parent of Eros (love). In this aetiological myth about Love, Poros is the son of Metis. The word 

mêtis translates as “wise and wily intelligence.”35 The titaness Metis is the embodiment of this 

wily intelligence, this cunning.36 There is an ancestral link set up by this myth between Metis, 

Poros, and Eros the philosopher – between cunning, resourcefulness, and philosophy. The Eros 

that Socrates describes in the Symposium is a philosopher, “a lover of wisdom through all his 

life” (203d7). The analogy between Eros and the figure of the philosopher is explicitly laid out 

in the Symposium. In Diotima’s account, related by Socrates, Eros is not beautiful but “tough 

and shrivelled and shoeless and homeless” (203d1-2). He is described as “by nature a lover of 

beauty” (203c5), and “on his father’s side he is a schemer after the beautiful and the good” 

(203d4-4). This is because one does not love what they have, but what they lack, “none of the 

gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise – for they are wise – and no one else who is wise 

already loves wisdom” (2041-3). Eros is in love with wisdom because “he is in love with what 

is beautiful, and wisdom is extremely beautiful. It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom 

and, as such, is in between being wise and being ignorant” (204b5-7). Eros desires what he 

does not have – beauty – and wisdom is extremely beautiful. The one who desires and loves 

wisdom, is the philosopher. The Eros described in Socrates’ account of Love, is a philosopher 

to whom all human philosophers are alike in their love of wisdom. Eros the philosopher is 

descended from Poros, resourcefulness, and Metis, the personification of cunning. The 

philosopher needs to be both cunning and resourceful if she is to find a way, a poros, through 

the aporia in which she is plunged on her philosophical travels.37  

The argument for love being desire for what one does not have has been explicitly 

argued for by Socrates at 199e-200c – just before he recounts Diotima’s account of love – and 

is portrayed as such in Aristophanes’ myth about love (189d6-191d4). Aristophanes tells an 

aetiological myth of human beings, of “what Human Nature was in the beginning” (189d5). 

Human beings had two faces and four arms and four legs, they were round, “with back and 

sides in a circle” (189e7). After attempting to overthrow the gods, their punishment was to be 

cleaved in two, making two persons where there had been one. They forever yearn for their 

other half, “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature 

                                                

35 Dolmage, J.T. (2009). ‘Metis, Mêtis, Metiza, Medusa: Rhetorical Bodies across Rhetorical Traditions’. Rhetoric 
Review vol. 28 (1), p. 5. 

36 Ibid, p. 5. 

37 Kofman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’ p. 9. 



22 

 

together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature” (191d2-4). In 

Aristophanes’ myth, Love is the yearning, the desire, for one’s missing other half.  

Socrates’ argument that Love must be of what is lacked begins with the assertion that 

Love is the Love of something. Love has an object, and it desires this object. Love does not 

have the object that Love desires because “a thing that desires, desires something of which it 

is in need, otherwise, if it were not in need, it would not desire it…[N]o one is in need of those 

things he already has” (200b1-9). This desire cannot be of what is ugly, since there is no such 

thing as love of that which is ugly; Love has to be a desire for beauty, and not for ugliness. 

Since Love is of what is needed, Love needs beautiful things. Good things are always beautiful, 

which means that what Love needs is good things. In both Socrates’ response to Agathon, and 

in Aristophanes’ myth, as well as in the myth that Socrates offers, Love is presented as a desire 

for that which one does not have; it inheres where there is a lack and a desire to overcome the 

lack. Socrates’ argument that Love must be desire of what one does not have has philosophical 

importance – the concept of human wisdom involves the understanding that one does not know. 

To be humanly wise is to be aware of one’s lack, rather than to have no lack at all. To love 

wisdom does not mean to be wise; to love wisdom is to be aware that one lacks it.  The 

philosopher is one who loves wisdom; one who is not wise, but, most importantly, is aware of 

this lack, and wishes to meet it. 

Kofman notes that in the ancient myth concerning the fate of Metis, she is swallowed 

by Zeus, who then births Athena from his head.38 I would like to take this analysis one step 

further. It is Zeus who apportions their roles to the gods, which means that in some sense he is 

the divine ordering principle. Socrates’ conception of justice is, as I will discuss in Chapter 2, 

just such an ordering principle.39 There is a genealogical thread set up in this myth, where 

wisdom is born from justice and cunning. I do not think that this ancestral link between justice, 

cunning, and wisdom is far-fetched, nor anathema to Plato’s own myth-making. Apart from 

being portrayed in Ancient Greek myths as the goddess of wisdom, the wisdom of Athena is 

mentioned in both the Timaeus (407a-b) and the Cratylus (24d), and in the Phaedo Socrates 

chooses death over exile from the only city wherein wisdom can be pursued – Athens, the city 

of which Athena is patron. In this myth, Wisdom – the object of the philosopher’s desire – is 

                                                

38 Kofman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’ p. 16. 

39 “[J]ustice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own” (Republic 433a6-8). 



23 

 

descended from wily intelligence, and justice. In Plato’s invented myth, mêtis is important for 

the possibility of the existence of philosophy, or at least of the original philosopher. This link 

is mirrored in the mythical context in which he was writing, namely in the origin story of 

Athena, whose domain, wisdom, is the object towards which the lover-of-wisdom strives.  

