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[June 11, 2016—updated with a correction on pp.11-12]

Reflecting on Mimesis: Why Plato Revisits Poetry in Book X of the Republic1

Introduction

Why does Plato return to mimesis in Book X, and what do we learn about mimesis in that book?

In order to answer these questions, we need to understand the internal unity of Book X, and

understand its relation to the Republic as a whole. Book X is devoted to restoring the rewards of

justice, the extrinsic consequences that make up part of its goodness. In that respect, it completes

the second part of the argumentative agenda laid out at the beginning of Book II, when Socrates

claimed that justice is good both in itself and for its misthoi. Book X must return to mimesis,

because the restoration of the rewards requires that we use imitative depictions of sub-rational

goods in a calculated appeal to the irrational parts of the soul. This is a dangerous process; the

discussion of mimesis shows us under what conditions it is safe to proceed. It also shows that

adult philosophers will make a much wider use of mimetic depictions, even depictions of vicious

behavior, than was permitted in Book III.

Part I: The Unity of Book X

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Critics have often puzzled over Book X; both its own unity, and its relation to the rest of the

Republic, have been hard to discern. The three largest chunks of the book are clear: the first

fourteen Stephanus pages (595-608) discuss mimetic arts and the nature of mimesis. The next

five pages offer an argument for the immortality of the soul (608-612a), and some reflections on

the soul’s nature. The final seven pages (614-621) tell a story, the Myth of Er, about the soul’s

fate in the afterlife, and how the souls of the dead come to be reincarnated anew.

Evidently, the second and third sections are connected: if the soul does not survive the body’s

dissolution, then there can be no journeys in the afterlife, and no reincarnation. But how is the

first part, the renewed discussion of mimesis, connected to them? The best route, I believe, is to

attend to a fourth element in the book, the discussion of the restoration of the rewards of virtue.

This is first briefly announced at 608c, before the proof of immortality, and then developed more

fully in 612-614, after the proof and before the Myth of Er. The proof of immortality, in fact, is

formally a digression within the discussion of the restoration, prompted by Glaucon’s

incredulous response to Socrates’ mention of the eternal rewards enjoyed by an immortal soul.

When Socrates resumes the discussion at 612ac, he points out that he has successfully carried out

the task appointed to him in Book II, of showing that justice itself is the best thing for the soul

itself, without importing any of the wages and reputations of justice, so that there can now be no

objection to giving back the rewards of justice and virtue in general, as they are enjoyed among

humans and among the gods.

somepartsofit,andthisledmetoavoidpublishingit.Otherpartsofitnowstrikemeasworth

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This, I believe, is the right way to understand the Myth of Er: it is an illustration of the rewards

of justice, and the penalties for injustice, that we receive in the afterlife, under the governance of

the gods and their ministers. It is, to that extent, subordinate to the plan of restoring the rewards

of justice.

Now the Myth of Er is striking for its vividness and poignancy. It is colorful and dramatic. There

are tearful reunions among friends, and fiery demons who flay people on thorn-bushes. There are

rainbows of color and beautiful polyphonic sounds. It is, as Er himself says (620a1), a spectacle

of pity and laughter and wonder, a spectacle worthy to behold.

In other words, it is a whirlwind of perceptual stimuli, targeted at the appetitive part of the soul.

It is designed as carefully as a Disney ride, to activate our pain and pleasure centers in a

manipulative sequence that will leave us feeling terror (appetitive terror, fear of physical pain) at

the fate of the unjust, and desire (appetitive desire for physical pleasures) at the experiences of

the just.

Why is Plato doing this? How can it be permissible for him to do this? Why does it not violate

his strictures against indulging appetite, so carefully detailed elsewhere?

A parallel question might be asked about his restoration of honors and dishonors in 613bc.

Socrates argues that even in this life, on the whole and in general, just people receive the good

reputation that they deserve, and unjust people eventually suffer exposure and come to be

publishing,soIofferitasadraft.

