Text

First, 507b

.... [I] remind you of things that have been said here before and often on many occasions:

There are any beautiful things and many good things...

We speak also of the Beautiful Itself and the Good Itself

And so,

everything which previously we considered "many,"

We now go back

and consider each to be "one" according to [its] Form.

The former [many] things

we speak about as "seen,"

not "mentally understood" (noesthai)

But Forms we speak of as "understood," not "seen"...

We speak of many beautiful things

and many good things

And Beauty Itself

and Goodness Itself

and so with all the things

which before we considered many

we now consider them again

according to a single Form of each, which is one,

and which we in each case call ‘that which is’ ...

Commentary

As Julia Annas points out, Plato's Republic does not try to prove to the general public that the Forms exist.  It refers to this theory as something already well-known to an intended audience of Plato's friends already familiar with the basics of this theory, something "said here often before."

Plato's contrast is not a contrast between "one" valid definition of Beauty and "many" invalid definitions.  It is the contrast between a single concept "beauty" on the one hand, and many concrete examples of beautiful things.  This leaves open the possibility that there might be several valid definitions of Beauty, each one of these instantiated in many different beautiful things.

The contrast between one concept and many examples is also associated with the contrast between abstract concepts, seen only by the mind, and concrete examples visible to the senses.

The final phrase here "that which is" (ho esti) introduces Plato's somewhat peculiar use of the Greek verb "to be" (einai), and its derivatives like "is" (esti), "being" (on), etc.  He can scarcely mean that only the Form of Beauty "is" - - that it "exists," in contrast to concrete examples of beauty which "are" not, i.e. do not exist.  As will be made clearer in passages quoted below, it makes more sense to suppose that he is using "is" to mean that only the Form of Beauty "is" fully beautiful, only it represents something only and always purely beautiful. The contrasting case is the case of many beautiful concrete objects, which might be partly beautiful and partly not beautiful, or which might change from being beautiful to being not-beautiful. 

Next 476a-476d.

Sight-lovers [philo-theamones]... and sound-lovers [phil-ekooi] are a strange group to be numbered among wisdom-lovers [philo-sophous].

You could not get them to attend any serious debate... they lend their ears to every chorus and run around to all the Dionysiac festivals, never missing one in all the villages.

Are we to call such men... "wisdom-lovers"? -No.

But they are like wisdom-lovers... [because] true wisdom-lovers are sight-lovers of [the sight of] truth [philo-theamones tes aletheias].

- How do you mean?

- It's difficult, [but let me explain]:

Since they are two, each is one.

And in respect to "the Right" and "the not-Right,"

"the Good" and "the Bad,"

and all the Forms...

each is one,

but because of mixing

with bodies and actions and each other,

each appears everywhere under many appearances.

The abstract Form of Beauty exists in many beautiful objects, but it exists there "mixed with" concrete bodies (somata), and sometimes even mixed with the opposite Form, the Form of "the shameful."  The context suggests, for example, a specific scene in a theater-performance presenting the audience with some things inspiringly beautiful and some things Plato regards as shameful.

This is explicitly related to a discussion of Rightness earlier in the Republic, where Socrates uncovers a contradiction in Kephalos' overly-concrete definition of rightness, "return to each what you have received from him." Since this definition can refer both to actions which are right and also to actions which are not right, the definition can be said here to contain in itself a "mixture" of the Form right and the Form not-right.  This shows that Plato conceives of his Form theory as a way of resolving contradictions uncovered in Socratic inquiry.

The lovers of sound and sights delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes, and everything that artful skill creates out of these, but their thought is unable to see and take delight in the nature of the Beautiful Itself. [Those are] few who are able to approach Beauty Itself, and see it by itself....

[So we have one kind of person] who attends to beautiful actions, but does not attend to the Beautiful Itself, nor is able to follow when someone tries to guide him to the knowledge of it...

[And then there is the person who is] the opposite of these: someone who recognizes the Beautiful Itself, and is able to see both it and what participates in it, and does not mistake what participates in it for it itself, nor mistake it itself for what participates in it....

Only the Form of Beauty is only and always purely Beautiful, whereas beautiful sounds and sights are only partly and changeably beautiful.  This explains why it is important to be able to "see and take delight in the nature of the Beautiful Itself," rather than only be able to take delight in beautiful sights and sounds.

Here we have the important Platonic notion of "participation."  Plato does not deny that beautiful sights and sounds are beautiful.  But Platonist spirituality requires that a person not let her love for beauty be focused on concrete beautiful objects which exhibit beauty only in mixed and changeable form.  Her love for beauty should be focused primarily on the Form of Beauty, and she should think of beautiful objects as participating in the pure and unchanging beauty of the Form of Beauty.

[Suppose there is] a person who does not think there is the Beautiful Itself, or any Form of Beauty Itself always remaining the same, but who attends to many beautiful things - - the sight-lover, I mean, who cannot endure to hear anybody say that the Beautiful is one and Rightness is one, and so of other things.

Is there any one of these many beautiful things that will not appear shameful? And of the right things, that will not seem not-right? And of the holy things, that will not seem unholy?

And again, do the many double things appear any the less halves than doubles? And likewise of the long and the short things, the light and the heavy things - - can these things be said of them [any more than] the opposite?...

But note that nowhere in this passage does Plato bring up the problem that different people might be attracted to different abstract definitions of beauty.  He does not speak of one valid abstract definition in contrast to many invalid abstract definitions.  He speaks of an abstract definition of Beauty which is "always the same" in its ability to represent beauty, in contrast to many beautiful things which are changeable in the beautiful, and in which beauty might be mixed with what is not-beautiful.

Again he relates the problem of concrete vs. abstract Beauty to the problem of Kephalos' overly-concrete definition of Rightness in Republic Book I.