It is also worth noting that in Socrates’ myth, Eros was conceived while Poros was 

passed out drunk at the feast celebrating the birth of Aphrodite. Eros’ mother Penia became 

pregnant when she assaulted his father. This mirrors Athena’s conception, where her mother 

was consumed by her father. In both cases, of both wisdom and Eros the philosopher, each is 

begot in an act of violence. I do not think that this fact is incidental. The Republic itself begins 

with Socrates and his friends being coerced into returning to Cephalus’ house, where the 

philosophical discussion of the dialogue takes place. “You must either prove stronger than we 

are, or you will have to stay here,” Polemarchus says to Socrates (327c8-9). However much in 

jest this may have been said, the invitation is couched in a threat of violence. This dialogue, 

which ends in aporia, and reduces its characters to aporia at multiple points, begins in some 

sense against the will of its protagonist.  

Thus, both myths – the traditional and that of the Symposium – set up a connection 

between mêtis, justice, and either wisdom (in the case of the traditional myth) or Eros the lover 

of wisdom (in the case of the Symposium). In addition, in both myths, as well as in the opening 

passage of the Republic, violence is depicted as an originator of either wisdom or the pursuit 

of wisdom. In the case of the traditional myth, Wisdom is born from violence. In the case of 

the birth of Love the philosopher, Eros is born from violence. In the case of the Republic, the 

philosophical dialogue is born from the threat of violence. In the previous section of this 

chapter, I discussed the description of a poros as a way through unmitigated confusion. Aporia 

is thus understood as the experience of being in such confusion, and having no clear way out. 

The terror involved in being lost in such a way communicates the experience of aporia as a 

kind of violence. The word aporia itself, in its ancient context, communicates deep discomfort. 

Furthermore, the discomfort of experiencing the aporia that dialogue with Socrates 

induces is communicated by multiple characters: we see it in in the Republic in Thrasymachus’ 

violent outburst in Book I; in Book VI, Adeimantus expresses his discomfort in feeling 

“trapped” by the argument (487b-c). In the Theaetetus, the title character’s uncomfortable 

confusion prompts Socrates’ famous midwife analogy (147c-151d); Meno likens his perplexity 

to being stung by the torpedo fish, and he likens Socrates (who has induced his perplexity) to 



24 

 

the torpedo fish (80a5-b2). As has been discussed above, Protarchus likens the sensation of 

perplexity to being sea-battered (Philebus 29b). Aporia is not comfortable. Being in a state of 

aporia can be terrifying and bewildering, like being battered by storms at sea, or like labour 

pains; it can be painful and numbing like being stung by a torpedo fish. It is not surprising that 

philosophy is depicted in the Republic (and similarly in both the myth about the birth of Athena, 

the goddess of wisdom, and in Plato’s myth about the birth of Eros, the lover of wisdom) as 

being born from an act of violence, when the sensation in which inquiry truly begins – aporia 

– is so deeply uncomfortable that it can feel like a violence in the self. 

Alcibiades describes precisely why philosophical discussion with Socrates is so 

disconcerting in his speech at the end of the Symposium. He says, 

[other orators] never upset me so deeply that my very own soul started protesting that my life 

– my life! – was not better than the most miserable slave’s. And yet that is exactly how 

[Socrates] makes me feel all the time: he makes it seem that my life isn’t worth living!...He 

always traps me, you see, and he makes me admit that my political career is a waste of time, 

while all that matters is just what I most neglect: my personal shortcomings, which cry out 

for the closest attention. (215e7-216a7) 

Like Adeimantus in Republic VI, Alcibiades feels trapped by Socrates’ argument. He 

is forced to agree that what is of greatest importance is the well-being of his soul, more 

important even than an external good such as his career (which is something that Alcibiades 

values highly). The language that Alcibiades uses communicates that his opinion being 

changed by Socrates’ argument happens against his will, the words translated here as, “he 

makes me admit” (emphasis my own). While the experience that Alcibiades describes here is 

not aporetic as such, it shares similarities with the experience of aporia, and illustrates why, in 

part, the experience is so uncomfortable. He uses words that elsewhere have been used to 

describe the sensation of aporia (“trapped”), and this happens against his will, just as the 

Republic begins with Socrates going to Cephalus’ house against his will. Finally, the 

experience of being shown that what he thinks is the case (that his political career is of the most 

importance) is not in fact the case is often part of Socrates’ interlocutors’ experience of aporia. 

For example, Theaetetus’ realisation that what he thought knowledge is (fields of study and 

different kinds of crafts), cannot be what knowledge actually is, makes up part of his aporia 

(146d1-3); Meno’s perplexity that feels like being stung by the torpedo fish follows his 

realisation that he does not know what virtue is. An important aspect of aporia is the realisation 

that one does not know what one thought one knew, that what one thinks to be the case is not 



25 

 

actually the case, that reality is other than as one has taken it to be. It is the realisation that one 

is oriented other than one thought one was, and needs to find one’s bearings again. 