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ridiculed and despised—their ears hang down on their shoulders, and they suffer humiliating and

degrading treatment that it is distasteful even to mention (613e1). This passage is as heavily

laden with appeals to the honor-loving parts of our soul as the Myth of Er is painted with

appetitive appeals.

First let us consider why he does it. Then we will consider how it is permissible.

By the time we have reached Book X, we know that our incarnated souls are tripartite. And we

know that virtuous people, when they undertake virtuous actions, do so with the cooperation of

all parts of their soul, working together. Sometimes, the cooperation of the lower parts consists in

their mere acquiescence in the dictates of reason. But more commonly, the unity of the virtuous

person will consist in parallel simultaneous endorsement of one action by all three parts. The

very action that reason sees as good, spirit will see as honorable, and appetite will see as

pleasurable.

This applies equally to the task of pursuing virtue. It is not sufficient that reason wish to pursue

virtue. Spirit and appetite must pursue virtue as well, so that I can do it whole-heartedly. Not

coincidentally, the rewards that are put in abeyance in Book II are the rewards and wages

constituted by honors and pleasures.

Restoration in Book X means enlisting the help of the lower parts of the soul in the project of

being just. We are already rationally justified in pursuing the life of justice, and rationally

motivated to do so, by the argumentation of Books II through IX. But until spirit and appetite are

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equally convinced that the just life is the happier life, in the terms in which they can conceive of

happiness, we are not pursuing it with our whole soul. That affects the motivational efficiency

with which we can pursue it: the lower parts are always the biggest parts, and carry with them a

lot of the motivational horsepower. If we cannot appeal to honor and appetite, we are only

working with part of our motivational force.

That is why the Myth of Er dwells on the idea that the life of injustice hurts—it’s really

painful!—and makes you shunned and loathed, and the life of justice involves lots of pretty

colors, luscious harmonies, and happy reunions.

The enlistment of these lower elements is, nevertheless, always an extremely dangerous strategy.

If there is a way to do it that will not destabilize our inner constitutions, then it will have to be

done with the utmost hygienic care. Precautions will need to be put into place, to prevent us from

becoming outright pleasure-lovers, dominated by our appetites.

My proposal is that the discussion of mimesis in the beginning of Book X is exactly designed to

give us a theory of the hygienic measures that are necessary to make such appeals to irrational

values possible. More than that: the discussion of mimesis is designed with the practical aim of

putting those very measures into practice, for Socrates’ listeners, before he proceeds to recount

the Myth of Er.

Socrates begins the book by commenting that mimetic arts can do severe damage—lôbê—to the

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minds of their hearers, unless they have a certain antidote, pharmakon, in place to prevent the

damage. The necessary antidote is an understanding of what mimesis is, and how it interacts with

the parts of the soul.

Having made this general statement, Socrates immediately asks Glaucon: do you know what

mimesis is? He is preparing to administer the antidote to his audience himself, in preparation for

the later use of mimetic methods, especially the appeals to the subrational parts, in the Myth of

Er. If Glaucon and the rest of the auditors—and we who are reading the Republic—can come to

understand mimesis and its interactions with the soul, then we will be able to hear the litany of

honor-loving and pleasure-loving rhetorical appeals without suffering damage. We will be able

to gain the benefit of pursuing justice with all of the parts of our soul, without overturning our

internal constitutions.

Now I will need to say more about exactly what the prophylactic knowledge consists in, and why

it should have the protective effects that it does. But this is the outline of my proposal: the

discussion of mimesis at the beginning of Book X is designed with the restoration of rewards in

mind, especially the Myth of Er, because Socrates intends to employ mimetic appeals to the

lower parts of the soul, and knows that such an appeal requires safeguards.

Let me offer a small piece of evidence that the discussion of mimesis has the Myth of Er firmly

in mind. It is not incontrovertible in any way, but I think it is suggestive. When Socrates

introduces the mimetic artist at 596c as a kind of omnicompetent wonderworker, he gives

Glaucon a list of all of the things that a mimetic artist can produce: artifacts, plants, animals

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(including himself), earth, sky, gods, and everything in the heavens and under the earth in Hades.

