TERMS AND DEFINITION

Aporia
Aporia is the Greek term for the state of helplessness—the inability to proceed—that
ends all of Plato’s early dialogues. Through his pointed questioning, Socrates succeeds
in showing that his interlocutors have no appropriate definition for the topic under
consideration (be that topic piety, love, courage, justice, or whatever else), but nor is he
able to supply one himself. In Book 1 of The Republic Socrates brings his friends to a
state of aporia on the topic of justice, but then in the next nine books he manages to
move beyond the aporia and give an actual answer to the question at hand.
Appetite
Appetite is the largest aspect of our tripartite soul. It is the seat of all our various
desires for food, drink, sexual gratification, and other such pleasures. It contains both
necessary desires, which should be indulged (such as the desire to eat enough to stay
alive), unnecessary desires, which should be limited (such as the desire to eat a ten-
pound sirloin steak at every meal), and unlawful desires, which should be suppressed at
all costs (such as the desire to eat one’s children). Though the appetite lusts after many
things, Plato dubs it “money-loving,” since money is required for satisfying most of these
desires. In a just man, the appetite is strictly controlled by reason and reason’s
henchman, spirit.
Auxiliary
Plato divides his just society into three classes: the producers, the auxiliaries, and the
guardians. The auxiliaries are the warriors, responsible for defending the city from
invaders, and for keeping the peace at home. They must enforce the convictions of the
guardians, and ensure that the producers obey.
Belief
Belief is the second-lowest grade of cognitive activity. The object of belief is the visible
realm rather than the intelligible realm. A man in a state of belief does not have any
access to the Forms, but instead takes sensible particulars as the most real things.
Elenchus
Elenchus is the Greek term for Socrates’s method of questioning his interlocutors. In
an elenchus, he attempts to show that their own beliefs are contradictory, and thus to
prove that they do not have knowledge about some topic about which they thought they
had knowledge.
Empirical
When something is an empirical question, that means that the question can only be
settled by going out into the world and investigating. The question, “What percentage of
the population of the United States likes ice cream” is an example of an empirical
question, which can only be answered through empirical investigation. The question
“What is the square root of two,” on the other hand, is not an empirical question. In
order to answer this question all you have to do is think about the mathematics involved;
you do not have investigate evidence in the world.
Epistemology
The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, belief, and thought.
Epistemological questions include: What is knowledge? How do we form beliefs based
on evidence? Can we know anything?
Form
According to Plato’s metaphysical theory, there is an aspect of reality beyond the one
which we can see, an aspect of reality even more real than the one we see. This aspect
of reality, the intelligible realm, is comprised of unchanging, eternal, absolute entities,
which are called “Forms.” These absolute entities—such as Goodness, Beauty,
Redness, Sourness, and so on—are the cause of all the objects we experience around
us in the visible realm. An apple is red and sweet, for instance, because it participates in
the Form of Redness and the Form of Sweetness. A woman is beautiful because she
participates in the Form of Beauty. Only the Forms can be objects of knowledge (that is,
Forms are the only things we can know about).
Form of the Good

Among the Forms, one stands out as most important. This is the Form of the Good.
Plato is unable to tell us exactly what the Form of The Good is, but he does tell us that it
is the source of intelligibility and of our capacity to know, and also that it is responsible
for bringing all of the other Forms into existence. He compares its role in the intelligible
realm to the role of the sun in the visible realm. The Form of the Good is the ultimate
object of knowledge; it is only once one grasps the Form of the Good that one reaches
the highest grade of cognitive activity, understanding. Therefore, it is only after he
grasps the Form of the Good that a philosopher-in-training becomes a philosopher-king.

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Aporia

Form of the Good

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