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(1) This page is an adapted translation of the French version dated June 29, 2023. The translation of Plato's Greek has been reworked directly from the Greek. For the translation of the introduction and notes in French, I worked with the help of Microsoft Word "Translate" function, but only as a starting point to be reworked and adjusted to the English. When the French version quoted other translations in French of the Republic, they have been replaced by quotations of translations in English and the comments had to be adjusted accordingly.
For a few comments of what I am attempting to achieve in my translations, see the page listing the translated excerpts of the Republic. There are certain words, such as logos, eidos, idea, that I prefer not to translate because they may have different meanings in different contexts, and thus warrant different English words to translate them in each case, but, when translating them, the reader no longer sees that they are the same word in Greek, a fact that Plato often plays with. (<==)

(2) The Greek word translated here as "imitation" is mimesis. The starting point of this discussion on mimesis is Socrates' reminder in the first lines of Book X of one of the laws of the ideal city, the one that proposes to banish tragic poets and all forms of poetry that practice imitation from the city. Hence the question of what imitation consists of more specifically. (<==)

(3) The verb translated here and in Glaucon's answer as "comprehend" is the verb sunnoein, built by adding the prefix sun- ("with, together") to the verb noein, which means "to think, conceive, understand" by means of the noûs ("mind, thought, intelligence"). The prefix sun- adds the idea of bringing together multiple ideas through thought to make some sort of synthesis (the "syn-" of "synthesis" is indeed the transposition into English of the Greek prefix sun-). Socrates' reply begins with mimesis holôs ("imitation as a whole") and this holôs, an adverb formed on the adjective holos which means "whole," by emphasizing the unity of this whole, is meant to make us understand that what Socrates seeks to sunnoein, to understand, is what is common to all forms of mimesis that can be imagined, whether it is imitation through images drawn, painted or sculpted, or through words (the previous lines evoked Homer and the tragic poets and this section will be a prelude to a critique of poets, Homer in the first place, in their role as imitators), or even gestures, or any other process of reproduction, whether what is "imitated" is objects, actions, words, or anything else, whether the imitator is a man, an animal, or a god, or even a natural process such as that which produces a reflection or a shadow, or a dream. (<==)

(4) In this line, Socrates uses three forms of verbs related to sight: polla toi oxuteron blepontôn ambluteron horontes proteron eidon (word for word: "many[_times] indeed [the] more_faintly looking [than the] more_piercingly seing earlier see"). Each of the three forms is built on a different radical:
- blépontôn is the present active masculine participle in the genitive plural of blepein, which means "to look" rather than "to see" and suggests an active attitude on the part of the subject, who chooses where to direct his gaze;
- horontes is the present active masculine participle in the nominative plural of horan, which means "to see" in the most general sense, and, when it is put in competition with blepein, in a passive rather than active way, to see simply because one has one's eyes open (on this distinction, see note 48 to my translation of the allegory of the cave);
- eidon is the third person plural of the active indicative aorist of a verb form idein which serves as an aorist for the verb horan, although it comes from a root id- different from that of horan, and which therefore also means "to see"; It is this root that is found in idea and in eidos, two words with similar meanings that designate the "appearance", the "aspect" of a thing that manifests itself to sight and, by extension, to thought as well.
This explanation, taken in the register of sight, that Socrates gives Glaucon to justify his asking for his opinion on a question on which he himself claims not to be very clear in his mind (the noûs implied by the verb sunnoô), even though it is he who leads the discussion, is undoubtedly not insignificant in more than one way . First of all, taken at face value, it suggests, through the play on the different verbs used to speak of "seeing", that the one who has a keen eye and takes the time to look carefully (blepein) at what he is interested in, precisely because he is trying to see it distinctly, can be outrun by someone who will be satisfied with an approximate view without nitpicking. Transposed into the register of the "sight" of the mind, of thought, this means that a Socrates who has a better understanding of the magnitude and complexity of the problem under discussion may have more difficulty answering the question he poses than a Glaucon who does not grasp all its implications, but who, through a spontaneous response that is more intuitive than thought out, can be right and give a relevant answer without even measuring all its implications. But anticipating what is to follow and noticing that Socrates ends his reply with the verb form eidon, thus highlighted (in Greek, it is indeed the last word of the sentence), which is the verb form that is closest phonetically to the noun eidos that he will use in his next reply (where it will be highlighted, after a methodological preliminary, by being the first word of the sentence that introduces it) to speak of what is shared by several distinct "things" to which we associate the same word, we can notice that what Socrates ultimately asks Glaucon is what eidos he associates in his mind with the word mimesis ("imitation"). (<==)

(5) Glaucon no doubt understood the meaning of the analogy with sight proposed by Socrates, the fact that a spontaneous response from someone who does not have a thorough knowledge of a problem may be right (but probably not that what Socrates was asking him was an eidos), but he is also aware of his limitations, at least in this case, and he does not want to take the risk of making a fool of himself in front of Socrates and the rest of the audience because, if his spontaneous response may be right, it may also fall short, and he probably assumes that Socrates is setting a trap for him. He bounces back on the visual metaphor used by Socrates in the previous line by asking him, at the end of his answer: autos hora, "see for yourself", using the present imperative hora of the verb horan, rather than his aorist imperative ide, which would have resonated with the final eidon of Socrates, also an aorist, and with idea, a word close to eidos, which will be discussed shortly. The aorist, designated by a word derived from aoristos, which means "limitless, indefinite", is the tense of verbs least linked to time, precisely the one that presents the action implied by the meaning of the verb in its timeless abstraction. Glaucon is here in the present time while Socrates seeks to distance himself from it by thinking in terms of eidè/ideai. (<==)

(6) "Following the usual way" translates the Greek ek tès eiôthuias methodou. Methodos, of which methodou is the genitive singular and from which comes the English "method", which is one of its possible translations, is formed by the addition of the prefix meta ("in the middle of, after"), which, in composition, introduces an idea of succession, to the word hodos, which means "road, path, journey", and thus evokes the idea of a journey made up of successive stages. My translation by "way" transposes into English the idea of journey induced by hodos, and avoids giving to what Socrates has in mind the overly systematic and structured character evoked in English by the word "method", which is the transposition of the Greek word, but masks to an English reader the connotations suggested to a Greek contemporary of Plato by its etymology.
Eiôthuias is the active perfect participle in the feminine genitive singular (for the agreement with methodou) of a verb mainly used in the perfect eiôtha, which is found later in the reply in the conjugated form eiôthamen, first person plural of the perfect active, which means "to be accustomed to/to be used to", whose perfect participle eiôthos, of which eiôthuia is the feminine, is used as an adjective and means "usual, habitual, accustomed".
It is important to note that Socrates is speaking here of "the usual approach", not of "my or our usual approach", that is to say that he does not propose a formalized "method" of his own, distinct from the way most people proceed, but what is the usual approach of everyone, so that, when immediately afterwards, he develops his thought by saying "we are in the habit of..." (eiôthamen), this "we" should not be understood as restricted to Socrates and the small group of his followers, but as a "we" that concerns everyone: "we (human beings) are in the habit of..." ». And what he is going to describe is no other than the manner for us of giving meaning to the words we use, the manner for each one of us of making one's way (hodos) through the words one assembles in logoi. (<==)

(7) "Methinks" translates the particle pou, whose primary meaning is "somewhere" or "in some way", a meaning that evolves from there to come to mark a part of uncertainty ("probably"), a restriction on the affirmative character of a proposition (meaning of "I believe, I think, I suppose"), uncertainty or restriction that can be real or ironic (as when someone says "if I have understood correctly" when the sequel will clearly show that he has perfectly understood what he is reformulating). Socrates reuses this same particle in the three lines that follow, and I have tried to find a unique translation in these four lines that fits in pretty much every case. (<==)

(8) In this section, key to understanding what Socrates means by eidos and idea and the differences he makes between both words, I prefer not to translate them so as not to orient the reader's understanding by forcing a range of meanings for words whose multiple meanings in Greek cannot be rendered by the same English word. I will therefore use eidos (neuter in Greek) and idea (feminine in Greek) for all the occurrences of these two words in the singular in all cases and eidè and ideai for all plural forms in all cases. I will come back to the meaning that eidos may have here in the note commenting on the sentence as a whole. For the moment, it is enough to know that, as I said in note 4, eidos, like idea which will appear in a later line of Socrates, are formed on a root meaning "to see", that eidos is very close, as we have seen in this note, to the form eidon, aorist meaning "I see" or "they see" (first person singular or third person plural of the active indicative aorist), that idea is very close to the verb form idein ("to see"), an aoristic infinitive of the same verb (the aorist being, as I have already said in note 4, a "tense" of Greek verbs which refers to the action implied by the verb as such, that is to say precisely without any implications regarding time) and that the primary meaning of both is "external aspect (for sight), appearance", that is to say, what is seen of what it is the eidos/idea of.
It may also be interesting to note that eidos is a much more common term than idea in the dialogues: there are 407 occurrences of eidos in the 28 dialogues listed in my tetralogies (73 of which are in the Republic), often in the collective "neutral" sense of "kind, species, genus" ("collective" as opposed to an individual meaning where the word refers to the "appearance" of a single person or thing, "neutral" as opposed to a supposedly "technical" meaning that it would have in certain contexts in relation to the supposed "theory of eidè/ideai" attributed to Plato), while there are only 97 occurrences of idea (21 in the Republic). This may explain why Plato uses eidos to designate something which, as we shall see, is closer to us, and idea to designate a more complex and less usual notion. It may also be noted that Plato always speaks of the idea of the good (hè tou agathou idea) and never, in any dialogue, of the eidos of the good (to tou agathou eidos).(<==)