Philosophy for Plato, as has been discussed, is care for the soul. In order to care for the 

soul, the individual needs to recognize that they are deficient in a certain respect, and to be 

motivated to take responsibility for this deficiency. Trying to overcome a deficiency requires 

both being aware of the deficiency, and being motivated to improve. Being reduced to aporia 

involves recognizing that there is a gap between what one actually knows, and what one took 

oneself to know. This gap between ignorance-that-was-taken-to-be-knowledge of a thing and 

actual knowledge of that thing, constitutes a lack of self-understanding. Taking oneself to know 

when one does not know is an instantiation of one’s limitation in understanding oneself. Self-

knowledge involves the recognition that one is ignorant; the recognition that one does not have 

knowledge; that one’s intuition does not constitute explicit understanding; that one, ironically, 

does not understand oneself. This is why one of the aspects of aporia is self-awareness. This 

self-awareness is a kind of distance from the self. Distance from the self is also created when 

one is immersed in the experience of engaging a myth. 

Pierre Hadot makes the observation that Eros and Socrates are both depicted in the 

Symposium as personifying the philosopher – Eros is the mythical manifestation of the 

philosopher, and Socrates the historical one.40 As I have already pointed out, there is a 

genealogical connection set up in Greek mythology between Zeus, the father of Athena, and 

Metis, whom he consumes, resulting in the conception of Athena; that is, there is a genealogical 

link set up between justice, wisdom, and cunning. Plato mirrors this familial connection in his 

story in the Symposium of the conception of Eros, who is conceived when his mother, Penia 

takes advantage of his sleeping father, Poros son of Metis. In this mythical tale, there is a 

familial connection between Love and his mythical progenitors, Penia (poverty) and Poros 

(resourcefulness), and Metis. As Love is in love with what is beautiful, and Wisdom is the most 

beautiful, then in this tale, Eros is a philosopher. Eros, the lover of wisdom, occupies a similar 

genealogical position to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, in the Platonic myth that mirrors the 

cultural one; both are descendants of Metis. If there is a subtle literary connection between not 

only Eros and wisdom, but between Eros and Socrates the philosopher, then it seems that both 

wisdom and the love of wisdom are born out of cunning, the kind of wily cunning needed in 

                                                

40 Hadot, P. (2002). What is Ancient Philosophy? Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 41. 



26 

 

order to navigate the directionless chaos of the sea and of Tartarus, which is only navigable 

using a poros. The mythical presence of cunning, of Poros, in the genealogical history of the 

philosopher imparts on the philosopher precisely the tools needed to navigate the state of 

confusion in which they must find themself: aporia. 

Types of Aporia  

Dylan Futter describes the love of wisdom as “a complex psychological state 

constituted by a generalawareness of ignorance and desire for knowledge.”41 This is an apt way 

to describe aporia, the inspired puzzlement that motivates inquiry. Futter identifies three types 

of aporia. One kind of aporia is seen in a definitional dialogue where an interlocutor cannot 

define a virtue.42 They have the sense of what they want to say, and they think that they do 

know what the virtue is, but when faced with having to adequately and accurately state what it 

is, they are unable to do so. They took themself to have knowledge, in this case of what the 

virtue is, when they did not.43 An interlocutor might experience another kind of aporia when 

they find themself faced with a contradiction. Futter here uses the example of Socrates’ 

puzzlement when faced with the statement of the oracle, which he takes to be contradictory, 

that Socrates is the most wise. Socrates took himself to be ignorant, and was forced into a 

position of being faced with trying to accept the contradictory ideas that he was both wise (as 

the oracle said he was) and not wise, as he took himself to be.44 As Futter points out, these first 

two kinds of aporia involve logical problems for the interlocutor experiencing the aporia, in 

that they are faced with a problem that they cannot reason away.45  

The final kind of aporia does not involve particular rational problems, but is a state of 

mind that Socrates consistently inhabits, which precedes particular logical or argumentative 

problems in the dialogues. It is often the state of mind in which he is presented as entering a 

dialogue. In the Euthyphro, he claims not to know what piety is (an ignorance which precedes 

the dialogue); in the Meno, he is presented as transferring his numbing puzzlement in the same 

way that the torpedo fish numbs its prey. His state of aporia is in the Meno presented as, in 

                                                

41 Futter, D.B. (2013). ‘Socrates’ Human Wisdom’. Dialogue vol. 52 (1), p. 62. 

42 A definitional dialogue is a Platonic dialogue in which Socrates is searching for a definition for a specific virtue. 

43 Futter, ‘Socrates’ Human Wisdom’, p. 65. 

44 Ibid, p. 65. 

45 Ibid, p. 65. 



27 

 

Futters words, “transferable.”46 Importantly, in the same way that the torpedo fish’s ability to 

numb its prey is an aspect of its identity, aporia is an essential part of Socrates’ epistemological 

position, of his philosophy.47 Thus, we can understand aporia as a mental state involving a 

puzzlement which one wishes to escape. In this third sense, however, the puzzlement is so deep 

as to be a state of being, just as aporia is for Socrates, and being able to numb prey is for the 

torpedo fish. It is this kind of mental state that is the mindset of the philosopher, who is 

constantly engaged in the activity of philosophy. 