When Glaucon finds this incredible, he is told that he himself could do the same thing with a

mirror, and Socrates lists the same items, in chiastic order: artifacts and plants come last,

preceded by animals (including yourself), preceded by the earth and the sky, and the sun. Now I

take it that the reference to the sun is a reference to that visible “god in the heavens”, as it is

called twice at 508b. So we have a perfect correspondence between what a mirror-mimic can

make, and what a word-mimic can make: except for ta en Haidou hupo gês. Now it is true that

these are things a mirror cannot show, and that only words can paint. But they are also exactly

the centerpiece of the Myth of Er. From the beginning of his discussion of mimesis, Plato was

already thinking about stories of the underworld, stories of Hades and its rewards and

punishments, and about the fact that only mimesis can picture them for us.

The unity of Book X, then, is centered around the project of restoring the rewards of justice. This

restoration is discussed most explicitly in 612-614. But the greatest rewards are the rewards of

the afterlife, which are depicted in the Myth of Er. And the other portions of the book fit in as

preconditions and preliminaries to that Myth. The proof of immortality is one sort of

precondition: we must be convinced of our immortality in order to be persuaded by the Myth of

Er. And the discussion of mimesis is a different sort of preliminary: we must have the knowledge

of mimesis and its effects on the soul in order to gain the benefits of hearing the Myth of Er,

without suffering the damage that mimetic appeals to honor and pleasure can produce.

Part II: The Relation of Book X to the Republic as a Whole

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Part II.1: The Relation to Book II

If Book X is dedicated to restoring the rewards of justice, then it bears a special relation to the

beginning of Book II, in which the rewards were put in abeyance. In fact, it seems to me that the

eventual restoration of the rewards was forecast by Socrates’ first words in Book II. When

Glaucon asks Socrates what sort of good justice is, Socrates tells him that it is the best sort of

good, in that it is good both for itself, intrinsically, and also for its misthoi and consequences.

And he says that anyone who is blessedly happy ought to welcome and embrace it both for itself

and for its consequences. This suggests to me that a full understanding and appreciation of the

goodness of justice requires more than what we are given in Books II-IX. Until we have come to

appreciate justice’s rewards and consequences, we have not understood its goodness in the way

that Socrates does.

Glaucon follows up, in the first half of Book II, on the narrow, consequential aspect of justice’s

goodness, and shows why it is an unstable basis for a vindication of justice. A conception of

justice that thinks only of its consequences will tend to settle on a contractual model of justice: it

is an agreement not to harm others in exchange for assurances of immunity from harm. The best

life would involve harming others with impunity; the worst life would involve suffering harm

without remedy. The life of justice is between these (metaxu ousan 359a5, en mesôi, b1), better

than the worst life, but worse than the best.

Still, we can vindicate the pursuit of justice within this system, if we can show that the best kind

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of life is not practically attainable. We do it by stipulating transparency. If all participants have

perfect knowledge of each others’ actions, then anyone who tries to acquire a better life by

committing injustices will be punished by the other contractors, and receive a worse life as a

result. A life of injustice, when combined with transparency, is still a bad bargain; the other

contractors will make sure that it contains much more pain than pleasure, by inflicting

punishments of all sorts. The life of injustice with impunity is not one of the practically

attainable lives, in this picture, and so we may claim that the life of justice is happier than any

realistic, attainable, life of injustice.

What undermines even this limited vindication of justice is, of course, the possibility of deceit, as

symbolized by the Ring of Gyges. The problem is that the connection between justice and its

rewards is always mediated by beliefs—i.e. other people’s beliefs about whether we are just or

not—and these beliefs can be manipulated and deceived in various ways, the Ring of Gyges

being an extreme case.

Adeimantus reinforces this point, by closing off a secondary appeal to transparency. Someone

might try to vindicate consequential justice in the first way, by saying that the gods will bring it

about that any life of injustice is less desirable than a life of justice. But as Adeimantus points

out, it may be possible to escape the detection of the gods, or it may be that they simply do not

pay any heed to human affairs (theous lanthanein ê mêden autois melei, 365d7-9). In that case,

once again, transparency is destroyed, and justice cannot be vindicated by an appeal to its

consequences.