(9) "We are, methinks, in the habit of positing for our own use some eidos unique in each case, for each of the pluralities upon which we impose the same name," translates the Greek eidos ti hen hekaston eiôthamen tithesthai peri hekasta ta polla hois tauton onoma epipheromen (word for word "eidos some_one one (numeral, not indefinite article, hence my translation as "unique") each we_are_in_the_habit_of posit_for_our_own_use (middle voice) regarding each the many[_things] upon_ which the_same name we_impose"). I translate by "pluralities" the substantized neuter plural adjective polla used here by Socrates: polus, of which polla is the neuter plural, means "many" (this is the origin of the English prefix "poly-" which is found in words like "polygone" (having many sides), "polyvalent" (capable of doing many things), "polyglot" (speaking many languages), etc.). The expression used here in Greek, hekasta ta polla, means word for word "each of the many" by substantizing the neuter plural polla of polus with the help of the article ta ("the") without specifying what it qualifies as "many", according to a usual turn of phrase in Greek. The translation by "pluralities", which is a noun in English, makes it possible not to be more specific than the Greek and dispenses with the addition of a noun such as "things", which is always limiting. Moreover, hekasta ta polla ("each of the pluralities") actually implies two pluralities: on the one hand, with polla, which is opposed to the hen ("one/unique") of ti hen ("a certain (eidos) unique"), the plurality of "things / objects / entities / elements / individuals..." which are grouped under the same name, and therefore under a single (hen) eidos; on the other hand, with hekasta, which refers to the same multiplicity as the hekaston of hen hekaston ("unique in each case"), the plurality of the different polla ("pluralities"), each calling for a different name, and therefore for a different eidos. To avoid ambiguity in the English translation, it is therefore necessary to translate polla by a noun that evokes the idea of multiplicity in the singular and therefore of a plurality of multiplicities in the plural. After these clarifications of vocabulary, let us move on to the examination of this sentence in its entirety.
This proposition, which can be considered as a quasi-"definition" of what Plato means by eidos in its collective sense (by oposition to its primary meaning of the "appearance" of a single thing), is absolutely crucial to understand him and to avoid falling into the errors of the supposed "theory of eidè/ideai" that is wrongly attributed to him, by pointing at the distinction that he makes and that the scholars do not make between eidos and idea, which will soon become clearer with Socrates' line at 596b6-10 which, echoing this one, will try to make us understand through examples what he means by idea, and his line at 597a1-2 which will bring, again on the same example, details on what he means by idea. Therefore, anticipating what's to come, insofar as the two, eidos and idea, must be understood in relation to one another, let us say that eidos is, for a given person at a given moment in one's physical and intellectual evolution, what one supposes, implicitly or explicitly, as being common, in the visible, sensible and/or intelligible register, to several "things" to which one attributes the same name (e.g. "horse" or "tree") or qualifier (e.g. "bay", "fiery" or "conical") and which explains the use of the same term for all of them, whereas the idea is the objective target, purely intelligible and independent of the name(s) used to speak of it, the same for all, which makes intelligible to us, human beings, through the relations it maintains with other ideai, all or part of what we group under one or more eidè associated with one or more names that we use to talk about that. To put it another way, these two terms refer to two distinct divisions of what activates our senses and our mind/intelligence (noûs), one, individual and evolving, intended for the attribution of names associated with eidè to talk about them, the other, imposed by the "reality" that we seek to understand, the "nature" (phusis) of which we are a part, and which does not depend on us individually, but only on the nature of the human mind/intelligence (noûs), concerning the ideai which, by the relations they have with each other, enable us to understand it. These are the two divisions that Socrates speaks of in the Phaedrus to explain what he means when he calls someone dialektikos and what such a person must be able to do to deserve this qualifier (Phaedrus, 265c5-266c9). In it, he compares an analytical approach that "carves [] according to eidè" (kat' eidè diatemnein) and must do so "along natural joints" (kat' arthra hèi pephuken), with the risk of making a mistake "in the manner of a bad butcher" (kakou mageirou tropôi), with a synthetic approach that is oriented "towards a single idea" (eis mian idean) for what it is interested in at a given moment (love (erôs) in the case of the Phaedrus), Calling himself "in love with these divisions and gatherings [which must make him] capable of speaking and thinking sensibly" (Erastès... tôn diaireseôn kai sunagôgôn, hina hoios te ô legein te kai phronein"), to speak through the division according to eidè associated with words, to think sensibly (my translation of phronein, which means both "to think" and "to be in one's right mind/to show common sense") thanks to the contemplation of ideai. And if the division according to eidè can be done badly, it is because it is a prerequisite for the definition and learning of words that are essential to make use of the logos that allows us to reason and therefore to understand and approach ideai. In the allegory of the cave, Socrates tells us that it is the prisoners still in bonds that hold them prisoner at the bottom of the cave who give names to the shadows, which are the only things they see, and which represent the images, all the images, provided by sight (those which are formed in the eyes) (cf. Republic VII,515b4-5). And here he is not so much thinking of those who created these words, but of each one of us when we learn to speak by first learning the names associated with the objects we are shown, to which we unconsciously associate eidè made from the images of these objects that we see. This being so, from the beginning to the end of the progression through the different segments statically described in the analogy of the line, and of which the allegory of the cave gives us a dynamic image, it is always on eidè that, consciously or unconsciously, we reason, since we reason with words, and the ideai, like the stars of the allegory which represent them, are only the distant horizon, to which we try to adjust our division into eidè, seeking to free ourselves as much as possible from the words and images that constituted the first source of these eidè. This is what Socrates means when he describes the second sub-segment of the perceived by intelligence, in the analogy of the line, at the end of Book VI of the Republic, as the one where, "using absolutely nothing perceptible by the senses, but with the eidè themselves through them and in them, [we] also end up in eidè" (Republic VI, 510b7-9). We end up in eidè and not in ideai, because ideai remain a target that is beyond words and that we can never be sure that we have reached.
In the first version of this page (in French only), I suggested that the idea was a special case of eidos based exclusively on criteria of intelligibility, whereas eidos in a broad sense could be based on purely visual criteria, or on a mixture of sensible criteria and criteria of intelligibility. This way of understanding these words had led me to acrobatic developments in order to safeguard both the "objective" character of eidè, of which the ideai were only a subset, and their "subjective" character since they were specific to each individual and evolving over time for each one. This new way of understanding solves this problem by putting objectivity on the side of the ideai and "subjectivity"/evolutivity on the side of eidè for which ideai are only distant targets beyond the words (represented by the stars in the allegory of the cave), and by also safeguarding the continuity of meaning of eidos from beginning to end.
That eidos be linked to a person and different from one person to another and, for each person, from one moment of his life to another, can be deduced from the words used by Socrates: "we are in the habit of positing..." (Eiôthamen tithesthai...): "we", that is to say, not the sole creator of the word in question, but each one of us; "habit", that is to say that we continuously do this, in fact for each word we learn when learning to speak, to which we unconsciously associate visual images that constitute a first level of eidos associated with that word, eidos that we continue to enrich over the course of our live according to our growing experience; "positing": the verb tithestai, whose primary meaning is "set, put, place", initially in a very concrete sense, and by extension "to institute", and also "to make", all meanings to which the middle voice, used here, add the idea that it is done for oneself, in one's personal interest, does not evoke the idea of the discovery of transcendent realities that would present themselves fully fit for us to grasp them, but on the contrary the idea of an individual production made for one's own benefit (that of giving a meaning, good or not so good, or even bad, to the words one uses).
As for the ideai, it is, as I have said earlier, what is represented in the allegory of the cave by the stars in heaven: this is explicit with regard to the sun, of which Socrates himself, in the explanation he gives of the allegory immediately afterwards, tells us that it represents hè tou agathou idea ("the idea of the good", 517b8-c1), and by generalization, we may think that it concerns all the stars. And what is suggested by this allegorical representation, in which Socrates introduces the stars by explicitly mentioning the heavens that contain them as an object of contemplation in their own right ("the [***] in the heavens and the heavens themselves ", ta en tôi ouranôi kai auton ton ouranon, 516a8-9, a formulation that explicitly mentions only the heavens, the word "stars" only coming later), is that, like the stars which present themselves to the eyes as mere bright tiny spots, all looking more or less the same, which take on meaning for us only in their relative position with regard to one another in the whole that constitutes the heavens, the ideai, deprived of any sensible and above all visible features, appear to us all similar to one another, as combintaions of words that only take on meaning in the relationships that are established between them in logoi, whose overall coherence must be put to the test.
In short, we want to understand the ordered world (kosmos) of which we are a part in order to understand the role we are called to play in it (gnôthi sauton, "learn to know thyself") and to play it to the best of our ability, that is, to be as good human beings (agathoi) as possible by achieving the excellence (aretè) we are capable of depending on our individual nature (phusis) (which implies that two human beings are never quite the same, neither in sensory abilities nor in intelligence, even though they both are human beings) by seeking to apprehend through intelligence (noûs), by means of the logos that specifies us as human beings (anthrôpoi) put to the test of shared experience in the practice of dialogue (to dialegesthai), which alone, allows us to verify that what we are thinking of is not a pure production of our mind but has an objective reality, the ideai that give meaning and intelligibility to this world for the human intelligence (noûs), by means of eidè that each one posits for oneself (tithesthai) by associating them implicitly or explicitly with words based on usages of one's fellow citizens speaking the same language and by making them evolve (or not) over the course of one's life as one's experience of this world and one's understanding of it evolve, eidè which, at the beginning, are based on visual images (horômena eidè, 510d5) and may over time be transformed into purely intelligible eidè (noèta eidè, 511a3) tending towards the ideai which are their distant objective targets and may lead us to revise our division into eidè as we progress.
In fact, when we learn to speak, those around us teach us words, but do not transmit us the eidè that they themselves associate with these words. At most, they can show us one or more instances of what they associate this word with, or even simple pictures of it, when unable to exhibit live instances of what it is the name of, but it is the one who is taught who must make in one's mind the eidos that one will associate with the word one is learning and adjust this eidos as one's experience grows. This is precisely what is in the background of the discussion, in the Theaetetus (Theaetetus, 197c, ff.), of Socrates' image of the soul as an empty aviary at birth in which we would enclose birds, images of "items of knowledge" (epistèmas, Theaetetus, 197e3), as we learn, whereas in fact, what the child captures is not ready-made items of knowledge, but words (this is also why the image does not work to explain the possibility of false speech, whereas if Socrates had assimilated birds to words, it would have worked perfectly; see the page of this site entitled "Tablette de cire et colombier" (in French only)). To know the name of something is not to know the thing "itself" (auton). To know the thing, within the limits of the knowledge accessible to human beings, is to associate the name we give to this thing with an eidos, based on the experience we have of it at this point, and to be able to describe the links that tie this eidos with other eidè, to which we associate other names, with the help of logoi (spoken, written or only thought) that tranpose these links into sequences of words that constitute these logoi. Thus, to know what a horse is is not to know the word "horse", which could just as well be hippos if we were a Greek contemporary of Plato, or "cheval" if we were French, or yet another word in another language, none of which teaches the slightest thing about what a horse / hippos / cheval... is to someone who has never heard this word before, but to know how to establish relevant relationships between words such as "horse", "animal", "quadruped", "mammal", "mane", "hoof", "saddle", "bit", "bay", "muzzle", etc. It is these relations between eidè that constitute for each word we use the eidos associated with that word, eidos that is enriched over time: at first, when, like the chained prisoners of the allegory of the cave, we give names to the shadows we see (cf. Republic VII, 515b4-5), that is, we do not create new words but we simply learn to speak, these eidè are made exclusively of associations with visual images, and more generally with sense data (we can very early associate sounds with these eidè by associating, for example, a meow with "cat" and a bark with "dog", but also smells to distinguish flowers from one another, or tastes, to distinguish foods from one another, etc.) and a young child will not associate "horse" with "mammal" until he knows the word "mammal," etc. But, even at this point, these eidè are not mere collections of images recorded by memory (imprints in the block of wax that Socrates uses as an image of the soul for Theaetetus in the already mentioned section of this dialogue, before talking to him of aviaries and birds to be captured). The eyes do not provide us with "shapes" that are distinct from each other, but with a kaleidoscope of ever-changing patches of color in a two-dimensional "space" (the images on the retina) and it is already our mind (noûs) that analyzes these raw data to break down this set of colored spots into a plurality of aggregates distinct from one another to which it associates distinct shapes and is able to follow independently from one another. And it is its ability to recognize similarities and differences, "same" (tauton) and "other" (thateron), in these aggregates both within space (the different parts of the field of vision at a given point in time) and time (the raw images that follow one another over time) that allows it to constitute eidè (aggregates of common characteristics) and to give names to these aggregates extracted from the raw data of sight. And where it gets tricky is when, from the same raw data, it is able to extract multiple aggregates corresponding to different analysis criteria and leading to different names. Thus, from the same raw data from the eyes, it can extract an aggregate that it will associate with the word "bed", another, which is a part of the first, which it will associate with the word "bedspread", yet another, from the same raw data, which it will associate with the word "red", yet another that it will associate with the word "cotton", another it he will associate with the word "rectangle", etc. And it will be able to recognize "red", "rectangle", "cotton" in other aggregates that have nothing in common with "bed" or "bedspread". And the same analysis could be made about sounds, noting that the same sound waves heard by a person listening to an opera aria are analyzed by that person into a melody, a rhythm, a voice, words, an accompaniment, specific musical instruments mixed in the orchestra that accompanies the performer, etc., and that she will later be able to recognize the voice in a different tune, the melody sung by a different performer or with different words, or at a different tempo, or with a different accompaniment, a given instrument, e.g. a clarinet, in a different context, etc. In short, what we register in an eidos that we associate with a given word is not collections of raw data of the senses but the result of unconscious multidimensional analyses of these data by our mind on the basis of distinct criteria that serve as criteria of recognition when confronted with new data of the senses and seeking to analyze them.
That being said, it is not because these eidè are specific to each person and evolving over time that they are just anything, since they are the result of analyses carried out by organs, mainly the brain, which have more or less the same structure and the same mode of functioning in all of them and that they seek to account for the "realities" activating these organs which, as far as they are concerned, are objective and do not depend on how we perceive them, at least as far as material "realities" are concerned. And the problem raised by Plato is precisely to determine whether this objectivity that almost everyone admits for material "realities" still holds for other words such as "beautiful", "just"... and above all "good".
Finally, it should be noted that the verb used in relation to nouns, epipherein, of which epipheromen, which I translate as "we impose", is the first person plural of the present active indicative, etymologically means "place upon" and therefore illustrates in a very pictorial way the fact that the noun is not the thing to which it is attributed, but something that is "placed" on it (by thought). (<==)

(10) I return here to the more usual translation of polus by "many", insofar as the pollai (feminine plural of polus) that I translate is no longer a noun neuter plural, as in tôn pollôn (genitive neuter plural preceded by the article, here a genitive partitive) which precedes in the same line or in ta polla in hekasta ta polla of Socrates' previous line, but a feminine plural nominative (for the agreement with klinai ("beds") and trapezai ("tables"), both feminine), which makes it the attribute of these two nouns. (<==)