In Plato’s dialogues, aporia takes several forms: it arises out of an interlocutor’s 

inability to articulate knowledge that they believed themself to possess. It is also seen when an 

interlocutor has to contemplate a contradiction. These forms of aporia are initiated by a 

contradiction over which the interlocutor must cogitate.48 Finally, Socrates instantiates an 

aporia that seems to be a mental state that he inhabits, rather than a puzzlement initiated by a 

specific contradiction.49 Aporia is the state of being conscious that one does not know – where, 

as Futter puts it, “the object not-known is incompletely grasped.”50 It is this final kind of aporia 

that Futter describes that is of interest to my project. Socrates is in constant pursuit of wisdom, 

he is always engaged in the activity of philosophy, and he is ever drawing others into this 

activity. In this sense, and in the similarity set up in the Symposium between him and Eros, the 

quintessential philosopher, he is the ideal. That he is depicted by Plato as inhabiting a mental 

state of aporia speaks to the importance of aporia to Plato’s philosophy. The activity of 

philosophy, whether engaged in one conversation like Theaetetus does, or consistently 

throughout his daily life as Socrates does, requires an awareness of a lack of knowledge and a 

desire to meet the lack.  

The Philosophical Significance of Aporia 

For Plato, philosophy is an attempt to care for the soul. The activity of caring for the 

soul involves inquiring into one’s deficiency in relation to an ideal; and attempting to bridge 

the gap. The philosopher recognizes themself as falling short in terms of an ideal such as virtue 

                                                

46 Ibid, p. 66. 

47 Ibid, p. 66. 

48 Futter, ‘Socrates’ Human Wisdom’, p. 65. 

49 Ibid, p. 66. 

50 Ibid, p. 67. 



28 

 

and knowledge. The activity of caring for the soul is the activity of trying to ameliorate this 

deficiency in some way: this is the practice of philosophy. In order for the activity of trying to 

ameliorate a deficiency to take place, the individual needs to recognize this deficiency, and 

desire to take responsibility for it. This recognition of deficiency is the state of aporia. Without 

aporia, we cannot care for the soul. To work on oneself, to care for one’s soul, involves inquiry. 

It involves understanding how we are limited in relation to an ideal. This limitation involves a 

limitation in our understanding of the ideal. The reason we are not courageous, for example, is 

because we do not understand what it means to be courageous.  

Care of the soul is an attempt to overcome this deficiency in our knowledge. In order 

to get to the point at which one is caring for the soul one has to recognize one’s deficiency. 

Hence the function of a definitional dialogue is to provoke aporia. The definitional dialogues 

are designed to lead someone to aporia, where aporia is understood as a type of self-

knowledge. Aporia can be understood as the recognition of an epistemic deficiency and for this 

reason is a form of self-knowledge. To recognize one’s deficiency of understanding in relation 

to an ideal toward which one grasps, is aporia. Both philosophy and myth have as their point 

of origin, the orientation wherein they begin, aporia.51 “For this is an experience, which is 

characteristic of philosophy, this wondering: this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else” 

(Tht. 155d). 

Sean Kirkland notes that in his Metaphysics, Aristotle says of aporia, “One who is in 

aporia and who wonders thinks himself unknowing, for which reason every lover of myths is 

in a way a lover of wisdom, a philosopher. For myth is composed of wonders.”52 Aporia is not 

merely a state of confusion. Being in a state of aporia involves not only an awareness of a lack 

of knowledge, awareness of a deficiency, but also the desire to meet it: aporia is a state of 

inspired bewilderment. Philosophy begins in a kind of wondering. Specifically, philosophy 

begins in aporia because it is in aporia that one becomes aware of one’s deficiency. This is 

because, as I will discuss in Chapter 2, if the soul is disordered, one cannot properly have the 

knowledge one needs to overcome one’s deficiency or lack of virtue.  

Aporia is the correct orientation of the philosopher because it is an invitation to inquiry. 

Aporia reminds the soul that it does not know, and invites it to pursue possible answers. Myth 

                                                

51 Kirkland, S.D. (2004). ‘Socrates contra scientiam, pro fabula’. Epoché vol. 8 (2), p. 313. 

52 Ibid, p. 313. 



29 

 

is one means by which Plato can impel his audience towards philosophy. Myth induces aporia, 

or at least a psychic state akin to aporia, and Platonic myth is designed to aid the philosophical 

discourse in which it is situated. The reason, then, for Plato’s engagement with myth is because 

doing so aids his philosophical project. Myth brings about aporia, and aporia is where 

philosophy begins. Aporia is to the philosopher an invitation to inquiry.  

Inquiry is the proper activity of the philosopher, and aporia is the place at which inquiry 

begins. Inquiry does not make suppositions about what the Good is. When we know, we cease 

to inquire. When we do not know – for example, when we do not know what the Good is – we 

inquire. If we live a life of inquiry into what the Good is, then we do not make possibly-

mistaken-and-therefore-harmful assumptions about what the Good is. The good life is the one 

that inquires into what the good life is.53 When we are aware of our ignorance, when we are 

humanly wise, we are in a position to pursue a life of inquiry. Human wisdom, as I will discuss 

in the following chapter, enables us to live the kind of life that allows us to care for our souls. 