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This is why Glaucon and Adeimantus demand that Socrates should vindicate justice in a new

way, not by reference to its consequences, and not by stipulating transparency, either among men

or gods. Socrates must allow for the possibility of the most extreme deceptions, carried out with

perfect success, and the most extreme misallocation of consequences, giving both the reputation

and the rewards of justice to the perfectly unjust man, and the reputation and rewards of injustice

to the perfectly just man. These are the terms on which the argument of Books II-IX is carried

out.

But when we are in the Myth of Er, we revert to the view of justice that emphasizes its

consequences and rewards. We help ourselves to divine omniscience once again. Our injustices

do not escape the notice of the gods, and they are not heedless of what we do: their judges and

ministers ensure that we pay the penalties for our injustices, and in a way that ensures that

injustice will bring a ten-fold excess of pains over pleasures (615b).

The Ring of Gyges does not help us in the afterlife. This means that it also poses no threat to the

straight consequential vindication of justice as a better bargain of pleasures over pains. That the

Ring will not work in Hades is nicely indicated at 612b5. Socrates is referring to his successful

vindication of justice in the central books, where, he says, he showed that “justice itself is the

best thing for the soul itself, and we must act justly, whether or not we have the Ring of Gyges—

and even if in addition to the Ring, we have the Helmet of Hades.” The Helmet of Hades,

however exactly it worked, is very unlikely to have worked in the House of its owner. In Hades,

the gods do not suffer from Lêthê or Ameleia; they cannot be deceived, and they are not

heedless. Rather, it is we mortals who are at risk from Lêthê and Ameleia—on which more later.

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[6/11/16: I have come to think that the following section is wrong, and was simply the result of

my own earlier misreading of the text. The text is 619a5-6: ἀλλὰ γνῷ τὸν µέσον ἀεὶ τῶν

τοιούτων βίον αἱρεῖσθαι καὶ φεύγειν τὰ ὑπερβάλλοντα ἑκατέρωσε. The Hackett translation reads:

“And we must always know how to to choose the mean in such lives and how to avoid either of

the extremes….” I had taken “such lives” to be a reference to the description just before of the

life of a tyrant in which one does and suffers atrocities, and this led to my earlier concern about

choosing a life that was a mean between committing and suffering atrocities. In fact, I think

“such lives” is incorrect for τῶν τοιούτων. Instead, I think that phrase is a back-reference to

619a2 ὑπὸ πλούτων τε καὶ τῶν τοιούτων κακῶν, i.e. “wealth and other such evils,” which

follows on the previous discussion in 618d of wealth, beauty, political power, noble birth, and

their opposites. So the correct translation of a5-6 is: “he will know how to choose a life that is

moderate with respect to such things [sc. wealth, poverty, high or low birth, etc.] and how to

avoid etc..” Contrary to what I wrote in my earlier draft, Socrates is not advocating that we

should choose a life that lies in the mean between committing and suffering atrocities.]

The fact that the vindication of justice in the Myth of Er is carried out in consequentialist terms, i.e. in the terms of

Glaucon’s first theory of justice, prior to its explosion by the Ring of Gyges, can explain, I think, one very odd

passage in the Myth. In 618b-619b, Socrates is describing the insuperable importance of making the right choice of

life for one’s next incarnation. We must choose to pursue justice, and cling to that choice like adamantine (another

echo of the Ring of Gyges story, 360b6). In that way, he says, we will not choose a life of tyranny, where we

commit many atrocities (anêkestata kaka), and suffer even more atrocities than we commit. Instead, we will know to

choose a life that is in the middle of these things (ton meson aei tôn toioutôn bion), and we will shun the extremes

on either side (pheugein ta huperballonta hekaterôse); for this is how a human being becomes happiest of all

(eudaimonestatos).