(11) The meaning of klinè is "bed" or "couch", not "seat", and trapeza means "table", not tripod. But it seems important to me here, where the problem is that of the relationship between eidè and names, to preserve something of what the names chosen by Socrates could evoke for a listener of his time based on their etymology.
Klinè is the noun derived from the verb klinein, which means "lean, recline, lie down" and the primary meaning of klinè is therefore "couch, bed", that is to say something on which one lies down, in the most general sense, and the word refers to both a bed to sleep on and a "table couch", these kinds of benches that replaced our chairs around a table and on which several guests (usually three) took their places side by side at a banquet. But the question is not so much what was the extension of the Greek word in relation to our terminology concerning furniture as to realize that the word klinè immediately referred to klinein for a contemporary of Socrates. The problem is that there is no available translation of klinè in English suggesting what this item of furniture is used for. This is the reason why, to preserve in English this relation between the name of the object and the use it is intended for as designated by a verb of the same root, I have chosen, not to translate the Greek, but to transpose in English what the Greek word suggests (the intended use of what it names) and to replace the exemple of bed with that of seat, that is, something made for people to sit on, seat, sit replacing in English the proximity of klinè, klinein in Greek (in French, I chose to translate klinè by "couche" (a somewhat pedantic word to designate a bed, precisely derived from the verb "(se) coucher") rather than by "lit", the usual translation in French of klinè). As a result, in the translation, I will write "seat(/bed)" wherever the Greek word klinè is used, "seat" for the reason stated above and "bed" between parentheses to remind the reader that the Greek word means "bed", not "seat".
Trapezais also a word whose etymology is telling, but in a different way: etymologically, trapeza is a contraction of (te)tra-pezos, which means "having four feet". The word therefore does not refer to a specific use, but to something of the appearance, or more precisely of the structure of the object, of its division into parts. It is in order to preserve this same characteristic in an English word that I have "betrayed" the Greek by replacing "table", which is the correct translation of trapeza, but whose etymology evokes nothing for us, by "tripod", which has, in English, an etymology close to that of trapeza in Greek, since "tripod" means "having three legs". It seemed to me that Plato had chosen his examples because of these characteristics of the names used to designate them rather than because of the particulars of the objects designated by these names.
Let us note, to end this note by anticipating what's to come, that between an object whose name evokes "form" (having four feet, or three in my translation / betrayal) and another whose name evokes function (allowing a human being to sit on it, in my translation / betrayal), it is the one whose name evokes the function that he will favor for the rest of his explanations. This choice most likely has something to tell us about what he means by eidos and idea and about the differences he makes between the two.
A recent reading of Book I of Aristotle's Parts of Animals, which contains among other a critique of the dichotomy method used by the Elean Stranger in the Sophist and Statesman, leads me to think that I may not be completely "betraying" Plato by replacing "table", which is the correct translation of trapeza, by "tripod", which would be in Greek tripous, a word that can refer to different categories of objects such as vases, tables, seats, etc., as long as they have three legs. In fact, in this work of Aristotle, in a section where he discusses the respective importance of "form" and matter in the understanding of what a living thing or being is and the relative importance of the final cause and the material cause, we find three references to the bed (klinè): in 640b23 and 26, where he uses the words eidos ("(visual) appearance, form, kind, species"), schema ("form, figure") and idea ("(visual) appearance, form, idea") before generalizing with the word morphè ("form, figure, appearance, kind") (the question of the specific meaning that Aristotle gives here to each of these words and in particular the differences that he would or would not make between eidos and idea is beyond the scope of this note); in 641a18, where he refers to the eidos of the bed (peri tou eidous tès klinès); and in 641a32-33, where he says that "wood is a bed and a tripod, because it is that in potentiality" (klinè kai tripous to xulon esti hoti dunamei tauta estin). These multiple appearances of the word klinè ("bed") to refer through examples to the creations of the human craftsman without taking the trouble to develop this example and what it is an example of suggests that the word alone might have referred to familiar discussions at the Academy and among Aristotle's followers, which the text of the Republic here translated would also echo, unless it was their origin, somehow like the simple mention in Metaphysics, A, 990b17 and Z, 1039a3 of the words "the third man" (ho tritos anthrôpos) were enough to evoke the argument bearing this name used in particular (in a fallacious way, cf. the page of this site entitled L'argument du troisième homme, in French only) by Parmenides in the eponymous dialogue to criticize the notion of eidos/idea as he understood it. And the fact that, in the third of these mentions, he uses next to "bed" (klinè) the word "tripod" (tripous), which, even more than trapeza ("table"), the etymology of which most Greeks of Plato's time had probably lost sight of (as the English speaking people of today are probably more likely to realize that the word "triangle" implies a figure that has three angles than to realize that the word "rectangle" implies a figure whose angles are right (rectus in Latin)), referred to a physical aspect of the object thus designated, suggests that the choice of these two examples was intended to compare two words, one of which (klinè, "bed") named what it designated by reference to its function and the other (tripous, "tripod", or trapeza, "table") named it by reference to its appearance, its physical composition (having three, or four, feet), in discussions where the problem was precisely to determine what is primary in order to define and understand the creations / creatures, man-made or natural, that surround us and classify them into genera / species / families / kinds... And we find in these pages of Aristotle a reference to the "painted physician" (gegrammenon iatron, P.A., 641a1, 3), that is to say, to a painted image of a doctor, who can only be called "physician" by homonymy (homônumôs, 641a1), which echoes Socrates' remarks towards the end of the section here translated about the painter who paints a shoemaker or a carpenter (598b8-c4). The two texts are indeed dealing with the same problems and the examples are chosen for the same reasons and were undoubtedly "familiar" in the circles of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's followers, for whom a single word was enough to evoke complete discussions such as the one reproduced in the passage from the Republic here translated. And if the choice of klinè ("bed") as a particularly clear (in Greek) example of a piece of furniture known to all whose name evoked its use seems to have been unanimous, it seems, in view of this passage of Aristotle compared to our text, that the choice of an example of a piece of furniture whose name evoked only its visual appearance was less stable. If we think that this passage from the Republic is at the origin of these examples, we can think that Aristotle, in order to show that he had understood what Plato had left the reader to discover for oneself about the reason for the choice of these two examples on the basis of the etymology of the name of the furniture chosen as examples, wanted to make it even clearer by substituting (as I do in English for other reasons) tripous ("tripod") for trapeza ("table"), the etymology of which was probably less obvious to the Greeks of his time, but we can also think it worked the other way around and that Plato, in writing this page of the Republic (in my hypothesis, quite late in his life), had in mind recurrent discussions at the Academy, in which either the choice of the example of a piece of furniture whose name evoked the visual appearance was less fixed, or was usually "tripod" (tripous) and that, to force his readers to do some more homework, he deliberately "complicated" the example by replacing tripous ("tripod") with trapeza ("table", or, to bring out the etymology in a neologism "(té)trapod"). In any case, by replacing "table", the correct translation of trapeza in English with "tripod", in the absence of a English word to translate trapeza whose etymology is similarly meaningful in English, it seems to me, in view of Aristotle's mentioned text, that I was not the first to consider this word as an alternative to trapeza ("table") in such a context. (<==)

(12) At the moment when we move from the problem of simply naming what we are talking about to that of manufacturing it by introducing the craftsman (dèmiourgos) who manufactures the objects taken as examples, eidos is replaced by idea, which is also derived, as I said in note 8, from idein ("to see") and which I do not translate any more than eidos, for the reasons explained in this note. Before thinking that these two words are synonymous or almost synonymous, the least we can do is to ask ourselves whether, since Plato changes words, it is because he is not talking about the same thing, or at least not from the same point of view, even if, in this case, the two words have a common root that refers to the register of "seeing" and close meanings.(<==)

(13) "Artifacts" translates the Greek skeuè, the neuter plural nominative of skeuos, a generic word for all kinds of equipment: furniture, tool, instrument, weapon, tackle, harness, etc. What is common to everything that can be grouped under this term is the fact that they are products of human activity, of crafts, intended for the use of men in their various activities. In the analogy of the line at the end of Book VI, to describe what is observed in the second subsegment of the visible, Socrates uses three words: ta zôia ("living beings/animals"), to phuteuton ("that which is begotten/planted"), and to skeuaston ("that which is manufactured"). The latter word, skeuaston, is the verbal adjective derived from the verb skeuazein ("to prepare, arrange, provide, equip"), itself derived from skeuos. In the context of the analogy, it is clear that the word is taken in its widest extension, as is the case with the two preceding terms (see note 17 to my translation of the analogy of the line), and it follows from this context that skeuaston in fact designates everything that is "artificial", product of human art, as opposed to what is encompassed by the two previous words, that is to say everything that is produced spontaneously by nature, animals and plants, or, if we accept the myth proposed by Timaeus in the eponymous dialogue, that which is the work of a divine "demiurge" (dèmiurgos). Here, we could translate as "furniture" but, as the word is reused a little later in a much broader sense that parallels the use of skeuaston in the analogy of the line, I prefer to settle for a translation by a term that is as general as possible.
It is interesting to note in conclusion that Socrates chooses his examples from the products of human activity and not from those of nature, no doubt precisely because it is easier for us to understand the purpose of what is produced by men for the needs of men than to understand the intentions of the creator of the Universe, if there is one (or several), when creating one or another of his creatures. Now, as I have already said and as the sequel will confirm, it is this idea of finality that is foremost in the idea. (<==)

(14) "Producer" translates the Greek dèmiourgos. It is the word which the English "demiurge" (which I used in note 13) comes from, and one of the names that Timaeus, in his "plausible myth" (Timaeus, 29d2), gives to the creator of the Universe. Etymologically, the word means "who does work (ergon) for the people / public (dèmos)" and can refer to all kinds of craftsmen or tradespeople (soothsayers, doctors, etc.) whose common feature is that they do what they do for the benefit of other people and not only to fulfill their own needs. In the rest of this discussion, Plato's Socrates will use several different words to talk about various categories of "makers / producers / creators... ", including both the god creator of ideai (the one who is indeed called dèmiurgos in the Timaeus), craftsmen who make furniture and producers of simple images or reflections of these objects, and of their productions, and several different verbs to speak of their activities, not for stylistic effects, but so as not to specialize certain words to the detriment of others and thus to force us to look for what he is talking about beyond the (multiple) words he uses to talk about it. As some of these words have common roots (for example, we will find the verb dèmiourgein to refer to the activity of a dèmiourgos), I have tried in this translation to transpose into English the relationships between Greek words and to always translate the same Greek word describing one of the "actors" or his activity by the same English word to allow the reader to follow as closely as possible the variations introduced by Plato in his vocabulary. Most of the words concerned can be grouped into three families:

- words from the family of ergon, whose usual translation is "work", both in the sense of "action/activity" and in the sense of "product of this activity"; in the section here translated, I translated it as "production". The words of this family that are found in the section here translated are:
    - the name ergon (which I translate as "production"), 2 occurrences, in 597a6 (ergon) and 598a3 (erga);
    - the verb ergazesthai (which I translate as "to produce "), 3 occurrences, in 596c7 (ergazetai), 596c9 (ergazetai) and 597b6-7 (ergasasthai);
    - its derivative apergazesthai, in which the prefix ap(o) adds an idea of completion (which I translate as "to completely produce"), 2 occurrences, in 597c2 (apergasasthai) and 598b7 (apergazetai);
    - the name dèmiourgos (which I translate as "producer"), 8 occurrences, in 596b6 (dèmiourgos), 596b10 (dèmiourgôn), 596b12 (dèmiourgon), 596d3 (dèmiourgos), 596e6 (dèmiourgon), 598a2 (dèmiourgon), 598a4 (dèmiourgôn) and 598b9 (dèmiourgous);
    - the verb dèmiourgein (which I translate as "to be the producer of" to highlight its proximity to dèmiourgos, translated as "producer" and distinguish it from ergazesthai, translated as "to produce"), 2 occurrences, in 596b9 (dèmiourgei) and 596d8-9 (dèmiourgoumenos);
    - the noun dèmiourgia (which I translate as "activity of production") to designate the activity of a dèmiourgos without specifying which one, 1 occurrence, in 598c8;
    - the name klinourgos (which I transpose as "producer of seats(/beds) (since I have replaced "bed" (klinè) by "seat", cf. note 11)"), 1 occurrence, in 597a6 (klinourgos), of which it is the only occurrence, not only in all of Plato's dialogues, but also in all the Greek texts available on the Perseus site, and which is perhaps a neologism coined by Plato, in competition with klinopoios, which we will find in another family, that of poiein;
    - the name phutourgos (whose primary meaning is "gardener", from the meaning "plant" of phuton and which is at the crossroads of two families, that of ergon and that of phuein: I translate it as "planter", privileging the community of root with phuteuein, which I translate as "to plant", rather than as "producer of plants", which would also evidence the community of root with ergon, but would be misleading since the planter / gardener is not the "producer" of plants in the sense the producer of seats(/beds) is the producer of what he manufactures), 1 occurrence, in 597d5 (phutourgon);

- words built on the root of the verb poiein, which means "make, create, produce"; in the section here translated, I translated poiein as "create" and poiètès (which is at the origin of the English word "poet" but has a much broader meaning in Geek, even if it also has the more specialized meaning of "poet") as "creator", which remains open to artisanal as well as artistic, literary or other creations, even if talking about "creator of beds (or seats)" to translate klinopoios sounds a bit pompous in English. The words of this family that are found in the section here translated are:
    - the verb poiein (which I translate as "to create"), 16 occurrences, in 596b7 (poiei), 596c2 (poiei), 596c5 (poièsai), 596c6 (poiei), 596d5 (poièsai), 596e1 (poièseis), 596e9 (poiein), 596e9 (poiei), 596e10 (poiei), 597a2 (poiei), 597a4 (poiei), 597a4 (poioi), 597c3 (epoièsen), 597c7 (poièseien), 597d8 (pepoièken), 598b1 (pepoiètai);
    - the noun poiètès (which I translate as "creator"), 3 occurrences, in 596d4 (poiètès), 597d2 (poiètès) and 597d11 (poiètèn);
    - the compound noun klinopoios (which I transpose as "creator of seats(/beds) since I have replaced "bed" (klinè) by "seat", cf. note 11)"), 3 occurrences, in 597a1 (klinopoios), 597b13 (klinopoios) and 597d3 (klinopoios); this word is in competition with klinourgos ("producer of beds", transposed as "creator of seats(/beds)), listed at the end of the previous group, but, in this case, occurrences of it are found outside of Plato's dialogues: it is the term used by Demonsthenes in the Against Aphobos, a plea against one of the guardians appointed by his father at his death to manage his inheritance until he came of age and who had squandered it,where he explains to the court that it was one of the two activities carried out by his father through a workshop employing twenty slaves, next to a workshop of maker of cutlery (machairopoios) employing thirty-two slaves (cf. Demosthenes, Against Aphobos, 9); Demosthenes' use of two terms using the suffix -poios associated with an object name to form a word describing the activity of making this category of objects shows that this practice seemed to be common, and the next word on this list gives us another example;
    - the compound name on the same model tragôidopoios (which I translate as "creator of tragedies" (tragôidia)), 1 occurrence, in 597e6 (tragôidopoios);

- words with the same root as the verb phuein, which means "to bring forth, beget, engender" and in the passive voice "to be born, to grow", from which the noun phusis, which means "nature", is derived. The words of this family that are found in the section here translated are:
    - the verb phuein (which I translate as "to be born" or "to give birth" depending on the context), 4 occurrences, in 596c6 (phuomena), 597c5 (phuôsin), 597d3 (ephusen), 597e7 (pephukôs)
    - the derived verb phuteuein (which I translate as "to plant", which is its primary meaning, even if this translation makes it lose in English the community of root with phuein), 1 occurrence, in 597c4 (ephuteuthesan)
    - the noun phusis (which I translate as "nature", a word derived from nascere, natum, the Latin equivalent of phuein), 6 occurrences, in 597b6 (in the expression en tèi phusei, "in nature"), 597c2 (en tèi phusei), 597d3 (phusei, adverbial form meaning "by nature"), 597d7 (phusei), 597e4 (phuseôs) and 598a1 (en tèi phusei);
    - the name phutourgos (which I translate as "planter" to keep the root community with phuteuein, as explained earlier when the word was encountered in the family of ergon), 1 occurrence, in 597d5 (phutourgon).