This is Plato’s object: to lead his audience towards human wisdom. This takes place through 

philosophy. Myth, being familiar and accessible to his audience, is a means of bringing them 

into the frame of mind in which they can engage philosophically. 

I have argued in this chapter that aporia should be understood in the context in which 

the term originated. For Plato and his contemporaries, aporia has the meaning of being without 

a path or a solution. It is semantically linked to the concept of apeiras, meaning boundless. To 

be in a state of aporia is to be lost in a place without boundaries or directions, as one is lost at 

sea or in the depths of Tartarus. To escape aporia is to cunningly search for and construct a 

poros, a flexible, constantly adapting path that is the only way to make it through the chaos. In 

this way, aporia is an invitation to find such a poros.  

I have also argued that aporia can be understood as a recognition of an epistemic gap 

between what one took oneself to know and what one actually knows. This recognition amounts 

to self-awareness. This self-awareness is a kind of distance from the self. In its mythical 

context, as well as in Plato, aporia is depicted as uncomfortable, as something that the 

experiencer desires to overcome. In this sense, aporia is an invitation, a motivation, to move 

away from ignorance. Aporia is thus an invitation to philosophy. Since philosophy is the 

                                                

53 Bloom, L. (2017). The Principle of Non-contradiction in Plato’s Republic: An Argument for Form. Lanham, 
Maryland, Lexington Books, 55.  



30 

 

movement towards wisdom, and aporia is the awareness of ignorance and the desire to escape 

it, aporia is important to philosophical engagement. If the philosopher is one who enquires, 

then aporia is the correct mental state of the philosopher. 

 

  



31 

 

Chapter 2: A Brief Account of Plato’s Philosophical Project, and 

Platonic Concepts Important To It 

Introduction 

In this chapter, I will discuss what I take Plato’s philosophical project to be, and I will 

unpack what I take Platonic philosophy to involve. Briefly, Plato's philosophical project – that 

is, his aim in writing his dialogues – is to invite his audience to take part in the activity of 

philosophy.54 What, then, is philosophy? Directly translated, philosophia is the love of, the 

pursuit of, wisdom. Love, as Agathon admits in the Symposium, is the desire for that which one 

does not have (200a-201a1). The notion of philosophy being an activity is entailed in the word 

itself. To pursue wisdom is to be moving, or attempting to move, toward it, from a position of 

not having wisdom. This pursuit must be an active one, or it is not a pursuit at all. Philosophy, 

then, is an activity. Plato’s aim in his dialogues – his philosophical project – is to invite his 

audience to devote themselves to engaging philosophically.55 Plato pursues his aim of drawing 

people into the activity of philosophy because the only way for the individual to achieve a good 

life is through philosophy.   

To engage in philosophy, for Plato, is to care for the soul. There are at least two 

conditions needed to engage in philosophy thus understood: first, the individual needs to 

recognize that she is deficient in a certain respect and, second, she needs to be motivated to 

take responsibility in addressing this deficiency. If we think we are already courageous, we 

have no reason to work to become courageous; furthermore, if we see ourselves as being 

cowardly, but are not motivated to become courageous, then we will also not work to become 

so. Likewise, if we take ourselves to have knowledge of x, then we have no reason to work to 

gain knowledge of x; if we see ourselves as not knowing x, but are not motivated to gain 

knowledge of x, then we will also not work to gain knowledge of x.  

The activity of philosophy as caring for the soul involves both inquiring into one’s lack 

in correspondence to an ideal, specifically the ideal of wisdom and attempting to bridge the 

gap between where one is and the ideal toward which one aims. To lack wisdom is, of course, 

                                                

54 Hadot, ‘What is Ancient Philosophy?’ p. 46-47. 

55 Futter, D.B. (2015). ‘Variations in Philosophical Genre: The Platonic Dialogue’. Metaphilosophy vol. 46 (2), p. 
253. 



32 

 

to be ignorant in some way. As such, the practise of philosophy is the activity of caring for the 

soul by ameliorating the deficiency that is one’s ignorance. In order for this to take place, the 

individual needs to recognize this deficiency, and be motivated to take responsibility for it.  

This recognition of deficiency is the state of aporia. I will discuss this term in greater 

detail in Chapter 3, which focuses on unpacking what that term means in its original ancient 

Greek context, and what it means to Plato’s philosophy. Briefly, aporia is often translated as 

“impasse.” The word is made up of the terms ‘a-’, meaning without, and ‘poros’, meaning  

path. When the philosopher is in a state of aporia, she is without a path.56 When she cannot see 

a way through the argument, when she realizes that she does not know what she thought she 

knew, she is in a state of aporia. Sarah Kofman makes the observation that the word ‘poros’ 

can also be translated as “to discover an expedient” and “to find a way out.”57  

Without experiencing or being in a state of aporia, one cannot care for the soul. This is 

because aporia, as recognition of a lack of knowledge, is an important aspect of care of the 

soul. Aporia is an important aspect of caring for the soul because working on oneself, caring 

for one’s soul, involves a certain kind of inquiry. It involves an inquiry into the self. Answering 

the question, “what is x?” in an effort to gain knowledge of x, involves asking the question, 

“what are the limits of my knowledge of x?” or “what do I not know of x?” The question “what 

is x?” then involves not just an interest in gaining knowledge of x, but also involves being 

aware of the self and the lack of knowledge that the self has. Being aware of what one does not 

know is a form of self-knowledge. The statement “I do not know x” is also the statement “I 

know of myself that I do not know x.” 

