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  • 9 - The meaning of “saphēneia” in Plato's Divided Line

  • Edited by Mark L. McPherran, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
  • Book:
    Plato's 'Republic'
    Published online:
    04 February 2011
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010, pp 171-187

  • Summary

    Plato's famous comparison of the different forms of human awareness with a line divided into four parts contains many puzzling features. This chapter talks about Socrates' most puzzling claim, namely that the different line segments provide a measure of the relative degrees of sapheneia and asapheia- usually translated into English as "clarity" and "obscurity"- available to human beings. It argues that none of the usual translations of sapheneia provides us with a satisfactory understanding of this remark. The chapter reviews the use of saphes and its cognates from the time of the Homeric poems down to the fourth century BCE and argues that the relevant sense of sapheneia in this setting is "full, accurate and sure awareness of an object". Socrates concludes that justice exists in the individual when each of the elements in the soul does its own and avoids meddling in the business of the others.