- A few words that do not belong to any of the three families mentioned above but which are close in meaning to a word of one of these families and are therefore still different ways of talking about the same things can be added to this list:
    - the noun cheirotechnes, formed from cheir ("hand") and technè ("art, technique"), which I translate as "manual worker", which is in competition with dèmiourgos ("producer") and with poiètès ("creator") by insisting on the manual dimension of the work, 3 occurrences, in 596c2 (cheirotechnôn), 596c5 (cheirotechnes) and 597a6 (cheirotechnou);
    - the noun tektôn (which I translate as "carpenter"), which can refer to any woodworking activity and can also by generalization, designate all kinds of craftsmen, and even non-manual activities, and which is therefore also in competition with cheirothechnes ("manual worker"), dèmiourgos ("producer") and poiètes ("creator"), 4 occurrences, in 597b9 (tektôn), 597d9 (tektona), 598b9 (tektona) and 598c1 (tekton);
    - the noun gennèma, formed from the same root as gignesthai ("to be born, to become, to happen"), a generic term to designate everything that is begotten, "offspring, child" as well as "fruits" (in the plural) or "work", whose meaning is close to that of the past participle phuomenos of phuein, used in 596c6 where I translate ta phuomena apanta as "everything that is born", 1 occurrence, in 597e3 (tou gennèmatos, translated as "of what is begotten")
    - the verb tithesthai, which I have translated as "to posit", but which can also mean "to create" or "to establish" (laws for example), and which is the verb used by Socrates in 596a7 about the origin of the eidè: mentioning it here is a way of comparing it with all the other verbs that Socrates does not use to describe the way in which they come about. (<==)

(15) "Looking toward" translates the Greek blepôn, the present active participle of the verb blepein, which, as I said in note 4, suggests an active attitude on the part of the subject, who chooses where to direct his gaze and does not simply "see" (horan) what happens to be in his field of vision. Here, this verb must be understood in an analogical sense relating to the "sight" of the mind (noûs) and no longer of the eyes: what Socrates is talking about when he uses the word idea is not a material model (in our case, a bed (or seat) or a table (or tripod) already made by him or another craftsman) that the craftsman would have in front of him and would simply copy as a sculptor or a painter would do with the model who poses in front of them, nor even a pattern or similar document which would prescribe to him the procedure to be followed in order to make what he intends to make, but rather something which is "visible" only by the "eyes" of the mind (noûs) and gives free rein to his creative imagination within certain limits laid down precisely by the idea. (<==)

(16) "None of the producers is the producer of" translates the Greek dèmiourgei oudeis tôn dèmiourgôn, where are used next to one another the noun dèmiourgos (in the genitive plural dèmiourgôn) and the verb dèmiourgein, of which dèmiourgei is the third person singular of the present tense of the active indicative. It is in order to make this community of root between the noun and the verb perceptible in English that I have translated dèmiourgei as "is the producer of" after having translated dèmiourgos as "producer" (cf. note 14). This formulation allows Socrates to avoid having to specify what kind of "work" (ergon) could be at the origin of the idea. And since we saw in note 14 that the term could have a very broad meaning not limited to manual work (the LSJ gives examples of the word associated with the production of discourses, laws, evils, virtue), this formulation remains open to almost any type of activity, manual or intellectual, whose productions can be material as well as immaterial. Socrates only says that the idea is not the product of the work of a demiourgos, without specifying whether these words should be understood as referring only to human demiurgoi. And the Timaeus also suggests that the one whom Timaeus qualifies as a dèmiourgos also works, to create the material world, from a "model" (paradeigma) of which he is not the creator, this paradeigma taking for him the place of the idea for the human dèmiourgoi (cf. Timaeus, 28c5-29b1). (<==)

(17) Having come to the end of this reply, it might be profitable to pause for a moment in order to examine it in its entirety and to ascertain its role and significance. The Greek text which I translate as "Then, aren’t we also in the habit of saying that the producer of each one of these artifacts, looking toward the idea, thus creates, the one the seats(/beds), the other the tripods(/tables), which we ourselves make use of, and the same for the rest? For, methinks, of the idea itself at least, none of the producers is the producer, for how [could they]? is "oukoun kai eiôthamen legein hoti ho dèmiourgos hekaterou tou skeuous pros tèn idean blepôn houtô poiei ho men tas klinas, ho de tas trapezas, hais hèmeis chrômetha, kai talla kata tauta; ou gar pou tèn ge idean autèn dèmiourgei oudeis tôn dèmiourgôn, pôs gar; (word for word: Thus_not also we_are_in_the_habit_of say that the producer of_each_one of_the artefacts toward the idea looking in_this_way creates the on_the_one_hand beds (replaced with "seats" for reasons explained in note 11), the on_the_other_hand the tables (replaced with "tripods" for reasons explained in note 11), which us we_use, and the_others according_to the_same[_principles]? Not indeed methinks the at_least idea itself is_the_producer none of_the producers, how indeed [could they]?) ».
Let us begin by noting that the line begins with the words oukoun kai eiôthamen legein ("Aren't we also in the habit of saying..."), a formula in which eiôthamen legein ("we are in the habit of saying...") echoes the eiôthamen tithesthai ("we are in the habit of positing for our own use... ") of 596a6-7, in what I described in note 9 as a "quasi-definition" of eidos. In the previous reply, Socrates, while he had just "defined" eidos in relation to pluralities sharing a same name, opposes to two pluralities taken as examples, the uniqueness, not of eidè, as one might expect, but of ideai, introducing a new word, which most commentators consider here simply to be synonymous with eidos, because of their common root and meaning. The problem is that what he says here about the ideai is not compatible with what he said just before about eidè. He has just said that it is we, each one of us, producer, craftsman, carpenter or other, who poses for one's personal use (tithesthai, middle voice) eidè by which one gives for oneself meaning to the words one uses, and he now says that the producer produces what he produces by looking towards something which he calls idea and about which he insists on the fact that neither he nor any other producer, artisan, manufacturer or other is the producer, and therefore cannot be the eidos that he has posited to give meaning to the word he uses to designate what he intends to produce. Thus, when we see him reuse in this line the eiôthamen ("we are in the habit of...") which had introduced the first quasi-definition, and encouraged by the kai ("also") which seems to announce this second eiôthemen as a sequel to the first, we can assume that he is trying to do here for idea what he has done earlier for eidos, referring here again to our "habits".  Admittedly, at first glance, this reply, which deals with specific cases (the manufacturers of tripods (/tables) and seats (/beds)) looks less like a definition than the one concerning eidos, which, at least, dealt with the general case (of onomata in general; the word onoma (onomata in the plural) is generally translated as "noun", in the grammatical sense, and, in Sophist, 262a1-7 for example, it is opposed to rhema, which, there, is translated as "verb"; but it must be remembered that the grammatical vocabulary was still embryonic in Plato's time, that the distinctions we make between noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, etc. (less strict in English than in French), were not yet clearly made, that the meaning of "verb" for rhema was a specialized meaning and was not the only one, nor the first possible meaning of this word, which more generally had the meaning of "verbal expression (made up of a sequence of words)", and that likewise the meaning of onoma was not fixed on a grammatical meaning and could be understood in the more general sense of "word", for which there was no specific word in Greek at the time; thus, for example, in Theaetetus, 168b8 and 184c1, where the two words rhema and onoma are used together in the expression rhemata te kais onomata (in the genitive plural rhematon te kai onomaton in both cases), these words are to be understood as meaning, not "nouns and verbs," but "phrases and [the] words [they are made of]"; here, then, the context, precisely because of its generality, invites us to understand onoma in the most general sense, that of "word", or in any case of a word carrying meaning as opposed to function words, such as a conjunction or a negation, because the plurality of which Socrates speaks and to which we associate an eidos, can be pluralities of actions (verbs) or pluralities of qualities (adjectives) as well as pluralities of objects (nouns in the specialized grammatical sense)). Plato's Socrates, unlike Aristotle, was never a fan of rigorous definitions, especially when it comes to abstract notions that are difficult to grasp. And indeed here, with eidos and idea, we are dealing with close notions and words which, for the contemporaries of Socrates and Plato, had very similar meanings, both of which having their roots in "sight" and designating in the primary sense the "appearance for sight" of a single person or thing, extended by analogy to visual or non-visual characteristics common to a plurality, what gives them all the same "appearance", the same "look", makes us say that they are all of the same "kind", of the same "species", that they all refer to the same "idea" (the words in quotation marks being possible translations of both). And what I have called the "quasi-definition" of eidos is not strictly speaking a definition in due form, even if it begins in Greek with the word eidos (to respect the order of Greek words in English and in particular the place of eidos at the beginning of the sentence, it would be necessary to translate it as "eidos, indeed, methinks, [is the] something unique in each case [that] we are in the habit of positing for each of the pluralities to which [it is] the same name [that] we attribute", a translation which rigorously respects the order of the Greek words at the cost of a few additions in English, but which has precisely the defect of giving to this sentence, because of the addition of the "is the" before "something unique", the appearance of a definition that it does not have in Greek). In fact, the word eidos is simply explained by the practical use we make of what it names: what we (each of us) are used to associating, consciously or unconsciously, in our thought with a name to make it understandable to us. And it is here by another habit, no longer of thought, but of way of speaking (eiothamen legein, "we are in the habit of saying") that Socrates seeks to make us understand how the idea is different from the eidos. So let's take a closer look at these differences. The first, which conditions everything else, is that, where the eidos is involved in a individual reflection by which each person tries to give meaning to the words she uses for herself (even if she does so from the use made of them by those around her and who speak the same language) in a process that never ends so that her eidè are in permanent "evolution" as her experience grows, the idea is involved in a process that brings together several people who need to understand one another, in this case a craftsman who produces goods for third parties (dèmiourgos), i.e. someone who carries out work (ergon) for the people (dèmos), and not for himself, and one or more users of his productions, and that changes everything! Because now, these people must understand one another, that is to say, associate with the same word eidè that are sufficiently close to one another for their verbal exchanges to lead to a satisfactory result for all, and therefore, in the example taken by Socrates, that, if the customer orders what he calls "seat", the manufacturer from whom he orders does not deliver to him what he, customer, calls "table", which would show that the manufacturer and the customer do not understand the word "seat" in the same way. For this to work and for people to be able to understand one another, the words must refer to something that is not the production of the mind of one or another of the persons who speak with these words and that allows them to have the eidè that each one has built in one's head converge towards something that serves as a common referent and allows them to understand one another and act accordingly (for the manufacturer, to make the furniture that his customer has in mind when placing his order, whatever word he uses to talk about it). And these objective referents that allow us to understand each other are precisely the ideai. And it should be noted at this point that this is not something that Plato would pull out of a hat to build a nice theory, because it is indeed the fact of experience that we manage to understand one another, in some cases at least, in particular with regard to material "objects", which proves that such objective referents "exist", whatever name one gives them.
In the case that concerns us here, that of the furniture manufacturer, what allows understanding between the craftsman and his customers is the purpose of the furniture ordered, what it must be used for, the use that the customer wants to make of it (hence the importance of the "which we ourselves make use of" (hais hèmeis chrômetha)), and it is therefore this that determines the idea: the idea of a seat is that of a piece of furniture made to sit on it. And it is precisely because tripods(/tables) and seats(/beds) are products of human activity intended to satisfy needs experienced by everyone that Plato, through his Socrates, chooses these examples to make us understand what he means by idea: not only are they objects that everyone has experienced (which is what the "ourselves" (hemeis) of the words hais hemeis chrômetha seeks to make us feel, since it is in no way mandatory in Greek, chrômetha alone meaning "we make use of", and which I render by adding "ourselves" after the "we" implied by chrômetha: "we", refers in a first time to Socrates' interlocutors that this emphasis implicates, and then to the readers who are invited to join them and whom Socrates thus invites to feel concerned, and finally, to everyone), which would also be true of horses or dogs, at least for his contemporaries in the case of horses, but in addition they are objects for which we know for what purpose their human creator produced them, which is not the case for horses and dogs, which were not designed by men and in relation to which the purpose that their divine creator could have had in mind in creating them is not known to us, even if we can find uses for them beneficial to us after domesticating them. Not to mention the case where he would have used as examples to introduce ideai and make us understand what he has in mind with this word, ideai like that of the beautiful, the just or the good?!... What these trivial examples, tripods(/tables) and seats(/beds), should allow us to understand is that a material "reality" can be "intelligible" so long as it is produced by an intelligent creator who conceives it in view of a specific end, even if it is perishable and will disappear one day. To understand something, we have to seek, not where it comes from, how it is made, what form it has, all things that look to the past and the origin in time, as the eidos also does, which is only the result of our past experience, but in view of what end it was conceived and produced, which then allows us to determine whether it answers well to what it is intended for and whether therefore it is a good (agathon) instance of what it is an instance of, a good instantiation of the idea that presided over its creation. And so we see how the idea of the good (hè tou agathou idea) finds its place in the process of understanding the world around us and of which we are a part, including its material part subject to change, which indeed is not an obstacle to understanding: it is not because a seat(/bed) is made of perishable wood or metal, that it is the result of a more or less successful manufacturing process, that it can break and, in any case, will not last forever, that it is impossible to understand that it is a piece of furniture made to seat(/sleep) on and that it can therefore easily be subjected to tests that will allow us to determine whether it is a good seat(/bed) or not. And it is on the basis of this simple model of what an idea is, accessible to all, that we must generalize what "understand" and "intelligible" mean, not on the basis of the idea of the good, as Socrates' interlocutors in the dialogue, and, following them, Aristotle and all the commentators since, would like to do.
Plato simply tells us here with the words of his Socrates, through an example, that his personal experience leads him to think that the custom of his compatriots speaking the same language as himself is to speak of these referents with the word idea, even if the word can take on other nuances of meaning in other contexts (as is the case with eidos). And this objective something designated by the word idea used in this way is, strictly speaking, in nobody's mind, it is the target of the eidè that each one patches together, in relation to which, over time, each one adjusts one's eidè, and this is why Socrates speaks of it as something towards which one directs one's gaze. We speak and reason by means of eidè, but we understand each other thanks to the ideai towards which these eidè point. And it is the experience shared through dialegesthai (the practice of dialogue), especially in conversations where concrete results validate mutual understanding, that makes it possible to evolve the eidè on which each relies in the use of words towards the ideai that are the never reached distant target.
Never reached because ideai, by nature, go beyond all the instantiations that a given person can know of them at a given time, and even go beyond the compilation of all those that all people who live and have lived up to this point have had experience of. Let's take the example of "bed". The idea of klinè ("bed") includes not only all the furniture called by that name that Socrates and Plato may have known, but also those that in England or the United States nowadays we call "bed", such as waterbeds or articulated and motorized hospital beds, which no craftsman of their time could have imagined, for lack of the materials and technologies that make them possible today, and also furniture that we cannot imagine today for similar reasons but that might become possible and might be built in the future and that might perhaps have a different name in the language that will be spoken then, but will respond to the same idea, that of a piece of furniture made to lie on to sleep or rest on. And if the Greek word klinè could also designate in Plato's time a "table bed", a piece of furniture used by guests at a meal to sit down to eat in an intermediate position between sitting and lying down, this does not mean that the idea has changed since Plato, but only that the word klinè was then used to designate furniture that responded to several distinct ideai associated with several distinct purposes, that of lying down to sleep and that of sitting down to eat around a table, whether the same furniture could have been used for both purposes or whether the furniture, while keeping the same name, took on different appearances depending on the purpose for which it was adapted (sleep or eat). For the idea is not the idea of a word, but the idea of something that "pre-exists" to words and precisely allows them to be given a meaning that allows us to sufficiently understand one another to cooperate in a productive and satisfying way, in a human process that is not always perfect and can lead to a division of reality into words that is not the same as the division into ideai, where the same word could be associated with several ideai, and the same idea with several words (synonyms).
And all this does not mean that the idea evolves over time along with the evolution of technologies and the imagination of craftsmen, for it is not a model imposing specific "forms" and technologies, but a principle of intelligibility based on purpose, so that it can remain open and allow each craftsman to give free rein to one's imagination according to the material and technological means at one's disposal (in the case of the ideai of man-made products) without this implying any change on his part: the idea of seat can always be expressed by words in English such as "a seat is a piece of furniture allowing one to seat on", or in French "un siège est un meuble sur lequel une personne peut s'asseoir". And above all, what must be seen in order to avoid conceiving the idea as evolutionary is that the idea is not eternal, which still implies a relationship with time, but without any connection either with time or with space. It is only a principle of intelligibility, expressible by words associated with eidè, which are themselves, although specific to a particular person located in time and space, and, for a large part of them at least, relating to "things" which are located in time and space, without any relation with time, nor with space. It is indeed the characteristic of the human mind, in the construction of these eidè from sensible impressions, to work on criteria of resemblance and difference, of "same" and "other" (two of the components of the human soul according to Timaeus), after having set aside in these comparisons everything that concerns the position in space and time. And it must not even be said that they are, eidè as well as ideai, outside time and space, for "outside" still implies a relationship to space, just as "eternal" implies a relationship to time.
But neither is the idea the words and logoi with which it is expressed, even if this is the only way for us, human beings endowed with logos, to make it understandable to us and to compare its understanding with that of other people in order to validate its relevance through dialegesthai (the practice of dialogue). It is what, I dare not say "from the outside" for that would be to attribute to it a relation with space, though it is still the least bad way of saying that it is not a production of our mind, elicits these words and logoi and gives them meaning, makes them intelligible to us. If, then, ideai are only principles of intelligibility, we see the absurdity of wondering whether the idea of seat(/bed) is a seat(/bed), whether the idea of man is a man, whether the idea of beauty is beautiful: one does not seat(/sleep) on a principle of intelligibility, even if it is the principle of intelligibility of "seat(/bed)"; a principle of intelligibility does not reason, does not eat, does not drink, etc., even if it is the principle of intelligibility of "man"; a principle of intelligibility has no sensible features, even if it is the principle of intelligibility of "beautiful", nor even intelligible features, even if it is the principle of intelligibility of "good"; It makes the instances of what It is the idea of intelligible by allowing connections with other related ideai that are precisely what gives meaning to them all in a coherent way. In short, the so-called "third man" argument that Aristotle opposed to Plato in his criticism of what he wrongly thought to be his "theory of ideai" does not hold water and only reflects a total misunderstanding of what Plato meant by idea (and by eidos) on the part of Aristotle, who could not think of the idea as anything other than a "model", analogous to that of a painter or a sculptor.
And finally, if Plato's supposed "theories" about eidè and ideai seems not to have been understood, partly due to Aristotle's misunderstanding, it is amusing to note that the word itself seems to have fared better over centuries and that finally the meaning of the English word "idea", directly transcribed from the Greek idea, is quite close, in expessions like "the idea of seat(/bed)", to what Plato had in mind when he was speaking of idea about the manufacturer of klinai ("beds"). And where it becomes even more spicy is when we note that the recent evolution of the terminology for talking about Plato's supposed theories tends to favor the expression "theory of forms" over the older name of "theory of ideas", evolution which manifests a step back toward an increasingly faulty and Aristotelian understanding of the thought of Plato, who was more interested in the "idea" of bed than in the "form" of bed which, except for Platonists who perverted the meaning of words by attributing to it "theories" that were not his own but have the advantage of making what they believe to be his thought outdated and thus defusing its revolutionary character (as Critias already sought to do in the dialogue that bears his name with his history of Atlantis), only directs us towards visual characteristics from which he was precisely seeking to free himself, and from which he invites us to free ourselves in order to get out of the cave... (<==)