Working on oneself, caring for one’s soul, involves a certain kind of inquiry. It involves 

an inquiry into the self. It involves understanding how we are limited in relation to an ideal – 

for instance, the ideal as knowledge of a certain kind, knowledge of what virtue is, for instance. 

This limitation in relation to an ideal involves a limitation in our understanding of the ideal. 

The reason we aren’t courageous, for example, is because we do not understand what it means 

to be courageous. The person who truly knows what courage is will always know what the 

courageous course of action is, even though every situation in which it is necessary for her to 

be courageous will be different to the next. In order to do what is best, we must know which 

                                                

56 Kofman, ‘Beyond Aporia?’ p. 9. 

57 Ibid. 



33 

 

action is best. In order to choose what is best, we must know which option is best. This applies 

to all choices and to all virtues. If we do not know what the best choice is, then we will rarely 

make the best choice. If we do not know what the virtuous action is then we will rarely take 

the best action. It is our ability to live well (and by this I mean both our ability to make good 

choices such that we can live a good life, and our ability to do what is morally good) that is at 

stake.58  

The philosopher, the lover-of-wisdom, is someone who is in-between ignorance and 

wisdom, who is not wise, but pursues wisdom.59 That is, the philosopher is someone who 

inquires. This means that the activity of philosophy begins in inquiry - one does not inquire 

where one is not perplexed. One does not inquire when one takes oneself to already know. We 

harm ourselves when we take ourselves to have knowledge that we do not actually have. We 

harm ourselves when we mistake the bad for the good while being unaware of this mistake. 

This lack of awareness of the mistake in our thinking amounts to a lack of knowledge of 

ourselves. We do not know enough of ourselves to know what the limitations in our knowledge 

are. How do we then live a virtuous life, a life where we are able to recognise the bad, and 

where what we take to be good is actually good? The answer for Plato is that the least harmful 

life for humankind is the life of inquiry.60 Inquiry is the proper activity of the philosopher, and 

it begins in aporia. Aporia is a state of puzzlement, often arising from a contradiction where 

both sides of the contradiction are equally plausible. Importantly, this puzzlement also involves 

the desire to resolve it. 

Virtue 

The concepts of knowledge and virtue are in Plato intimately linked. Being virtuous 

involves having knowledge of what virtue is. I used the example of courage above – one cannot 

be courageous if one does not know what courage is. The Republic lays out the argument that 

a good city is one in which philosophy flourishes, and philosophy can only flourish where 

                                                

58 The connection between the virtuous life and self-knowledge is an important feature of Plato’s philosophy In 
order to make good choices for our own well-being, we must know what is good for us. This involves knowing 
what we need, which in turn requires knowledge of what we lack. Self-knowledge is then in some sense at the 
root of the good life, and aporia is the impetus to inquire into ourselves. 

59 Hutter, H.H. (1989). ‘Philosophy as Self-Transformation’. Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, vol. 16 
(2/3), p. 181. 

60 Bloom, L.  (2017). The Principle of Non-contradiction in Plato’s Republic: An Argument for Form. Lanham, 
Maryland, Lexington Books, p. 62. 



34 

 

people engage in the activity of philosophy.61 By “good life” is meant both a life that is happy, 

and a life that is morally good. I use the word ‘moral’ here because, as I discuss below, while 

for Plato virtue is excellence, to be virtuous also has the connotation of being morally good. 

To be a good man meant to be good at being a man, and this involves being ethically, or 

morally, good. From Plato’s perspective, this distinction between the good life as the morally 

good life, and the good life as the happy life, is a false distinction. The argument for the good 

life being the virtuous life comes at the end of Republic I. The discussion of both human 

happiness and human virtue ultimately also involves the discussion of the function of the 

human being. Socrates defines the function of a thing as, “that which one can do only with it 

or best with it” (352e2-3). The function of an eye, for example, is seeing because only eyes can 

do the job of seeing; the function of pruning knives is pruning because pruning is done best 

when it is done using pruning knives (cf. 352e-353c). Identity is based on function. For a thing 

to be what it is, is for that thing to be suited to perform the function that it is intended to perform. 

Virtue is, then, determined by function. As G.M.A Grube points out, “virtue” as translated from 

ἀρετή, simply means “excellence.”62 The virtue of a thing is the state of being or feature of that 

thing that renders it good at being the thing that it is.63 Another way of saying this is that the 

virtue of a thing is the feature of that thing that renders it good at performing its function.  

