In the last essay, we discussed the difficulties with the Greek words that are often translated as “form” and why we should resist the temptation to reify “the Forms” into a class of super-objects in a distant heaven somewhere. Instead, I argued that we could translate the synonyms εἶδος (eidos) and ἰδέα (idea) as the “look” or “character” of something that allows us to mentally grasp what something is, i.e. its peculiar style of being.

I mentioned that, despite so much talk about “Plato’s Theory of the Forms,” he rarely uses these words and he never straight-forwardly gives us a theory in any dialogue. Nevertheless, he does occasionally use these terms, and in this essay, we will examine two critical passages from relatively early dialogues in which he does so.

Such early dialogues are often called “Socratic” dialogues because they feature Socrates as the main character and engage in a typically Socratic style of question-and-answer refutation. Unlike the portrayal of Socrates in later dialogues, this version of Socrates does not claim to know the answers to his questions. Instead, by drawing out what his interlocutors claim to know he shows them, through their own inability and self-contradiction, that they don’t have the answers they thought they did at the beginning.

These Socratic dialogues always begin from a basic “What is X?” type of question. Aristotle tells us that philosophers before Socrates tended to focus on “naturalistic” themes such as the nature of the physical elements or the origin of the cosmos. By contrast, Aristotle says, Socrates turned away from “things concerning the whole of nature” to “moral matters” (Met. Α, 987b1–4). Hence, these dialogues focus on questions such as “What is friendship?” or “What is courage?” Many people have thought that Socrates is after verbal definitions that would consistently answer these questions. By examining these passages closely, however, I hope we can see that Plato did not understand his teacher’s aims in this way. The thing Socrates is after is not so much a matter of words and definitions as it is a matter of the objective structure of the world. The world needs to have some kind of objective structure and we need to be able to grasp that structure for our definitions to have any basis in the first place.

I want to quote from both these dialogues at some length because it is important to see the usage of εἶδος (eidos) and ἰδέα (idea) in context. These terms go on to have an enormously important role in the history of philosophy both inside and outside of the Platonic tradition, so we should take a careful, patient look at the very inception of that lineage. In each passage, I have translated both εἶδος and ἰδέα as “character” because this is the most neutral term I can think of that can be used consistently in each passage. I recommend the exercise, however, of reading each passage over again and mentally replacing “character” with some of our other options to see how such a switch might shift the color or emphasis of the language. Try “look,” “quality,” “appearance,” “essence,” “shape,” “structure,” or, “form.” For many of the quotations, I will include the entire quotation in Greek, taken from the Burnet edition, making bold the phrases that include our key words. Since this series of essays is aimed at the absolute beginner in Platonic philosophy, however, the Greek should not be taken as an intimidating barrier. It is there for the curious reader to see the original phrasing, but those without any Greek can simply skip it.

In the Meno, the whole dialogue opens right away with the focal question, “Can virtue be taught?” but Socrates insists that this question cannot be addressed adequately unless they can answer the more basic question, “What is virtue?” Meno thinks this question is easy, because he is able to rattle off a number of different kinds of virtue: the virtues appropriate to men and the virtues appropriate to women; virtues for slaves, freemen, the elderly, and children. Because there are so many easily recognizable virtues, Meno thinks that Socrates is being ridiculous when he claims not to know what virtue is: “And there are many, many other virtues so that there is no trouble saying about virtue what it is” (72a, all translations mine).

As he does in several dialogues, Socrates points out that listing examples of something is not the same as explaining it. Rattling off examples gives us a many when the original question was asking for a one. It is, he suggests, as though someone were to ask “What is a bee?” and the response came back: “Well, there are honey bees and bumble bees and…” The frustrated questioner would be right to say, “Yeah, I know those are all bees, but I’m not asking about all the different kinds; I’m asking about what is the same across those different kinds.” In just this way, Socrates presses Meno: “Tell me, then, Meno, what is this very thing by which they do not differ from each other but rather are the same” (τοῦτο τοίνυν μοι αὐτὸ εἰπέ, ὦ Μένων· ᾧ οὐδὲν διαφέρουσιν ἀλλὰ ταὐτόν, 72c). By parallel reasoning, when asked about the virtues, it is insufficient to answer with a list of different virtues even if this list is exhaustive. Such an answer tells us only what is many and different, while we are trying to figure out what is one and the same. And this is when Socrates introduces our key term:

Even if they [virtues] are many and various, they do indeed all have some character that is one and the same on account of which they are virtues. One should look to this when asked to answer clearly, “What is virtue?”

κἂν εἰ πολλαὶ καὶ παντοδαπαί εἰσιν, ἕν γέ τι εἶδος ταὐτὸν ἅπασαι ἔχουσιν δι’ ὅ εἰσὶν ἀρεταί, εἰς ὅ καλῶς που ἔχει ἀποβλέψαντα τὸν ἀποκρινόμενον τῷ ἐρωτήσαντι ἐκεῖνο δηλῶσαι, ὅ τυγχάνει οὖσα ἀρετή.
(72c6–d1)

Meno is still unsure what Socrates means, so Socrates gives parallel examples of health, size, strength, shape, color, and sight. Men and women can both be healthy, he says, and this may involve different things, but health itself must have some common nature if we are to identify health in both as the same quality:

Isn’t it the same character everywhere, if it is health, whether in a man or in anything else at all?

