“But it is not painting or any sort of manual craft, but speech and discourse, that constitutes the more fitting medium for exhibiting all living things, for those who are able to follow; for the rest, it will be through manual crafts.
Young Socrates: That much is correct; but show me how you say we have not yet given an adequate account.
Visitor: It is a hard thing, my friend, to demonstrate any of the more important subjects without using models. It looks as if each of us knows everything in a kind of dreamlike way, and then again is ignorant of everything when as it were awake.
Young Socrates: What do you mean?
Visitor: I do seem rather oddly now to have stirred up the subject of what happens to us in relation to knowledge.
Young Socrates: How so?
Visitor: It has turned out, my dear fellow, that the idea of a ‘model’ itself in its turn also has need of a model to demonstrate it.
Young Socrates: How so? Explain, and don’t hold back for ‘my’ sake.
Visitor: Explain I must, in view of your own readiness to follow. I suppose we recognize that when children are just acquiring skill in reading and writing… That they distinguish each of the the individual letters well enough in the shortest and easiest syllables, and come to be able to indicate what is true to them.
Young Socrates: Of course.
Visitor: But then once again they make mistakes about these very same letters in other syllable and think and say what is false.
Young Socrates: Absolutely.
Visitor: Well then, isn’t this the easiest and best way of leading them on to the things they’re not yet recognizing?
Young Socrates: What way?
Visitor: To take them first back to those cases in which they were getting those same things right, and having done that, to put these beside what they are not recognizing. By comparing them, we demonstrate that there is the same thing with similar features in both combinations, until the things that they are getting right have been shown set beside all the ones that they don’t know; once the things in question have been shown like this, and so become models, they bring it about that each of all the individual letters is called both different, on the basis that it is different from the others, and the same, on the basis that it is always the same as and identical to itself in all the syllables.
Young Socrates: Absolutely right.
Visitor: Well then, have we grasped this point adequately, that we come to be using a ‘model’ when a given thing, which is the same in something different and distinct, is correctly identified there, and having been brought together with the original thing, brings about a single true judgment about each separately and both together?
Young Socrates: It seems so….
Visitor: Right, my friend: How could anyone begin from false belief and get to even a small part of the truth, and so acquire wisdom?
Young Socrates: I dare say it is impossible.”
p. 319-320, “Statesman,” PLATO COMPLETE WORKS (1997)
Friday, April 7, 2017
PLATO'S "MODELS"
“But it is not painting or any sort of manual craft, but speech and discourse, that constitutes the more fitting medium for exhibiting all living things, for those who are able to follow; for the rest, it will be through manual crafts.
Young Socrates: That much is correct; but show me how you say we have not yet given an adequate account.
Visitor: It is a hard thing, my friend, to demonstrate any of the more important subjects without using models. It looks as if each of us knows everything in a kind of dreamlike way, and then again is ignorant of everything when as it were awake.
Young Socrates: What do you mean?
Visitor: I do seem rather oddly now to have stirred up the subject of what happens to us in relation to knowledge.
Young Socrates: How so?
Visitor: It has turned out, my dear fellow, that the idea of a ‘model’ itself in its turn also has need of a model to demonstrate it.
Young Socrates: How so? Explain, and don’t hold back for ‘my’ sake.
Visitor: Explain I must, in view of your own readiness to follow. I suppose we recognize that when children are just acquiring skill in reading and writing… That they distinguish each of the the individual letters well enough in the shortest and easiest syllables, and come to be able to indicate what is true to them.
Young Socrates: Of course.
Visitor: But then once again they make mistakes about these very same letters in other syllable and think and say what is false.
Young Socrates: Absolutely.
Visitor: Well then, isn’t this the easiest and best way of leading them on to the things they’re not yet recognizing?
Young Socrates: What way?
Visitor: To take them first back to those cases in which they were getting those same things right, and having done that, to put these beside what they are not recognizing. By comparing them, we demonstrate that there is the same thing with similar features in both combinations, until the things that they are getting right have been shown set beside all the ones that they don’t know; once the things in question have been shown like this, and so become models, they bring it about that each of all the individual letters is called both different, on the basis that it is different from the others, and the same, on the basis that it is always the same as and identical to itself in all the syllables.
Young Socrates: Absolutely right.
Visitor: Well then, have we grasped this point adequately, that we come to be using a ‘model’ when a given thing, which is the same in something different and distinct, is correctly identified there, and having been brought together with the original thing, brings about a single true judgment about each separately and both together?
Young Socrates: It seems so….
Visitor: Right, my friend: How could anyone begin from false belief and get to even a small part of the truth, and so acquire wisdom?
Young Socrates: I dare say it is impossible.”
p. 319-320, “Statesman,” PLATO COMPLETE WORKS (1997)