Since virtue is determined by function, the virtue of a pruning knife is what makes it 

good at performing the function for which it is designed. That is, a virtuous pruning knife is 

one that prunes vines well. For a pruning knife to be a pruning knife is for it to do the job of 

pruning vines. For it to be a good pruning knife is for it to be good at pruning vines. A pruning 

knife that is good at pruning vines is a virtuous one. Likewise, to be a virtuous human being is 

to achieve excellence with regards to being a human being. From this perspective, when we 

say that a human being is virtuous, we mean that that human being is good at performing the 

function of being a human being. This in turn raises the question, “What is the function of a 

human being?”  

                                                

61 Arguably, this is what is argued for in the whole of the Republic. Specifically, that the leading class must be 
philosophers is stated at 473c10-e2 and 503b3-5. The aim of their education is to bring the whole soul under the 
direction of reason (518b4-519c4), which is precisely what the activity of philosophy does. 

62 Plato. (1992). Republic. Grube, G.M.A. (Trans.). In Cooper, J.M. (Ed.). Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: 
Hackett Publishing Company, p. 980. 

63 Ibid. 



35 

 

For a person, or more accurately in terms of the language of Plato’s discussion, for a 

soul, to be virtuous, there must then be a function that people have. In Book I, Socrates and 

Thrasymachus agree that living is the function of the soul (353d9). The function of the soul is 

living. The virtuous soul is then one that lives well. As Socrates says in Book I, the person who 

lives well is the happy person: “And surely anyone who lives well is blessed and happy, and 

anyone who doesn’t is the opposite” (354a1). The good life evaluated in terms of virtue, and 

the good life evaluated in terms of happiness, are thus the same life: to live the good life means 

to be virtuous, and thus happy. Justice is the virtue of the soul (353e7). The just life is thus the 

happy life.64 This is because the virtuous life is the happy life, and justice is the soul’s virtue.  

What does it mean to live well? Or, in other words, what is involved in being just? The notion 

of a human being’s function, and thus of human virtue, is tied up in the notion of rationality, 

and of the human soul. The tripartite nature of the human soul is discussed in Book IV (435b7-

441c5). The soul is divided into three parts: the appetitive, the spirited, and the rational. The 

appetitive part is the part that has appetites. This is the part of the soul that desires food when 

it is hungry, that desires water when it is thirsty, that desires hot when it is cold, and desires 

cold when it is hot. It is the part of the soul that keeps the organism alive.  

The spirited part of the soul is the part that drives and motivates. It is the part of the 

soul that is concerned with such virtues as honour; it is the socially-oriented part of the soul. 

Finally, the third part of the soul is Reason. This is the part of the soul the having of which 

distinguishes human beings from other beings. Because it is the part of the soul that is unique 

to human beings, it has an important aspect to play in human identity. When we ask the 

question, “what is the function of the human being?” the answer is going to have something to 

do with the rational part of the soul because this is the part of the soul that is uniquely human.65 

The function of the human being, the function that only the human being can perform, is to 

exercise their rationality in a specific way. This means that the virtuous human being, the just 

human being, is one who exercises the rational part of their soul in a specific way. The just 

human being is thus in possession of a peculiar kind of ‘human’ wisdom. 

                                                

64 “But isn’t justice human virtue?” (335c3); “a just person is happy, and an unjust one is wretched” (354a4). 

65 C.f. Aristotle’s function argument in NE 1.7. 



36 

 

Human Wisdom 

In the Apology, Socrates relates the fact that the oracle at Delphi made the statement 

that Socrates is the most wise of human beings (21a6-7). When this statement was at first 

related to him, he had found it puzzling because he does not think that he knows anything; he 

does not take himself to be wise (21b2-5). After engaging with this question and questioning 

various people who are wise in their fields of work or study, he came to the conclusion that to 

be the most wise, is to be aware of one's own ignorance. He concludes that human wisdom, the 

wisdom that imperfect human beings are capable of, is comprised of the awareness that we are 

ignorant (21b7-23b7). For the person who is humanly wise, the content of their knowledge is 

that they do not know. This has implications for how it is that human beings can exercise the 

rational part of their souls, such that they are pursuing the function of being a human being.  

Reasoning is the activity through which the soul can order itself with a view to being 

just.66 In Republic IV, Socrates defines Justice. Justice involves each part of a thing doing its 

own work, and not the work of any other part (433a-b). That is, justice is a virtue that belongs 

to wholes when they are correctly ordered such that each part can do its own work well, without 

interfering in the work of any of the other parts. In the city, this means that each citizen must 

do their own work and not the work of any of the other citizens. The potter must mould clay 

and bake pots, and not participate in the defence of the city; the guardians must do their own 

work of keeping the city safe and secure; the philosopher-kings must rule (cf. 434a-c). In the 

human being, the soul must be ordered such that each of the three parts of the soul can do their 

own work, with the rational part ruling the whole soul just as the philosopher-king rules in the 

city (441d-e). 