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At first sight, this passage is extremely strange. Is Socrates really telling us that the best life should be chosen by

avoiding the extremes of committing many atrocities and suffering many atrocities? How do we do this—by

committing and suffering only a few, moderate atrocities? Secondly, if Socrates is still upholding the idea that the

life of justice is the best life, then presumably he has just given us a formula for a just life. But the terms here—that

a life of justice is an intermediate life, lying in the mean (meson) between doing and suffering atrocities, are exactly

those of Glaucon’s first, contractual account of justice.

I do not think this is a mistake, or a repudiation of the richer, more interesting account of justice developed in Books

II-IX. Rather, I think the point is that this is as much as our subrational soul, especially our appetitive soul, can ever

understand about justice. It is a sort of degraded image of justice, suited to a psychic part whose most advanced

cognitive achievements go no further than the calculations and comparisons of larger and smaller pleasures and

pains.

As a complete theory of justice, of course, it would be a catastrophe. It would entirely

misdescribe the essence of justice, either in society or in the soul. And it would always be prey to

concerns about the Ring of Gyges, methods for separating justice from the consequences of

justice. But in Hades, where no Rings or Helmets can deceive the omniscient and attentive gods,

we can employ this degraded model as part of an appeal to the subrational appetite. Justice, as

appetite understands justice, is still the best choice for producing happiness, as appetite

understands happiness, i.e. as a set of appetitive consequences. Restoring the rewards means

reviving, in this limited and controlled context, the understanding of justice that held sway before

the rewards were put in abeyance—an understanding that always holds sway in the appetitive

soul.

Part II.2: The Relation to Book III

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The Ring of Gyges cannot fool the gods in Hades. But there is something like a Ring of Gyges

there, nevertheless. There is an impostor in Hades: a life of extreme vice, a superlatively wicked

and unjust life, which conceals its injustice and presents a pleasant and attractive aspect to the

outside, and succeeds in deceiving human beings. This is the life of the greatest tyrant, who eats

his children; the very first life chosen by the very first chooser, in 619b. The first chooser suffers

from Lêthê and Ameleia: the tyrant’s evil fate escaped his notice (auton lathein), and he was

heedless in his choice, despite the prophet’s immediately preceding injunction not to be heedless

(mête...ameleitô). The fate of this first chooser is striking; why is he so heedless? Why is he so

unskilled at investigating the paradeigmata of lives (618a1)? It seems to be a consequence of his

previous experiences, both in his previous life, and in the afterlife. In his previous life, he was a

tolerably decent person, living in a well-regulated city, who had “a share of virtue as a result of

habit, without philosophy” (619d1). After his death, he went into the upper heaven, and so

remained untrained in the sufferings (agumnastous tôn ponôn) that wicked and evil lives

experience in Hades.

But if he lived in a good city, and was a decent person, and spent the last thousand years among

virtuous people in the upper heavens, why was he so heedless? Why was the Heedless Decent, as

I will call him, not a better judge?

This question gains force when we consider an earlier discussion in the Republic of how judges

should be trained. In Book III, Glaucon suggests that the best judges will be those who have

associated with all sorts of human natures, both the virtuous and the vicious. Socrates demurs.

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He insists that those who are to be good judges when they grow up should have no experience of

vicious characters when they are young (409a6). Indeed, while the Junior Jurist (as I will call

him), is still a youth, he will actually be very easy to deceive, because he has no paradeigmata of

vice within him. Only later, as an adult, will the Junior Jurist be exposed to vicious types. And

then he will come to understand vice not through a direct personal experience of it (409b5-6), but

having paid heed to it as an alien feature in the souls of other people.

We can see a good judge of this sort in 577, when we find someone who can judge the life of a

tyrant. The Tyrant’s Houseguest, as I will call him, has actually lived in the same house as a

tyrant, but has remained uncorrupted; he understands vice, but not by having experienced it in

his own soul. As a result, he does not judge on the basis of the externals, the way a child would

(mê kathaper pais exôthen); he is able to use his mind to penetrate to the inside of the character

of the man and see him (dunatai têi dianoia eis andros ethos endus diidein). The Tyrant’s

Houseguest has seen the tyrant naked (gumnos), just as the judges of the underworld in the

Gorgias sees the souls that they judge stripped naked (Gorgias 523e).