(18) The word cheirotechnes here replaces dèmiourgos. Cheirotechnes, built on the root cheir ("hand") associated with technè ("art, technique"), means "craftsman/manual worker" by emphasizing the use of the hands of the craftsman, already more or less implied by technè ("manual art"), whereas dèmiourgos rather emphasized the beneficiaries of the work done (the dèmos, the "people", i.e. everyone, and not only the craftsman himself working for his personal benefit). At the moment when Socrates is about to introduce a person whose production, as we will soon see, is immaterial, he takes a malicious pleasure in insisting on the concrete and material character of the work of the persons he is talking about. And, far from refusing this new qualification of "manual worker" to the newcomer, he will, on the contrary, in his next line, also qualify him as a cheirotechnes ("manual worker") but, in his case, in an ironic way, on the grounds that his hand does intervene in his production since it is the hand that holds the instrument of his prodigies, as suggested by the verb used by Socrates when he tells Glaucon that he too can do the same by " taking in his hand" (labôn, 596d9) the instrument used by the person he is talking about: the primary meaning of the verb lambanein, of which labôn is the active aorist participle, is "to take (in or with one's hands)". (<==)

(19) The adjectives translated as "terrible" and "astonishing" are deinos and thaumastos, respectively. Deinos is an adjective derived from a verb meaning "to fear", whose primary meaning is "fearful", i.e. "terrible, awful", and whose meaning has evolved into "powerful, extraordinary", then "skilful" (with a meaning close to sophos in some of its meanings), and finally, by specialization in the field of rhetoric, "eloquent". Thaumastos refers to the idea of thauma, which means "wonder, marvel" and also "astonishment, admiration", from which it derives through the verb thaumazein "to wonder, marvel, be astonished", a feeling that Socrates makes the starting point of philosophy at Theaetetus, 155d. (<==)

(20) We find here, in very similar terms, the three categories with which Socrates "populates" the horaton ("visible") in the analogy of the line when he describes the second subsegment of the visible (510a5-6), as recalled in note 13 about skeuè: panta skeuè ("all the artifacts") parallels to skeuaston holon genos ("the whole family of what is fabricated"), ta ek tès gès phuomena apanta ("everything that is born from the earth ") parallels pan to phuteuton ("all that is planted"), and zôia panta ("all living beings") parallels ta peri hèmas zôia ("the living creatures around us"), except that the order of enumeration here is reversed. In the analogy of the line, where he was dealing with the visible only, Socrates went from the noblest, the living beings, to the most common, the products of human craftsmanship; here, where he includes the whole visible and invisible Universe and where it is precisely in the productions of human craftsmanship that he takes his examples and where he puts the one he speaks of in competition with the manual workers, he begins by evoking their productions before evoking other productions of which the producer/creator and his intentions are less familiar to us, thereby inviting us to see the other creatures he lists, plants and animals, as also being the work of a craftsman. In doing so, he progresses from what is easiest to produce for a "normal" craftsman/manual worker to what is most difficult, and therefore most surprising (thaumaston, cf. previous note). (<==)

(21) Reading these lines cursively, a reader educated in a environment shaped by twenty centuries of Christianity naturally thinks of the God creator of the Universe, especially after the question of the craftsman of the ideai has been raised. And a reader of Plato thinks, by analogy, of the demiourgos of the Timaeus to avoid anachronism. However, a more careful reading of the text, which will be confirmed later on, shows that this understanding is to be excluded. And what excludes this understanding is not so much the fact that Socrates requalifies the one he speaks of as cheirotechnes ("manual worker") after having qualified him as dèmiurgos, since both of these two terms with similar meanings can be used analogously to speak of a god as Creator (the God of Genesis uses his hands to create Adam, cf. Genesis 2:7, where the Greek verb used in the Septuagint is plassein, which means "to shape/model"), than the kai heauton ("as well as himself") of zôia panta ergazetai, ta te alla kai heauton ("[he] produces all living beings, the others as well as himself"), which indicates unambiguously that the one Socrates has in mind is a zôion ("living") among others, and not one of the gods who will be discussed soon or a creature who would be neither man nor god. As the rest will show, the one Socrates, who does not forget that this discussion has as its starting point the question of "imitation" (mimesis), has in mind is the artist, painter or sculptor, who can not only reproduce what he sees around him, landscapes, still lifes, animals or characters in situation, but also make his self-portrait and even paint or sculpt from imagination the gods in Olympus or in the Underworld, of which he will give a particularly trivial example in the person of someone who holds a mirror in his hand and does not even need to use his hands for anything other than to hold and rotate the mirror to produce images of himself and everything around him.
Socrates' words can be compared to the exchanges between the Elean Stranger and Theaetetus in Sophist, 233d9-234b10Sophist, 233d9-234b10, where it is also a question of someone who would be able to produce "you and me and all the other creatures that grow... and also the sea and the earth and the sky and the gods and all the rest together", by means of a single technè ("art/technique") generically qualified as mimetikon ("imitative") art, which includes not only the case of painters by means of the graphic arts, but also that of the sophists by means of logoi claiming universal knowledge. (<==)

(22) I translate the Greek word sophistès used here by Glaucon as "master craftsman," because its transcription as "sophist" is not strictly speaking a translation, at least not one that is appropriate here. In its original meaning, sophistès, derived from sophos, which in its original sense means "who knows, who masters an art or technique" before evolving toward the meaning "educated, intelligent" and finally "wise", designates any person who excels in his field of activity, whatever it may be, artisanal, intellectual or artistic, before specializing in Athens around the time of Socrates to designate teachers of rhetoric like Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, etc. and, from there, and because of the criticisms that may have been addressed by some (including Plato) to these individuals, to take on a pejorative connotation which is the one that accompanies its transcription in English in the form "sophist" when it is not used with a capital letter (the Sophists) to designate precisely a school of thought of which Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias are the best known representatives nowadays because of the role that Plato makes them play in his dialogues and because they gave their name to some of these dialogues.
That being said, the sophists in the sense of this word in the dialogue to which it serves as a title, are not far off in Socrates' thought, as can be seen by reading the last line of the section here translated, which refers to people claiming universal knowledge, that is, to the case where words and logoi have replaced the mirror to produce an "image" of everything. (<==)