ἢ ταὐτὸν πανταχοὺ εἶδος ἐστιν, ἐάνπερ ὑγίεια ᾖ, ἐάντε ἐν ἀνδρὶ ἐάντε ἐν ἄλλῳ ὁτῳοῦν ᾖ;
(72d8–e1)

Again, Socrates uses the example of strength. Although men and women may have various levels of strength, strength itself is the same across these differences:

Even if a women should be strong, won’t it be on account of the same character and the same strength that she is strong? For by “the same” I mean this: strength does not differ with respect to being strong, whether it is in a man or in a woman.

ἐάνπερ ἰσχυρὰ γυνὴ ᾖ, τῷ αὐτῷ εἴδει καὶ τῇ αὐτῇ ἰσχύϊ ἰσχυρὰ ἔσται; τὸ γὰρ τῇ αὐτῇ τοῦτο λέγω· οὐδὲν διαφέρει πρὸς τὸ ἰσχὺς εἶναι ἡ ἰσχύς, ἐάντε ἐν ἀνδρὶ ᾖ ἐάντε ἐν γυναικί.
(72e4–7)

Right away, the first thing to notice from these passages is that Socrates is not speaking about perfect versions of things up in heaven somewhere. What would a perfect “Strength” or a perfect “Health” even be? Instead, he’s talking about something very this-worldly and quite ordinary: the common character that things or situations present to us by which we are able to recognize them and so label them as “virtuous,” “strong,” or “healthy.” He is indeed pushing Meno to verbally say what this character is beyond the mere names “virtue,” “strength,” and “health,” but his point is not really about words, language, or definitions. Instead, he’s pushing Meno to see that the things themselves must have some common pattern.

Next, we should see that the whole method of Socrates presumes that we are all already capable of recognizing the common character in things. So when he says that he “does not know what virtue is,” he isn’t saying that he, or anyone else, is incapable of recognizing virtue. Socratic ignorance is not skepticism about the reality of virtue or the human ability to see it. Instead, his whole point is that we all can recognize virtue when we see it but that we struggle to make clear to ourselves and to others just what it is we are latching onto when we do so. The underlying premise is that full-blown knowledge implies the ability to give the logos, i.e. the ability to articulate a complete account of what we’re talking about beyond simply identifying it. In other words, if I really, fully understood virtue I would be able not just to recognize it when it comes along, but explain it in a way that is complete and self-consistent.

Like the Meno, the Euthyphro quickly settles, after some preliminaries, on the question “What is piety?” Both Socrates and Euthyphro will soon be in the law courts, Socrates because he is being prosecuted for corrupting the youth and Euthyphro because he is prosecuting his own father for murder. As soon as he tells Socrates why he is going to court, Euthyphro is quick to justify his actions. He knows what justice and piety are and he is confident that in prosecuting his father he is doing the right thing. Socrates begs Euthyphro to impart this knowledge to him so that, in his own case, Socrates can claim to be the student of Euthyphro:

So now, by Zeus, tell me what you were just now saying you knew so clearly. What kind of thing do you say the holy and the unholy are, both concerning murder and concerning other matters? Or isn’t the pious itself the same thing in every case? And likewise for the impious, the opposite of everything pious, isn’t it similar to itself and have some one character according to which everything that is going to be impious is not a case of piety?

νῦν οὖν πρὸς Διὸς λέγε μοι ὅ νυνδὴ σαφῶς εἰδέναι διισχυρίζου, ποῖόν τι τὸ εὐσεβὲς φῂς εἶναι καὶ τὸ ἀσεβὲς καὶ περὶ φόνου καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων; ἢ οὐ ταὐτόν ἐστιν ἐν πάσῃ πράξει τὸ ὅσιον αὐτὸ αὑτῷ, καὶ τὸ ἀνόσιον αὖ τοῦ μὲν ὁσίου παντὸς ἐναντίον, αὐτὸ δὲ αὑτῷ ὅμοιον καὶ ἔχον μίαν τινὰ ἰδέαν κατὰ τὴν [μὴ] ὁσιότητα πᾶν ὅτιπερ ἄν μέλλῃ ἀνόσιον εἶναι;
(5c8–d5)

Euthyphro answers the question by saying that piety is the very thing he is doing just then in prosecuting his father, comparing his own action to that of Zeus when he overthrows Kronos. After some questions about whether he really believes such stories about the gods, Socrates protests that he has not actually answered the question. Instead of saying what the pious is, Euthyphro has, at best, only given one example of piety. Euthyphro agrees, however, that there are many other cases of piety, not just this one situation, so Socrates presses him further:

Do you recall, then, that I did not ask you to teach me some one or two of the many pious actions but to teach me that very character by which all the pious actions are pious? For you must articulate how it is that the impious things are impious and the pious things are pious by one character. Or don’t you remember?