The problem with the Heedless Decent is that he is like a Junior Jurist who never grew up to be a

Tyrant’s Houseguest. He picks up a life which looks attractive on the outside, but he is unable to

use his mind to penetrate to the inside of the character of the man—the life deceives him, not so

much because it possesses any special Ring of Gyges, but because he needed greater exposure to

the various paradigms of life. But this exposure must come after a decent person’s character has

been established in childhood. In fact, throughout the Junior Jurist’s childhood, he is so well-

shielded from such paradeigmata of vice, that if he were to die before maturity, he would be

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exactly like the Heedless Decent: well brought up in a well-regulated city, decent by character

without philosophy, ignorant of the paradeigmata of vice, and easily deceived because of that

fact.

Children are poor judges, because they tend to judge on the basis of externals. And they are poor

judges, because they are not able to have an intellectual understanding of vice as a property in

other people, an understanding that holds the object at arms length. The only two choices for

children are either complete ignorance of vice, achieved by strict isolation from paradigms of

vice, or exposure to vice which leads rapidly to the vitiation of their own characters.2

Vices, like virtues, are forms of character, forms of the soul. And there are two ways that a soul

may contain or token one of these forms. The form of injustice, for instance, can be present in a

soul in one way, when the soul itself is unjust. This is direct participation. The form of injustice

can be present in a soul in a second way, when the person knows and understands the form of

injustice, without being unjust. This is not participation, but a kind of representation. Being able

to represent the forms of vice without participating in them is a special accomplishment of our

rational souls. It is not something that a child’s soul can achieve. And it is not something that our

non-rational soul-parts can ever achieve, however old we are.

With children, there is a problem that the representation of a form in the soul will immediately

turn into the instantiation of that form, or participation in it. Call this the Pygmalion problem. A

2Thingsaremadebadbythepresenceofbadness,andviciousbythepresenceofvice,sohowcanvicebepresenttomeinsuchawaythatIcanlearnaboutvice,butnotmyselfbecome

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sculptor sets out to represent a form in a mimetic depiction. But instead of merely representing

the form of human, the statue comes to participate in the form of human; it comes to be a human

being. This is not a problem with all forms. The form of mountain can be present to my soul,

representationally, without my soul coming to participate in it. But when the forms at issue are

exactly the forms of different kinds of character, i.e. different configurations of the soul itself,

then it is a very real danger. The severity of the danger varies with the plasticity of the soul;

young souls are easily malleable, old souls are not. The Tyrant’s Houseguest may see the tyrant’s

vice and not participate in it. The Junior Jurist cannot.3

This concern, I think, is largely what motivates the Book III treatment of mimesis: imitations,

practiced from youth, become part of character and nature (395d1). The reason that this is

especially relevant to Book III is that this book is an extended discussion of the education of the

cadet Guardians. From the perspective of the whole Republic, we know that these Guardians are

the political analogue of the rational part of the soul. So the discussion of their education is an

allegory for the education of immature rational souls, rational souls before they have acquired

fixity of character, and acquired the capacity that the Tyrant’s Houseguest has, to represent

without participating. It is crucial that the immature soul should remain unexposed to

paradeigmata of vice, and should be untrained (agumnastos 396d6) in imitating them. But it

would be disastrous to remain untrained in this way throughout one’s life: then, one would be as

easily deceived as the Heedless Decent is.

vicious?ThisquestionwasalreadyonPlato’smindinthediscussionofwhite-lead(psimuthion)inLysis217d.