(23) "That in a certain way might happen a creator of all this, but not in another" translates the Greek tini men tropôi genesthai an toutôn apantôn poiètès, tini de ouk an (word for word "in_a_certain on_the_one_hand way happen possibly of_those all a_creator in_a_certain on_the_other_hand not possibly"). On the word poiètes used here by Socrates, which I have translated in this section as "creator" in a manner consistent with my translation of poiein as "to create", and the translation problems it raises, see note 14.
But what should especially attract our attention here is the expression "in one way" (tini tropôi), which shows up again at the end of this line (596d6) and again at 596e10. It suggests that we can have ways of speaking that, without the speaker and/or his listeners realizing it, are imprecise and ambiguous. The surprising character of Socrates' words, which give Glaucon the impression that he is speaking of a "terrible and astonishing man", of a "master craftsman quite astonishing", comes simply from the implicit choice he makes in the multiplicity of possible meanings of the verb poiein that Socrates used to describe the prowess of the one he is talking about, deliberately, without any doubt and knowing full well how his interlocutor might understand it, precisely to draw his attention, and ours, to these kinds of problems. By choosing a verb that has a very broad range of meanings, as can be seen by consulting the entry dedicated to it in the online LSJ, he knew full well that it was very likely that he would be misunderstood. But before clarifying his point, he begins by providing a clue to his interlocutor: there are several possible ways of poiein ("make / produce / create... ") something and, depending on what this something is, not all of them are accessible to everyone. But if the problem were only to realize that a word can have several meanings, it would not be a very great discovery. In the context of this discussion, which has just introduced two words that have to do with the way we give meaning to words and how we understand them, eidos and idea, the question that should be asked is whether, when a word has several meanings, it is because we associate several eidè with it or because we have several ideai in mind behind the same eidos. After all, when Socrates says that "We are in the habit of positing for our own use some eidos, unique in each case, for each of the pluralities upon which we impose the same name," he is indeed saying that the eidos is unique for a given plurality formed of elements to which a person gives the same name, but he is not saying that this plurality must contain all the elements to which that person gives that name. And there are cases of homonymy where it's pretty sure it's not. To take an example in English, the word "crane" may refer to a bird or a machine for hoisting and moving heavy objects. It is quite obvious that each of these senses corresponds in the mind of anyone to two different eidè since these two beings, bird, and machine, have nothing in common, either in appearance or in purpose (and this is even more obvious if we take into account several languages: in the French version of this page, I use as example the word "fraise", which, depending on the case, would be translated into English as "strawberry" if what is being talked about is a fruit, as "drill" if what is being taiked about is a tool and as "fraise" or "ruff" if what is being taiked about is a sort of collar worn in the 1500s). But in many cases, the boundaries are blurred and the answer on the number of eidè less obvious. Let us remember what Socrates says in the Phaedrus, about the division into eidè, the result of which is not guaranteed in advance and the fact that some, if not the vast majority, at least initially, may act like bad butchers, without respecting "the natural joints" (cf. Phaedrus, 265e1-3). In note 17, we have seen an example of it with klinè, which refers to furniture that has in common that one can lie on it, but which can designate beds for sleeping, table beds, or biers on which to lie a corpse. Does this imply three eidè for one single idea or rather three ideai, one for each purpose? The answer may undoubtedly vary from one person to another, and, for a given person, from one moment of one's life to another, because one probably does not discover the three possible uses of such a piece of furniture at the same time. What follows will allow us to progress in the understanding of eidos and idea and their relationship to words, as long as we remain open to the idea that through this discussion of familiar objects, Socrates is trying to make us perceive through examples, and not by means of formal definitions, what ideai and eidè are, how they relate to words and how they differ from each other. (<==)

(24) Here we find one of the two examples that Socrates gave to explain what he meant by "images" (eikones) in relation to the first sub-segment of the visible in the analogy of the line, to which he associated "images (eikones), first shadows, then reflections (phantasmata) on waters and on [other things] insofar as they are by design at the same time compact, smooth and bright" (509e1-510a2). In the analogy, he was refering to reflections "on waters", because what interested him at the time were images that occur naturally, without human intervention, which is also the case with shadows, and above all, in the end, the images formed in the eye in the process of vision, which was what he had in view with the first sub-segment of the visible to make us understand that it is all that is provided by sight which is "images", as shown by the allegory of the cave where the shadows seen by the prisoners "chained", at the bottom of the cave, by their attachment to these shadows, that is to say to the data of sight, as the ultimate proof of "existence" pictures all the data provided by sight. But here, the problem is different and it is precisely the ability of humans to produce images that interests him, hence the reference to mirrors rather than reflections on water. (<==)

(25) "Appearing to sight" translates the Greek phainomena, the present participle in the neuter plural nominative of the verb phainein which means "to bring to light, cause to appear, make known, reveal, shine", and in the middle or passive voice phainesthai, "to come to light, appear, appear to be (as opposed to be)", a form which is at the root of the English "phenomenon". Glaucon here contrasts phainoimena with onta tèi aletheiai ("being in truth"), without realizing that what sight makes us perceive are always "images" that are formed in our eyes and that, when what we are looking at is a reflection, that is to say already the image of something else, if the mirror is of good quality, or if the reflection occurs on the surface of an body of water without wrinkles, the image produced by this reflection in our eyes is indistinguishable, for sight alone, from the image which is formed in our eyes of that of which the reflection is a reflection, that is to say, from that which sight enables us to grasp of that of which the reflection is an image. In other words, for the eyes, there is no difference between what they perceive of the reflection and what they perceive of what it is the reflection of. It is only through an effort of our mind that mobilizes senses other than sight (touch in particular) and other means (moving in particular to approach what we are looking at, or detecting discontinuities at the edge of the reflecting surface), an effort that has become unconscious over time, that we "interpret" the reflection as such and that we are able to distinguish an image in a mirror from the same things observed in direct view, whereas, for our eyes, if the mirror is of good quality, it amounts to the same dots of color in both cases. The opposition that seems obvious to us between appearing (phainesthai) and being (einai) is therefore anything but obvious if we remain within the realm of sight alone. And in the context of this discussion, which has mentioned moments ago the craftsman / producer / maker who "looks" (in an analogical sense) toward an idea that is invisible to the eyes, impalpable and without effect on any of our senses, the question of how the observer of the images produced by a mirror differentiates between the image and its model and judges one as "being in truth" and not the other is not misplaced. The problem is that, as the discussion between the Elean Stranger and Theaetetus in Sophist, 239c9-240b12 shows, if one tries to express this difference by means of the verb einai ("to be") without attributes, the game is lost, because after all, an image or reflection too "is" (an image or a reflection). What allows us to pull through is precisely the notion of "truth" (aletheia), which is not an intrinsic property of something, but always the property of a relationship, the relationship between an image and an original or the relationship between a word and what it is applied to. And this is precisely where the idea comes in, as a criterion of truth: a "real" seat(/bed) is not a seat(/bed) that "is/exists" without further precision, which means nothing and would suppose that the image "is not/doesn't exist" when it "is" indeed (an image), but a seat(/bed) which corresponds to the idea of seat(/bed), that is to say, something on which one can sit(/lie) down to rest(/sleep), which is not the case with the painted seat(/bed), and, by the way, is not the case with the idea of a seat(/bed) either. The "truth" in question here is ultimately the relevance of the attribution of the name regarding the idea of what the name points towards. And what Glaucon seeks to express here is the fact that it is not enough for something that we see to present the appearance for sight (the phainomenon) of that whose name is attributed to it for it to correspond to the idea towards which this name points. The problem is not a problem of "existence" (einai) but a problem of the way of speaking and the relevance of the use of a noun. And the difficulty, as the rest will confirm, is that, for "historical" reasons, related to the way in which we have all learned the words we use, beginning, like the prisoners in the depths of the cave, by associating them with exclusively visual images (horômena eidè, eidè seen), the shadows on the wall of the cave representing the images provided by sight (cf. 515b4-5), we are used to associating a name with something, when this something is visible, as soon as it corresponds to the visual appearance (the horômenon eidos, the eidos seen) that we associate with the name, even if it does not correspond to the idea towards which this name points (its noeton eidos, its intelligible eidos), which we only began to apprehend and specify later. And the consequence of this way of thinking is that we find it difficult to admit the "existence" of what we cannot see, especially when it is precisely invisible because it is immaterial and non-sensible, that is to say, to privilege the seen (horômenon, the qualifier associated by Socrates with the first segment of the line) over the perceived by the intellect (nooumenon, the qualifier associated by Socrates with the second segment of the line). (<==)

(26) "Painter" translates the Greek zôgraphos, which etymologically means "draughtsman (-graphos derived from graphein, "to write, draw") of living beings (zôia)", but whose meaning has broadened to simply designate a "painter", regardless of what he paints. This clarification is not superfluous in a discussion where we have just spoken of someone who "creates" (poiei) zôia ("living beings", 596c6) in a certain way (tini tropôi). The very name implicitly gives us in this case the answer on this "certain way": it is through the drawn and painted image that the producer of the painting "creates" a living being (zôion). Unfortunately, it is not possible to bring out this etymology in English. "Portraitist" could at the very least suggest here that the painter in question paints from live models (but without echoing the words "living beings" used shortly before by Socrates), but the word would no longer be appropriate to translate zôgraphos in the following line of Socrates where what is painted is a bed (klinè).
By moving from the mirror manipulator, of whom it is somewhat borderline to say that he "creates" (poiei), or even that he "makes" (another possible translation of poiei), the images that appear on his mirror, to the painter, Socrates makes more concrete and acceptable the idea of "creation" of the "image" produced by the painter, but does not change the fact that, in both cases, it is an image of something else, that is to say, something that is indeed something in its own way (a reflection or a painting), but which is not what it only presents the visual appearance of from a certain point of view, as Socrates will soon make clear. If Socrates began with images in a mirror, it is in the first place because a miror image is an animated image reflecing the movement of what it shows, this making it much more difficult to distinguising it from its model than with a still painted image. It is also because this process is almost instantaneous and within everyone's reach, as he himself points out, and finally also because it is easier to present in a way that leads to confusion by dispensing with specifying which dèmiourgos ("producer / craftsman... ") we speak of (since this activity is within anyone's reach and does not require any prior learning), which was the desired goal: to astonish (the first step towards philosophy according to what Socrates says in Theaetetus, 155d2-4) to invite the interlocutor to question oneself and thus become more receptive to what follows. (<==)

(27) "In a certain way at least, the painter also creates a seat(/bed)" translates the Greek tropôi ge tini kai ho zôgraphos klinèn poei (word for word: "way at_least in_a_certain also the painter bed creates"). The expression "in a certain way" (tini tropôi) has already been used by Socrates at 596d2 (cf. note 23). But at this point and thus posed, Socrates' question takes on other resonances: is it so obvious that the answer to this question is "Yes!"? Glaucon will answer with a qualified yes. And in the end, the relevant question is: is it justified to give the name "seat(/bed)" (klinè) to something that one cannot sit(/lie) on, that is to say that is not an instantiation of the idea of seat(/bed), simply because, to the eyes, it looks the same? Isn't this once again privileging sight over the intellect? The painter does indeed "create" (poiei) something tangible, but does what he creates deserve the name of "seat(/bed)" (klinè) when what he looks at to "create" it is not the idea of seat(/bed), as the furniture maker would do according to what Socrates says in 596b7-9, but a specific seat(/bed), created/made by someone else, which is in front of him in a specific context, and that what he produces does not abide by the idea of seat(/bed) since he does not make it so that someone can sit(/lie) on it. And this second point, that of the intended use, would still be true even if the painter did not paint the seat(/bed) from a model, but from imagination: he would indeed adjust the product of his imagination to the idea of seat(/bed), but only partially, since he would produce something that does not respect the purpose implied by this idea. It is therefore our way of speaking that is called into question here, and which clearly highlights the difference between eidos, which makes us give such and such a name to such and such a thing (klinè ("bed" both to a piece of furniture on which one sleeps and to what one sees on a painting or a photo representing it, and even to its immaterial image in a mirror), and idea, which determines the purpose of this or that object, the use for which it was created (sleeping on it or admiring it with the eyes in the example of the bed). Concretely, this means that, consciously or unconsciously, we associate two different eidè with the word klinè ("bed"), one, the horômenon eidos ("eidos seen", cf. 510d5), which includes only criteria of resemblance for sight alone and which is associated with a plurality that includes both beds that correspond to the idea of bed, that is, on which we can sleep, and another, the noeton eidos ("intelligible eidos", cf. 511a3), which is limited to intelligible criteria relating to the use that can be made of what is associated with this name. And when we wish to distinguish the two "kinds" (eidè) of beds, since we use the same word in both cases, we shall end up having to say that only the beds of the second "kind" are "true" beds, are "in truth" (tèi aletheiai, 596e4) beds, that is to say, instantiate adequately the idea (exclusively intelligible and the same for all) of bed, which constitutes the criterion of "truth" for "bed". (<==)