The implication of the fact that human wisdom is knowledge of ignorance for the 

philosopher, the pursuer of wisdom, is that discursive focus is on asking questions, rather than 

on dogmatically giving answers. If you take yourself not to know, you are not in a position to 

offer certainties as answers. On the other hand, if you take yourself not to know, but have no 

interest in knowing, then you are not going to be engaging with questions, you are not going 

to inquire. The philosopher then, being the lover of wisdom, the person who is pursuing 

wisdom, who is moving from ignorance to wisdom, is the person who takes themself not to 

know, but who is nevertheless motivated to know. This involves being in a constant state of 

                                                

66 Bloom, The Principle of Non-contradiction’, p. 81. 



37 

 

questioning, of inquiry. This is how Plato sees the human function, that to be performing the 

function of being a human being is to be constantly exercising the rational part of the soul, 

while being aware that true knowledge, is beyond our ability to completely grasp. We never 

see the whole of a situation, and we always interpret things against a background of pre-formed 

assumptions and opinions about what is good. Our view of a thing will always reveal only 

partial knowledge of that thing, and so it cannot, strictly speaking, be called knowledge. 

Knowledge must be complete, or it is not knowledge. From a Platonic perspective, to have 

knowledge of a thing is to see it as it truly is, rather than to see it as it appears to be.  

So why is it that this state of inquiry – of being aware that one does not know, and being 

motivated to try to know, however far out of our reach this might actually be – why is this an 

important activity? This state of inquiry that I am discussing is the state of aporia. If we think 

about the harms that human beings can cause to each other and to themselves, it is rare that a 

human being sets out to do something that is harmful to their own aims, or to do something 

that purposefully brings harm to their community. Most often, when someone does something 

that causes harm, in other words, when someone does something that is bad, it is because they 

have mistaken the bad for the good. They think that they are doing something that will bring 

about good, but they actually bring about bad. They do not have a true idea of what the good 

is in that situation. Laurence Bloom uses the example in his unpublished work on the Apology 

of someone who smokes.67 We can say that smoking is an objectively bad decision to make. 

We know it is bad for the body, and that it is injurious to the long-term health of the individual 

who is smoking. It is even injurious to anyone who is in the smoker’s immediate environment. 

Someone who is smoking is making a decision in the moment that they know is bad. Yet, it 

isn't actually clearly the case that the smoker is consciously choosing what is bad. The smoker 

is mistaking the immediate pleasure of smoking for the good, rather than looking at the long-

term good of health. It is a mistake of distance from the individual: the immediate thing - the 

pleasure of smoking - is taken to be what is better than the faraway thing, namely health.68 

This question of “what is the good?” is then of paramount importance to any decision 

we make. It is both of paramount importance to decisions that we make that have moral content 

such as, “will this decision cause harm to others?” as well as decisions that have relevance to 

                                                

67 Bloom, L. (2017). Plato’s Apology: An Argument for the Examined Life. Unpublished manuscript, p. 56. 

68 Bloom, ‘Manuscript’, p. 56-57. 



38 

 

our own happiness (“Will this decision be good for me?”). For Plato, that distinction between 

“good for others” and “good for the self” is not a real one. It is not a distinction that we can 

make, which is why for Plato the happy life, and the moral life, are the same life.69 In the 

Republic, Adeimantus makes the observation that a city comes into being because no one 

person is able to meet all their needs themself. In order to survive and thrive the individual 

needs a community. Adeimantus says:  

I think a city comes to be because none of us is self-sufficient but we all need 

many things…And because people need many things, and because one person 

calls on a second out of one need and on a third out of a different need, many 

people gather in a single place to live together as partners and helpers. And such 

a settlement is called a city (369b6-c3).  

The entire dialogue concerning justice proceeds from the observation that people need 

each other. Whatever justice is to be found in the city can only be found because the city exists 

so that people can depend on and help each other. People need each other, and without 

community they cannot survive. For a person to make good decisions for herself, she must also 

make good decisions for the community, because her survival is dependent on the survival of 

the community. If she is making good decisions, if she is making virtuous decisions, then these 

decisions will be good for both herself and her community because she depends on the 

community. Likewise, if she is making good decisions for the community, then these will also 

be good decisions for herself, because when the city that she depends on thrives, so too does 

she.  

Pierre Hadot observes that Socrates, who alone the oracle deemed to be wise, and who 

dedicated his life to the pursuit of philosophy and the attempt to bring others into the activity 

of philosophy, was also involved in the business of the life of his community: he had a family, 

and he spent his days in dialogue with other citizens.70 Hadot quotes Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 

“[Socrates] thought that it was impossible to be just by oneself. If one is just all by oneself, one 

ceases to be just.”71 Merleau-Ponty argues that in the Apology it is not himself that Socrates 

                                                

69 Pierre Hadot, for example, writes: “[c]are for the self is…indissolubly, care for the city and care for others.” 
See What is Ancient Philosophy, pp. 37-8. 

70 Ibid, p. 37. 

71 Ibid. 



39 

 

defends, it is the city of Athens. In sentencing Socrates, the tribunal will be sentencing 

philosophy, and thus separating themselves from what is good for them. Socrates’ aim in his 

argument is to have them accept philosophy, accept the care of the self, and what is good for 

the city. When the tribunal condemn him, they condemn themselves; they condemn themselves 

as a city that has rejected philosophy.72 What is good for Socrates – that he not be found guilty 

of impiety – is good for the city, and what is good for the city – that the tribunal sees the merit 

in his philosophy, and find him not guilty – is good for Socrates. 

Philosophy is an activit