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Book X bears another important relation to Book III in that it completes a discussion of tupoi, of

general patterns of narration, that are permissible in the education of the Guardians. When

Socrates at 607a says that "hymns to the god and eulogies for good people" are the only genres

of poetry that the Kallipolis will permit, we should understand the eulogies in terms of the earlier

comments at 392b. There, Socrates had said that the city will prohibit the ordinary poetical

stories which claim that "many unjust people are happy and many just ones are wretched…we'll

prohibit these theories and order the poets to compose the opposite kind of poetry and tell the

opposite kind of tales." The opposite of the two tales mentioned will thus be stories about

rewards for the virtuous, and penalties for the vicious. And I take it that both of these count as

"eulogies for the good"; condemning the bad and showing their punishment is part of how we

show the contrastive glory and happiness of the good. So the 607a reference to "hymns and

encomia" really gives us the contents of the Myth of Er: stories about the gods, and about the

rewards and penalties for virtue and vice.

Part III: The Knowledge of Mimesis

If we want to appeal to the subrational parts of the soul, and enlist their enthusiastic cooperation

in the pursuit of justice, then we must tell them that justice will, in the long run, provide a better

balance of honor over dishonor, and pleasure over pain. But that is only true in the very long run,

i.e. when we take into account the afterlife. So we must employ mimetic depictions of the things

under the ground in Hades, in order to persuade them that there, at any rate, injustice is

3ComparetheproblemthatSocratesputstotheyoungHippocratesinProtagoras314a:you

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humiliating and painful, and justice is gloriously pleasurable.

And we can do this without damaging the minds of our auditors, provided that they have been

forearmed with the knowledge of what mimesis really is, and how it relates to the parts of the

soul.

“I myself,” Socrates says in 595c8, “do not entirely understand what mimesis wants to be

(bouletai einai).” This talk of “wanting to be” should remind us of the Phaedo’s discussion of

how particulars want to be or strive to be like the forms in which they participate (Phaedo 74d9).

Mimesis, as it turns out, is not something in itself. Rather, it is a kind of image of something else,

a degraded copy. The thing that it is a degraded copy of, is participation. I am inclined to

understand this in line with the metaphysics of the Timaeus. Before the creation of the world,

there were forms. Then the forms were put into the receptacle in such a way that it had visible,

tangible bodies in it. These bodies had appearances; there was something that fire looked like,

and something that water felt like. Among the many bodies that were created, there were some

that could also participate, in a qualified and imperfect way, in the appearances of other bodies.

The smooth surface of water cannot participate in fire by being fire. But it can in some way share

in the appearance of fire without becoming fiery: it can provide a reflection of fire, an image of

fire. This secondary, derivative kind of participation is already mimesis, natural mimesis, without

intentional craftsman taking steps to bring it about.

Think of two chains of relations: body => participation =>form

cannottaketeachingshomeinanyothercontainerthanyoursoul.

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image => mimesis => body

In each case, the lower item “wants to be” the upper item. Just as bodies are trying to be, but

falling short of being, the forms in which they participate, so too mimesis itself is trying to be,

but falling short of, the relation of participation in which it imperfectly participates.

This schema is obscured at times in Plato by the fact that he frequently uses mimetic language to

describe the genuine, primary participation relation. And there is no problem with his doing so,

as long as we distinguish the cases in which mimetic language is being used as a metaphor for

participation (i.e. a relation between particulars and forms), from mimesis proper (i.e. a relation

between perceptible images and the perceptible bodies that they resemble).

Considered in this way, the Pygmalion problem can be seen not as a problem about mimesis

itself. If the imitation of vicious characters stopped with mere mimesis, no damage would be

done. The damage comes because mere mimesis somehow leads to genuine participation. This is

not generally the case: if I draw a tree on a chalkboard, no matter how many times, the

chalkboard does not come to participate in the form of tree. Marble statues do not really come to

life. But the case of souls and the forms of psychic characters, i.e. virtue and vice, is different.

This is the first thing that we need to know about mimesis: it is a grave danger to souls, just

insofar as it moves beyond mimesis into participation. But the very knowledge of this fact, in a

mature and decent soul, is itself a kind of antidote. We know that it is possible to represent vice

in our souls without participating in vice. And we can and should see images of vice, and learn

about vice as an external thing, provided that we do not start to participate in vice.