Μέμνησαι οὖν ὅτι οὐ τοῦτό σοι διεκελευόμην, ἕν τι ἢ δύο με διδάξαι τῶν πολλῶν ὁσίων, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο αὐτὸ τὸ εἶδος ᾧ πάντα τὰ ὅσια ὅσιά ἐστιν; ἔφησθα γάρ που *μιᾷ ἰδέᾳ τά τε ἀνόσια ἀνόσια εἶναι καὶ τὰ ὅσια ὅσια· ἢ οὐ μνημονεύεις;
(6d9–e1)

We noted in our last essay that Plato tends to use εἶδος and ἰδέα as synonyms, and right here we see him switch back and forth between the two terms with little if any difference in meaning. The later Platonic tradition will sometimes use these terms in two distinct technical senses, but it is interesting to see their original, non-technical usage in these early dialogues.

We can also notice from the above passages that the language of a shared eidos is not only applied to good, positive terms like “virtue,” “health,” and “strength” that we saw in the Meno; Socrates also uses it with reference to the negative and opposite term “impiety.” In the later tradition, there will be some discussion about whether there are really “forms of privations,” but here such a question is not really relevant to Socrates’s point. Whether we are talking about something positive like piety or something negative like impiety, either way, we are capable of recognizing it when we see it and so capable of grasping a common pattern. This should again reinforce the point that Socrates is not discussing ideal versions of things up in heaven. How could there be an ideal of impiety? Instead, he’s simply pointing out that we can see a common eidos running through diverse cases of impiety, so the teacher who claims to know about such things should be able to identify and explain that eidos.

Socrates then continues to press Euthyphro to give the eidos rather than list examples:

So then, teach me this very character, what it is, so that looking at it and using it as a pattern, I can say whether anything of this sort that you or anyone else does is pious, and if it isn’t of that sort, then I can say that it isn’t.

Ταύτην τοίνυν με αὐτὴν δίδαξον τὴν ἰδέαν τίς ποτέ ἐστιν, ἵνα εἰς ἐκείνην ἀποβλέπων καὶ χρώμενος αὐτῇ παραδείγματι, ὃ μὲν ἂν τοιοῦτον ᾖ ὧν ἂν ἢ σὺ ἢ ἄλλος τις πράττῃ φῶ ὅσιον εἶναι, ὃ δ’ ἂν μὴ τοιοῦτον, μὴ φῶ.
(6e3–6)

Out of all the sentences we have quoted, this sentence is especially interesting because here Socrates uses a powerful metaphor that will become incredibly influential in later philosophy. Once he has been taught about piety and impiety, he says, he will be able to use the ἰδέα (idea) as a παράδειγμα (paradeigma). This latter word, from which we derive the English word “paradigm,” refers to the “model” that an artist might use when painting or the “plan” a builder might use in constructing a building. When an artist paints from a model, he must constantly look back and forth between the model and the painting to see just where the painting must be adjusted. The model is a kind of reference point, and he must judge over and over again whether the painting is “true” to that standard. Likewise, a builder must constantly go back to his blueprints, examine the pattern, and figure out where to put the next wall. In a legal context, lawyers use this word in a less physical way. They refer to “precedents,” i.e. former outstanding cases, in order to judge whether the case in hand is or is not a violation of some law.

All this suggests that the eidos or idea is something we can mentally look at and use as a reference. Suppose, for example, that I had a doubtful case of piety (as is Euthyphro’s own suit against his father—despite his protestations). I can recognize piety when I see it in clear-cut cases, and I can also recognize impiety in clear-cut cases, but I become fuzzy when the case is less obvious. Wouldn’t it help to have a reference? Like the blueprint that the builder looks to when he needs to figure out whether a wall is where it is supposed to be, I could look to the eidos of piety and judge the borderline case by that standard. The kind of education that Socrates demands from Euthyphro would yield just such an ability: A person so educated would have clear in his mind not just numerous examples of his subject matter but also the common pattern by which he can judge whether anything at all, even a fuzzy or complicated case, is or is not an example.

This metaphor may be where the perfect-objects-in-heaven misinterpretation comes from since one way that we could have a “paradigm” is by having a perfect version of something. Suppose, for example, that I wanted to improve quality control in a factory. We have widget after widget coming off the factory line, but sometimes the casting isn’t what it should be. My workers need to know what a correct widget looks like so that they can discard the misshapen ones. So I select one of the successful castings and set it aside as a Perfect Widget. I ask the quality control workers to compare each widget coming off the line to the Perfect Widget as their standard. This is not, however, the only way that something can function as a paradigm. In many other types of paradigm, the standard is not itself a perfect version of what is being judged. A blueprint is not a Perfect Building. Indeed, it isn’t a building at all. Similarly, an artist’s model is not a painting. Such paradigms exist in an altogether different mode from the things that they provide the standard for.

In what kind of different mode, then, might the eidos of piety exist? Such a question will drive us straight to the very heart of Platonism, but it will need to wait for the next essay.