(28) After having highlighted a maximalist vision of the attribution of a name on the basis of exclusively visual criteria, on the phainomenon ("what appears/is presented to sight") assessed in the light of a horômenon eidos ("seen eidos") that each person posits for oneself (tithesthai, 596a7) and associates with the name, and without taking into account the idea that makes it intelligible and expresses its purpose, which is our usual way of speaking, Socrates will now go from one extreme to the other, wondering whether the name is strictly speaking the name only of the idea. In other words, he seeks to make us reflect on what a name is the name of. Is the visual appearance alone sufficient to justify the name, in which case a reflection of a seat(/bed) in a mirror is indeed a seat(/bed) (after all, as Socrates says in the allegory of the cave, the names, at least those that designate visible "beings", are attributed by the prisoners chained at the bottom of the cave to the shadows which are the only things they can see, and which represent the images provided by sight of all that is visible, cf. 515b4-5)? Is it, on the other hand, only the idea that deserves the name associated with it, in which case no material object, which constitutes only a particular instantiation of this idea and therefore excludes all other ways, in infinite number, of instantiating it, properly deserve the name that is associated with it? But if the idea is only an immaterial principle of intelligibility with no relation as such to time and space, and therefore does not itself respond, as an idea, to the principle of intelligibility that it "states" for us (for klinè, the fact of being able to lie on it, for "seat" the fact of being able to sit on it), then does it deserve the name of what it is the idea of? An image of a seat(/bed), even if it does not correspond to the idea of a seat(/bed) since we cannot sit(/lie) on it, at least shares a visual appearance with what it is the image of, but an idea, which can only take the form of logoi for us, has nothing in common with an instance of a seat(/bed) and we only give it a name in order to be able to relate it in logoi to the names of other ideai to make it understandable, and these names are only the result of conventions and tell us nothing about the idea to which they are associated, since we may change them from one language to another, or even use several of them in the same language (for example "seat" and "chair", or "bed" and "couch", in English). In short, should the name seat(/bed) be reserved for the idea or on the contrary is it applied to it as improperly as in the case of images of seats(/beds) that do not correspond to the idea of "seat(/bed)"? At this point, Socrates tries to make us aware of these three pretenders to the name of "seat(/bed)", of these "three kinds of seat(/bed)", an expression in which "kind" is one of the possible translations of eidos...
The Greek text of the line that concerns us here, which I translate as "But what about the creator of seats(/beds)? Didn't you indeed just say that he doesn't create the eidos that we declare to be what "seat(/bed)" is, but a certain seat(/bed)?", is ti de ho klinopoios; Ouk arti mentoi eleges hoti ou to eidos poiei ho dè phamen einai ho esti klinè alla klinèn tina; (word for word: "What then the creator_of_beds? not just indeed you_said that not the eidos he_creates that precisely we_say to_be what is bed but bed a_certain?"; for reasons that will become clear in what follows, I do not reproduce the punctuation given by the editors for the second sentence, aside from the final semicolon, the Greek equivalent of the question mark). The first difficulty that this reply poses, and which conditions everything else, is that of the meaning that must be given to eidos here. The earlier remarks to which Socrates refers are those, not of Glaucon, but of Socrates himself in 596b6-10, describing the role that the idea plays in the work of the creator and specifying that "of the idea itself, none of the producers is the producer", remarks to which Glaucon only agreed. The problem is that Socrates used the word idea then, whereas here he uses the word eidos, and this with a wording that seems to reproduce what he said before about the idea. It all depends on the punctuation (which is why I have not reproduced it) and on the role that must be given in this sentence to the words ho dè phamen einai ho esti klinè ("that we declare to be what "bed" is"). Let's start by seeing how my predecessors understood this sentence:
- Jowett: "And what of the maker of the bed? were you not saying that he too makes, not the idea which, according to our view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed?"
- Shorey: "What of the cabinet-maker? Were you not just now saying that he does not make the idea or form which we say is the real couch, the couch in itself, but only some particular couch?" (with a note on the words "the couch in itself", saying "ho esti belongs to the terminology of ideas. Cf. Phaedo 74 D, 75 B, 75 D, Rep. 507 B"
- Cornford: "And what of the carpenter? Were you not saying just now that he only makes a particular bed, not what we call the Form or essential nature of Bed?"
- Bloom: "And what about the couchmaker? Weren't you just saying that he doesn' make the form, which is what we, of course, say is just a couch, but a certain couch?"
- Grube: "What about the carpenter? Did you not say just now that he does not make the Form, what we call the truly existent bed, but he makes a bed?"
- Grube/Reeve: "What about the carpenter? Didn't you just say that he doesn't make the form—which is our term for the being of a bed—but only a bed?"
- Reeve: What about the couch-maker? Didn't you just say that he doesn't make the form—which we say is what a couch is—but only a particular couch?" (with a note on "what a couch is" directing toward an entry for "what it is" in a Glossary of Terms, which says: "What it is (ho estin) If we ask what justice is, the correct answer will specify (the) what it is. What we might mean in speaking of the essence of justice")
As we can see, everyone considers (rightly) that ho dè phamen einai ho esti klinè ("which we declare to be what 'bed' is") takes the place of what Socrates had previously called idea, of which it could constitute a more formal "definition" on an example, encouraged in this by the punctuation proposed by the editors (ouk arti mentoi eleges hoti ou to eidos poiei, o dè phamen einai ho esti klinè, alla klinèn tina;), who put these words in commas, and most of them consider it a parenthetical clause explaining the word eidos, which, depending on the translator, they put in commas or in hyphens, and on the other hand all consider (wrongly) that eidos has simply replaced idea and that the two words are synonymous and designate the same thing. But it should be noted that punctuation did not exist in Plato's time and that therefore the punctuation given to us in the manuscripts is not his own. And above all, apart from the fact that this way of dealing with words would be cavalier to say the least on the part of someone intending to clarify the meaning of a word he has just used earlier, it supposes that Socrates admits a synonymy between idea and eidos which we have already seen was incompatible with his earlier remarks (see note 17). In fact, it is in the light of the summary of this discussion that follows from 597b5 onwards, that we must understand the meaning of eidos here: focusing on what has just been said, Socrates notes that the discussion has brought to light "something like these three seats(/beds)" (trittai tines klinai), the seat(/bed) whose creation he attributes to a god, the multiple material seats(/beds) made by the creators/makers of seats(/beds) and the multiple images of seats(/beds) painted by painters, and he concludes this list with these words: "Then painter, creator of seats(/beds), god, these three responsible for three eidè of seats(/beds)" (597b13-14).
Let us see, then, how the translators I have quoted earlier translate eidos in this line, and how it compares with the way they translate it here:
- Jowett: "Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintend them: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter?"
- Shorey: "The painter, then, the cabinet-maker, and God, there are these three presiding over three kinds of couches."
- Cornford: "So the three kinds of bed belong respectively to the domains of these three: painter, carpenter, and god."
- Bloom: "Then painter, couchmaker, god—these three preside over three forms of couches"
- Grube: "Painter, carpenter, god; these three, corresponding to three kinds of bed"
- Grube/Reeve: "Then the painter, carpenter, and god correspond to three kinds of bed?"
- Reeve: "So painter, carpenter, and god—these three oversee three kinds of couches?".
Obviously, all of them except Bloom (who abides by the rule he set to himself and stated at the beginning of his Preface, to "insofar as possible always [use] the same English equivalent for the same Greek word") make the difference between a sense of eidos which, for them, is a "technical" meaning in connection with what they consider to be the "theory of forms/ideas" which they assume to be that of Plato, where most of them translate it as "form" with (Grube) or without (Bloom, Grube/Reeve, Reeve) capital "f" or "idea" (Jowett twice) or both (Jowett once, Shorey), and a "usual" meaning. where they unanimously translate it as "kinds" (except Bloom for the reason stated earlier) and it seems obvious to them that eidos is used in the "technical" sense here (and everywhere else in this discussion except in 597b14) and in the "usual" sense in 597b13-14, a few lines later, As shown in the table below, which lists the four occurrences of eidos and the three of idea in the section here translated and their translation in each case by each of them:

	Jowett	Shorey	Cornford	Bloom	Grube	Grube/Reeve	Reeve
eidos (596a6)	idea or form	idea or form	essential nature or Form	form	Form	form	form
eidos (597a2)	idea	idea or form	Form or essential nature	form	Form	form	form
eidesi (597b14)	kinds	kinds	kinds	form	kinds	kinds	kinds
eidos (597c8)	idea	form or idea	character	form	Form	form	form
ideai (596b3)	ideas or forms	ideas or forms	Forms	ideas	Forms	forms	forms
idean (596b7)	idea	idea or form	Form	idea	Form	form	form
idean (596b9)	ideas	idea	Form	idea	Form	form	form