"Long and short" here connects this discussion to the discussion in Book 7 of the ring finger that is both-long-and-short (long in relation to the little finger, short in relation to the index finger).  There Plato's picture is even clearer: Abstract Forms are contained in our concrete sensory perceptions, but they occur there sometimes mixed with opposite Forms. This is a problem that can be resolved by mentally separating abstract Forms from concrete perceptions.

It is like those who pun on double meanings at banquets, or the children's riddle about the eunuch and his hitting the bat - - what they say he hit it with and as it sat on what.

These things too are double-meaninged, and it is impossible to conceive firmly any one of them to "be" or "not-be," or both, or neither.

[There is not] a better place to put them than midway between being [ousia] and not being [me einai]. For we shall surely not discover a darker region than not-being [mē on], that something should "not be" still more, nor a brighter region than being [on], that something should "be" still more.

We would seem to have found, then, that the many conventions of the many people about the beautiful and other things are tumbled about in the mid-region between what "is-not" and what exactly "is."

Regarding Kephalos' definition "return to someone whatever you have received from him," one cannot properly say that it "is" right, any more than one can say that it "is-not" right.   Plato describes this by saying that such a definition lies in a region between "being" and "not-being."  The context suggests: It would be wrong to say that Kephalos' definition does not represent the being of Rightness at all, since most of the time it is right to return belongings to someone.  But it would also be wrong to say that this definition represents the pure being of Rightness, because in the case of the man gone insane, returning the weapons is clearly not right. So we should say that what this definition says lies somewhere "between being and not being" - - between representing pure rightness and not representing rightness at all.

This reading is supported by the reference to the children's riddle concerning the eunuch and the bat, which Paul Shorey gives more fully as follows:

A man not a man

Seeing and not seeing

A bird not a bird

Sitting on a limb not a limb

Hit at it and did not hit it

With a stone not a stone.

The riddle’s answer:

A half-blind eunuch  saw (a man not a man, seeing did not see)

a bat (a bird not a bird)

perching on a reed (a branch not a branch)

threw at it a pumice stone and missed (hit and did not hit it with a stone not a stone).

A eunuch (a castrated male) and a bat are also examples of things that lie "between being and not-being."  Clearly 'being" and "not-being" here do not mean "existing" and "not existing," but "being fully an X" or "not being fully an X.  A bat is not a being lying between existing and not existing, but lying between fully-being-a-bird and not-being-a-bird-at-all.  Just so, the above discussion has argued that concrete examples of beautiful things lie between fully being-beautiful and not being beautiful at all.

Anything of this kind... must be called "what one observes the appearances of" [doxaston] not what is Known [gnoston], the wanderer between being caught by this in-between [mental] capacity [which goes by appearances].

Those who see many beautiful things, but do not see The Beautiful... and see many right things but not The Right, and everything like this - - we should say they "go by the appearances" [doxazein] of everything, but do not Know what they observe the appearances of.

What about those who see each of those things, the things [i.e. the Forms] that always are the same? [We should] say they "Know," not that they "observe the appearances" [doxazein].

[We should] say that those who take delight in and love those things about which there is Knowledge, the others [take delight in and love those things] about which they observe the appearances [doxa]... These love and give their attention to beautiful sounds and colors and similar things, but cannot bear the Beautiful as something that "is". [We should] call them "lovers of appearances" [philo-doxous] rather than "lovers of wisdom" [philo-sophous]...

Those who delight in the "being" of each thing [hekaston to on] should be called "lovers of wisdom" [philo-sophous] not "lovers of appearances" [philo-doxous].

The preceding paragraphs suggest a very different contrast: Some people focus their attention on visible appearances of beauty -- beauty as it appears in many concrete objects visible to the eyes -- whereas others focus their attention on an abstract Platonic Form of Beauty visible to the mind but not to the eyes.  Those described here as philo-doxous are not lovers of unreliable theoretical opinions, but  are explicitly identified with the party-going sight-lovers (philo-theamones) referred to at the beginning of this discussion.

This is why I think doxa and related words are better translated here as "[visible] appearances," a meaning this word clearly has in some earlier Republic passages as well.

This passage again clearly implies that "being" (on) in Plato refers primarily to the perfect Form of a virtue.  Only the Platonic Form of Beauty has the full "being" of beauty, and only it is fit to be used as a measure for self-evaluation.

This passage again shows what Plato means by "being."  Platonic "being" is something that can serve as a model to be mentally looked at and imitated in the same way that a painter looks at a model and imitates it with his paints. The "beings" in question here refer to the being of "the beautiful and the just and the good," i.e. the Forms of each of these virtues.  The transcendence of these "Beings" is pictorially represented by saying they are "over there, " (ekeise) but able to serve as true models for concrete human existence "here." (enthade).  "Most true" (alethestaton) here clearly does not refer to accurate knowledge of concrete entities, but to knowledge of the ideal perfect paradigms of the virtues.

Here the Forms are called the "natures" (physei) of things.  The abstract Forms of virtues are what "really have being," in contrast to many concrete examples of virtue which only "appear" to have the full being of these virtues.  A true philosopher does not mentally dwell among the many concrete examples of virtue, but mentally communes (literally "mingles') with the Forms.  One part of his soul is "kin" to these Forms - - this part consists partly of the capacity to grasp abstract concepts, and partly of that part which loves pure Goodness.

Plato sometimes refers to the Forms simply as "the beings."

The Platonist philosopher does not see himself in the context of social life in this world, competing with others in a world full of competitive wrangling.  He makes the "divine" Form the main objects of love in his life.  He fashions his identity in relation to them, trying to become like them, and so himself becoming "divine" so far as is possible to man.