Despite the title of Essay 12 (‘On the Cave in the Seventh Book of the Republic’), the text which survives deals not only, and in fact not primarily, with the famous image of the Cave, but also with the image which precedes it in the Republic, the Divided Line. Due to a lacuna in our essay, of uncertain length but of at least one entire folio, a large part of Proclus’ discussion of the Cave is lost to us. Proportionately, therefore, we have more remaining to us of the discussion of the Divided Line. By the nature of the passages which Proclus analyses here, there is some overlap with Essay 11 (in relation to the Good), and Essay 10 (in relation to the ascent through the distinct ontological levels).

The Tenth Book is divided into three principal topics. The first of these is directed towards a critique of poetry on the grounds that it is mimetic, but not educative of souls. The second establishes the immortality of the soul and reveals its kinship with the divine. The third provides the myth itself, which exhibits providence as a whole, both daemonic and divine, which governs souls both descending into becoming and transcending becoming, and the multi-form ways of each. These being the three subjects, it is clear that the first proposes to separate us from material images (eidôlon) and to lead us up from the illusions (phantasia) of false learning, because these draw us down to the very last of existent things, which are in fact partial (merikos) and imitative of existent things, but do not truly exist themselves, and [to lead us up] from what is simply and entirely a fictive life.

Socrates dealt with two arguments through which he supposes that the sameness of education and virtue for men and women is rendered unstable.98 One argument leads the doctrine to something contrary to received opinion (adoxos)99 (for, attempts to go from things that are contrary to received opinions have a capacity to refute (anatreptikos), while those that go from received opinions are persuasive (pithanos) relative to the propositions that are under examination). The other argument proceeds from what was agreed upon – [an assumption] through which he showed what justice is and arranged the entire political order.100

The General Introduction to volume 1 in this series provides an overview of Proclus’ Republic Commentary.1 We discussed the place of Plato’s Republic within the Neoplatonist curriculum and defended the conclusion that, while Proclus’ Republic Commentary is different in character from his (incomplete) line-by-line commentaries on Alcibiades I, Parmenides, and Timaeus, it is not merely a grab bag of disparate materials that is unified only by having the Republic as their subject matter.2 The seventeen essays that make up the Republic Commentary do cover the dialogue from beginning to end. The essays also differ from one another in character and tone. Some are expressly said to have been composed for one purpose (e.g. Essay 1 arises from a class on the Republic), while others were for special occasions. As we noted in volume I, Essay 6 reflects a lecture celebrating Plato’s birthday.

If it is necessary that we too should speak about the Cave and all the things outside the Cave and their resemblance (homoiotês) to reality (ta pragmata), let us first discuss how Plato himself divided all things in the cutting up of the Line (Rep. VI 509d–511e5).17 In those [divisions] as well he makes the things inside the Cave represent the objects of opinion (doxasta), and makes the things outside the Cave represent the objects of understanding (gnôsta). It is for this reason too that, in addition to the division itself, when he has completed it in the sixth book (VI 511d6, ff.), he immediately adapted this image at the very beginning of the seventh (VII 514a1, ff.)

In Essay 11 Proclus discusses one of the most memorable sections of the Republic: the analogy between the Sun and the Good. His response to this challenging portion of the text is conceptually rich and subtle. The essay builds on the definitions developed in Essay 10 to explore the sense in which the Good can be understood when it is fundamentally unlike other objects of understanding. Essay 11 is also, by its nature, related to Essay 12, on the Cave and the Divided Line. Essay 12, however, makes a fresh start and is pitched in general at a more introductory level, as an overview of Platonic education as a whole.

The first step in Proclus’ discussion is establishing three different senses of ‘the good’ (to agathon) in Plato’s teaching on the subject. The first of these is ‘the good in us’ (to en hêmin agathon (269.16)), which is neither pleasure nor intellect, and with which he says that Socrates begins in the present passage of the Republic.

How Socrates in the Republic arranged the account concerning the virtues, after he isolated both the political classes and the parts of the soul, is itself something that we might learn once we have first sought for ourselves an answer to this question: ‘What is the distinctive feature of every virtue?’ I do not use the word ‘virtue’ homonymously in the sense in which it is customarily applied even to things that are lifeless, as when one talks about the virtue of an implement or some such thing, but I mean instead when the term is used strictly.22 In this sense we will inevitably be speaking about something that relates to its vital character and the way that it perfects its life, since it is the cause of things going well for those in which it is present rather than of their existence.