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The second thing we need to know about mimesis is that it is asymmetrically related to the parts

of the soul. The lowest part of the soul cannot deal in reasoned accounts; it thinks, to the extent

that it thinks at all, entirely in images. This means, on the one hand, that if we want to appeal to

it, we must ourselves employ images. It also means that we must never suppose that the lowest

part of the soul, or the mimetic images that it deals in, can provide us with the truth about things

(except perhaps by accident). The lowest part of the soul can have true images in it, as for

instance when it sees justice as something worthy to be pursued. But its understanding of that

truth is very inadequate; it thinks justice is to be pursued because it will be, in the end and on

balance, a pleasurable thing. And its endorsement of some image as a true image should never be

a reason for us to endorse its truth ourselves. What persuades the appetitive soul is pleasure; it

has no direct access to the truth.

Thus we must also distinguish the attempt to use mimesis as a way of discovering the truth, or

imparting rational understanding, from the use of mimesis to persuade the lower parts of the

soul, in their own terms, of things that reason independently knows to be true in its own terms.

We must never do the first; mimesis cannot give us truth. But there is nothing wrong with the

second. Even in Book III (401a-402a), Socrates endorsed the use of mimesis—in painting,

weaving, ornament and architecture—as a means of persuading the young irrational soul to love

the right things, so that it will already be sentimentally disposed to love the things that reason

will later reveal to be the true things as well.

But the only criterion of correctness internal to mimesis is pleasure. This is why we expel from

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the city the poetry that aims at pleasure (607c5; cf 398b1). But the use of mimesis that is not

controlled by pleasure—the use of mimesis under the strict control of reason, and in order to

achieve the ends of reason—remains acceptable. Such a use occurs when reason, which has

shown that justice is entirely choiceworthy on rational grounds, enlists the assistance of appetite

and spirit in the pursuit of justice, by showing them mimetic images that make it look attractive

to them on non-rational grounds.

Our audience in Book X differs from our audience in Book III. There, we were thinking about

cadet Guardians, exemplars of immature reason who needed protection from all paradeigmata of

vice, lest their mimesis slide into participation. In Book X, we are addressing adults with stable

characters, people like Glaucon and Adeimantus, who need to know about the paradeigmata of

vice in order to be adequate judges, Tyrant’s Houseguests instead of Heedless Decents. We can

employ a greater variety of mimetic means with them, safely, provided that they have the

prophylactic knowledge of what mimesis is. That knowledge is provided in the discussion of

mimesis in Book X.

Conclusion:

1) Book X is unified around the restoration of the rewards of virtue. All of the parts of

Book X—the Myth of Er, the proof of immortality, and the discussion of mimesis, are related to

that goal of restoring the rewards, whether instrumentally or constitutively.

2) The relation between Book X and the main part of the republic, Books II-IX, follows

the relation between the two ways in which Justice is good, as stated by Socrates at the beginning

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of Book II. The main argumentative arc shows us that Justice is an intrinsic good, good in itself

without regard to consequences and rewards. Book X shows us that Justice is also an extrinsic

good, good for its consequences and rewards. This is probabilistically so during our current life,

and guaranteed to be so in the afterlife. These two aspects of Justice also correspond to the

distinction between reason, which is the audience for 2-9, and the subrational parts of the soul,

which are the special audience of the Myth of Er

3) The Myth of Er emphasizes the importance of being able to judge lives, and the

necessity of exposure to vicious as well as virtuous paradigms if one is to be a competent judge.

The Republic shows us many paradigms of vicious lives esp. in Books 8-10, and allows us to be

competent judges like the Tyrant’s Houseguest, not ill-informed judges like the Heedless Decent.

4) The discussion of mimesis in Book X is primarily designed to provide us with an

antidote against the potentially damaging effects of the mimetic depictions in the Myth of Er. But

it also shows us, in the details of the antidote, what Plato’s final views on permissible mimesis

are. The extremely stringent rules of Book III are appropriate for the immature reason of

children. They are inadequate for forming the mature judgment of an adult. For that, we need

depictions of vice. And provided that they are beneficial, true, and not controlled by the end of

producing pleasure, there is no reason why philosophy, and a properly philosophical city, should

not employ them.