In short, they have no problem supposing that Plato, a few lines apart, uses two different words (idea, then eidos) to talk about the same thing, the "form/idea" in a supposedly Platonic "technical" sense, and the same word, eidos, to talk about two different things, the "form/idea" in the supposedly Platonic "technical" sense where the word is synonymous with idea and the "species / genus / kind / category..." in the "usual" sense of what is shared by distinct "things" to which the same name is given because of this common "appearance" (primary meaning of eidos). But if, as I have already said, there is no doubt that the words ho dè phamen einai ho esti klinè ("which we declare to be what 'bed' is") seem to explain what was previously referred to by idea in relation to the manufacturer / craftsman / creator / carpenter... who looks toward it to produce a seat(/bed) (or something else), this in no way implies that the word eidos which precedes these words also replaces idea, which would be equivalent to saying that Socrates, when he wants to give details on what he means by idea, uses another word to talk about it! However, the rest of the discussion leaves no doubt that, for Socrates, an image of a seat(/bed) made by a painter or produced by a mirror, a seat(/bed) made of wood or other materials by a craftsman looking toward the idea of a seat(/bed) and the idea of seat(/bed) produced by a god are three distinct eidè of seat(/bed): that is exactly what he says in the reply I just quoted.  Everything therefore invites us to think that, already here, Socrates uses eidos in the sense in which he will use it in 597b13-14, and not as a synonym for idea, and to understand his words as meaning that the seat(/bed) maker does not produce the eidos (the "kind / species / genus...") of seat(/bed) which is the production of a god, that is to say the idea towards which he "looks" to guide him in his work. Simply, he says it by replacing idea with a formula, ho dè phamen einai ho esti klinè ("which we declare to be what 'bed' is"), which tells us a little more about what he means by idea, which means that the set of words to eidos ho dè phamen einai ho esti klinè ("the eidos that we declare to be what 'seat(/bed)' is") must be understood as a whole, without the comma added by the editors between eidos and ho, designating the "kind" (eidos) of seat(/bed) that Socrates has in mind here, the one to which he referred shortly before when speaking of the idea of seat(/bed), and which is not "a certain seat(/bed)" (klinèn tina), a particular seat(/bed), having a particular shape and dimensions, made of specific materials, visible in a particular place and not elsewhere, made at a particular date by a specific craftsman, all characteristics that are foreign to "what 'seat(/bed)' is", which does not imply any specific shape, any specific dimensions, any specific materials, and which is unrelated to time and space and is therefore not provided by the idea of seat(/bed).
What are the clarifications that these words afford us about the idea? The first one is that it moves us from the question of what we use this idea for to the question of how we talk about it, that is to say from the register of ergon ("action") to the register of logos ("speech"), and the second is that it describes the idea to us as that by which we claim to know "what is" (ho esti) what it is the idea of, that is to say, to understand it. The words ho esti ("what it is") used here and the words "we are in the habit of positing for our own use" (eiôthamen tithesthai) of 596a9-7 used in connection with eidos oppose what they apply to, the idea in one case, the eidos in the other, as the "objective" (it is this and nothing else, and what you may think of it doesn't change anything to that) to the "subjective" (I think that's it, but I could be wrong). The main difficulty for us human beings is that "what it is" boils down to words and logoi, which are nothing concrete and that we would like to be able to "concretize" it, associate it with something tangible and visible, or at least with images that would better speak to us than long speeches. We would like to be able to understand the words independently of each other by associating to each one one or more images like those that used to appear in the school books with which we learned to speak, and we cannot admit that a sentence like "a seat(/bed) is a piece of furniture on which we can sit(/lie) down", which for us formulates the idea of a seat(/bed), refers to "something" that "would be" this idea as such, independently of its instantiations in concrete furniture, and independently of the words used to enunciate it and their arrangement, "something" which, beyond words, grounds their meaning by making their common understanding possible: the sentences "a seat(/bed) is a product of human craftsmanship made so that someone can sit(/sleep) on it", "a seat(/bed) is an item of furniture for people to sit(/sleep) on", « un siège(/lit) est un meuble sur lequel on peut s'asseoir(/s'allonger) » all refer to the same idea, and the fact of experience that different people can understand one another by using these words proves that they are not the product of the mind of one or the other of these people. But for most people, today as in Plato's time, something that does not affect any of our senses and that we can only grasp through words, but which is not even those words, is not "something." And this is why, when they want to "visualize" what Plato calls ideai (which Plato urges us not to try to do, especially in his description of the second sub-segment of the perceived by the intellect in the analogy of the line), they imagine them as "models", indeed "intelligible", but models nonetheless, in a "world" of models where each "thing" to which a different name is given exists only in one instance. In short, they may say "purely intelligible", but they cannot think of something that has no sensible property, nor any connection with time and space. It is not because an idea is "used" in time and space by a mortal being made of flesh and bones that this idea must "pre-exist" to this use, since as an idea, it has no relation to time! Ideai should not be spoken of in terms of "existence", but in terms of "meaning": the idea of seat(/bed) only makes sense if there exist in time and space creatures whose organism requires rest (which implies the passing of time), that this rest requires a lying position (which implies space) and that these creatures are endowed with the capacity to make artificial "objects" that could meet this need better than what they can find ready-made in nature around them (which implies a form of intelligence, capable of acting with a predetermined purpose in mind). But a logical dependence is not a temporal dependence, except for the one who reasons and thus links in time, in his time, the ideai that allow him to understand. And so the words ""a seat(/bed) is a piece of furniture on which we can sit(/lie) down," or formulas of equivalent meaning in the same or another language, have sufficed since men endowed with logos have contemplated arranging their "dens," are and will remain sufficient as long as there are still men on earth or elsewhere in space for any craftsman to imagine seats(/beds) that will not resemble any of those made by his predecessors but which will nevertheless be as "seats(/beds)" as all those that preceded them and all those that will follow them, which would not be possible for a "model", whatever it may be, as soon as it is supposed to have the slightest sensible characteristic (but if it has no sensible characteristics, what is left to make it a "model" and how does it help us to understand better?). But it is not because instances of seats(/beds) appeared for the first time at a given time in the Earth's evolution that this means that the idea of seats(/beds) was "born" at that time, since it is not an "object" in time and space but a node in relations with other ideai that were not "born" at one time or another in evolution. To understand is not to materialize, on the contrary, even for material things, it is to abstract oneself from spatio-temporal and material contingencies in order to arrive at principles of coherence in a whole in which nothing is understood independently of the rest, of all the rest step by step, principles of coherence that we must seek beyond the words themselves, in what Plato calls the ideai, with the help of eidè that everyone fiddles with for this purpose and adjusts as one understands better, counting on dialegesthai, that is to say the sharing of experience by means of dialogos, to check his wandering thoughts (dianoia). Plato did not imagine an "ideal" world that alone would be "real/existing" and of which our material and sensible world would be a pale copy, constantly changing and therefore without real "being".  He sought to explain and understand our world in the making, the only one we can know, by trying to understand how logos allowed us to understand it and to cooperate effectively with one another, starting from the fact that in some cases at least, logos "works", which implies that our logoi refer to something that is not for each person the product of one's imagination, different from one to another, even if they all use the same words, and this something is intelligible, even if it manifests itself in creatures subject to becoming and perishable, gives meaning to our logoi and can be understood by us human beings. He did not reserve understanding and knowledge for a "world" that would be immutable, non-material and without action on the senses, and discarded the world that is ours as unknowable and therefore uninteresting. He took notice of the fact that the same world of which we are a perishable part, the only one he knew and the only one he was interesed in, could be apprehended by both the senses (and therefore "sensible", and in particular "visible") and intelligence (therefore "intelligible"), but that it was intelligible only on the condition that we did not limit ourselves to sense data and that we accepted to "see" (with the eyes of the mind) the ideai that give it meaning, even if we are not able to apprehend them as immaterial ideai without relations with time and space, by exploring by means of logos the network of relations that these ideai maintain with one another and which are what give meaning to them all in the profusion of their temporary instantiations in the material world, while being careful not to let ourselves be trapped by words by taking them for the ideai that they seek to represent in a way that is understandable to us and accessible to the senses, that is to say, by becoming dialektikoi, in other words, capable by means of (dia) words and logoi to go beyond (dia) them through the practice of dialogue with others, the only guarantee that we do not invent what we think we understand. And if there is a lesson to be learned from the Parmenides, a prelude to the discussion of the Sophist which will demonstrate the possibility of false speech (pseudes logos), it is what Parmenides says at the conclusion of his discussion with a still young Socrates on eidè and ideai who has stressed the impossibility of reaching a satisfactory representation of what they are, even if he does not distinguish between eidè and ideai, and no doubt has an understanding of them different from that of the Socrates of the Republic: if, although we are unable to imagine what they are, we do not admit them, we completely destroy "the power of dialegesthai" (hè tou dialegesthai dunamis) by suppressing the possibility of understanding one another, for lack of objective referents to words (Parmenides, 135b5-c3). The rest will show us that Plato offers us, in an attempt to make us understand the ideai, an analogy different from that of the painter and his model, just as defective but highlighting other interesting aspects of the relationship between ideai and instances of them, that of the gardener/planter and his plants / seeds, but that, unfortunately, as Plato is not in the habit of dotting the i's and crossing the t's, and that he prefers to make sure that it is the reader who manages to understand by oneself what he is trying to make understood, the only way to be sure that it is well understood and not just read / heard / learned, this suggestion went completely unnoticed, at least by those who, over the centuries, have produced commentaries on his dialogues and what they assumed to be his doctrines...
But then, in this use of eidos, where it is not synonymous with idea, does this word have a meaning distinct from the one it has in 596a6-7, in what I have called the "quasi-definition" of eidos? At first glance, one might think so, since this "pseudo-definition" establishes a close relationship between eidos and name and that here, we are talking about "kinds" that all have the same name. But, as I pointed out in note 23 about synonyms, if Socrates says that we associate a single eidos with a plurality to which we give the same name (or qualifier), he does not say that we associate only one eidos with everything to which we give the same name, that is, on the example used here, that we associate a single eidos with everything to which we associate the name seat(/bed). And to say that there are several eidè of seats(/beds) is to say that we associate several eidè, in the sense of this word in 596a6-7, with the word "seat(/bed)", one that allows us to associate the word "seat(/bed)" with what we see on a painting representing a seat(/bed), and which does not imply that we can sit(/lie) down on this "seat(/bed)", another, more restrictive, which allows us to call "seat(/bed)" only that which we can sit(/lie) down on, and finally another, which allows us to designate what is at the origin of a certain idea common to all that we call "seat(/bed)" but which is no particular seat(/bed) and which, as only perceptible by the mind as principles of intelligibility to the human mind, is not a seat(/bed) which we can lie down on, but which merely makes comprehensible to us "what seat(/bed) is" (ho estin klinè). And it is precisely because it is not itself a seat(/bed) among others that it constitutes a third eidos ("kind / species / genus...") of seat(/bed), which differs from the first one by the fact that, as purely intelligible, it is not visible to the eyes, and from the second by the fact that it does not itself satisfy the criteria of intelligibility that characterize what "seat(/bed)" is (the fact that one can sit(/lie) on it). And all this discussion is precisely aimed at making us understand this ambiguity constitutive of most of the words we use, which begins when, as children, we learn to speak (often by learning names from images of what the name is the name of, which is not always readily accessible to allow this learning), to be associated only with visual appearances (eidè), and which, as we grow up, take on a more precise meaning, that is to say, are associated with one or more different eidè corresponding to the various meanings of the word in question and not limited to exclusively visual appearances, but without calling into question the fact that the word remains associated with everything that meets the exclusively visual criteria that we had associated to it at the beginning (the horômena eidè mentioned in 510b5). In short, eidos always has the same meaning in this page, a meaning related to what allows anyone, at any moment of his life, to give for oneself meaning to the words he uses based on his past experience, and is not synonymous with idea, which designates what, based on purpose and the relations that these ideai have with one another, constitutes the objective reference that is the distant target of the eidè and allows us to understand one another by means of words. (<==)

(29) "But then, if he does not create what is, he would not create the being, but something such as the being, but not being?" translates almost literally the Greek oukoun ei mè ho estin poiei, ouk an to on poioi, alla ti toiouton hoion to on, on de ouˑ (word for word: "But_then if not what is he_creates, not possibly the being he_would_create, but something such as the being, being but not;"). The difficulty in understanding this sentence comes from the fact that it uses various forms of the verb einai ("to be") without explicit attributes, and also from the fact that the words ho esti klinè used by Socrates in his previous line are ambiguous in Greek, a fact that cannot be preserved in translations. So let us look at it a little more closely. As I explain in the previous note, in his previous line, Socrate has used the words ho esti klinè in the sense of "what bed is", in a way that makes ho esti ("what is") a substitute for hè idea ("what bed is" meaning the same thing as "the idea of bed"). But the Greek is very flexible in the order of words in a sentence, doesn't have an indefinite article equivalent of "a(n)" in English and, in the time of Plato, didn't have punctuation marks (in this case, quotation marks around "bed"), and the words ho esti klinè may be understood either as meaning:
(1) "what/that which 'bed' is (i.e. "means")", "bed", between quotes, being the subject, calling for an explanation of what the word 'bed' refers to,
(2) "what/which thing is [a] bed", "bed" being the attribute, as in the sentence "I will show you in this room what (which item of furniture) is a bed".
And to make things worse, Socrates, when reusing the words ho esti klinè, drops the word klinè, leaving it implicit to give more generality to what he now says, as if to suggest: "we have been talking so far about klinè, but you might replace klinè by any name you'd like, by seat or table for instance, and what we are about to say would still hold." And that's the point. The use of einai without attribute in this case doesn't mean that Socrates is now suddenly talking about no one knows what abstract "Being", but that he is talking of things being something that is not explicited because it might be anything, klinè ("bed/ a bed"), as was the case so far, or anything else. In other words ho estin should be understood as meaning "what *** is", where *** might be replaced by any name, and means the same thing as "the idea of ***".
Now, what Socrates does here is to move from the form ho estin (klinè) to the form to on (klinè), since it is obvious that, if klinè is implied in ho estin and may be replaced by anything else, it is also implied in to on and may be replaced by the same anything else. By anything else, but by something! In other words, on ("being") is not refering to "being" in the absolute, without any associated attribute, but to "being something, whatever it is". With any verb other than the verb einai ("to be"), the substantivation of a participle with an article means "the person(s)/thing(s) who/which do(es) what the veb implies" or, in the passive voice, "the person(s)/thing(s) being subjected to what the verb implies", as for instance, ho legôn (word for word "the (masculine) talking") means "the [man] talking/who talks" and ta legomena (word per word "the (neuter plural) being said") means "the [things] being said". But since, for Plato, the verb einai ("to be") has no meaning by itself and assumes meaning only through the predicate, the ousia ("beingness") it calls for (see the entry on einai in the Lexicon of Greek Words Important to Understand Plato on this site, and Appendix 2.1: einai, ousia in Plato: User's Guide, and also the definition of to on given by the Elean Stranger in Sophist, 247d8-e4, one of the only formal definitions found in the dialogues, which is a long ironic formula which, properly understood, includes absolutely everything as "being", including the fantasies of my mind, since to be thought, or dreamed, even only once, is still to suffer / be affected (pathein), therefore "to be" in the sense of this definitition, that is, puts no boundary whatsoever to what can be said to "be", whereas the original meaning of the word translated by "definition", horos, is precisely "boundary"), to on has no meaning until a predicate is supplied (or implied by the context, as is the case here, or assumed by the one talking/writing, which might not be the same as the one assumed by a listener/reader), or has the meaning of "the subject" in a grammatical sense, that is, the "thing" to which a predicate is associated in a sentence of the form "s is p" where s is the subject (to on, "the being") and p is the predicate/attribute (hè ousia, "the beingness") attributed to the subject "being" that. So, if we supply "bed" as the assumed predicate, what Socrates says here is: "if he does not create what is bed, he would not create the being bed, but something such as the being bed, but not being bed", which may be understood in two ways, corresponding to the two possible meanings of ho esti klinè mentioned earlier:
(1) "if he does not create what is 'bed', he would not create the [thing] being 'bed', but something such as the [thing] being 'bed', but not being ('bed')", 'bed' refering in this case to the meaning implied by the word "bed", hence the quotation marks, which didn't exist in Greek in Plato's time, suggesting that we are talking of the word, not of individual objects being called by that name;
(2) "if he does not create what is a bed, he would not create the [thing] being a bed, but something such as the [thing] being a bed, but not being a bed", 'bed' refering in this case to an instance of what is called 'bed', hence the addition of an indefinite article, which doesn't exist in Greek.
Behind this ambiguity, Socrates raised the question of the difference between the definition of a word and the identification of instances of "things" bearing this name, through a question about the bed-maker: if he is not the creator of the definition / idea of what bed is (ho esti klinè), can he be said to be the creator of "bed" when he creates an instance of a thing being bed / a bed (to on (klinè)).
The problem, that Plato most likely was aware of and deliberately plays with, is that, for most Greek speaking people of his time, the words ho esti (klinè) were most naturally understood as meaning "what (bed) is", calling for a definition of the word ("bed") (meaning (1)), and that the words to on (klinè) were most naturally understood as meaning "the [thing] being (a bed)", refering to an instance of bed (menaning (2)), which means that the rewording of his sentence by supplying the implicit word "bed", of which I just gave two possible versions should in fact be a mix of both, something like:
(3) "if he does not create what is 'bed', he would not create the [thing] being a bed, but something such as the [thing] being 'bed', but not being 'bed'."
And, by deliberately composing a sentence having a sophistical flavor, he wanted to stage Socrates raising the attention of Glaucon (and himself, of his students/readers) on this ambiguity, which is the first step toward distinguishing the name from the thing it names. This means that this sophist-mimicking sentence should not be read as a statement of Socrates, but as a question to Glaucon. And this leads us once again to a question of punctuation, which must be adressed taking Socrates whole line into account, and not only the sentence here considered. Adam puts a question mark at the end of each part of the line, one after on de ou ("but not being") and one at the end of the line; Jowett/Campbell, Burnet, Shorey and Chambry (Budé) put a high dot (the equivalent of a semicolon) at the end of the first part (after on de ou) and a question mark at the end of the line; Slings puts a question mark at the end of the first part (after on de ou) and a period at the end of the line. What seems important to me is to consider that the whole line is interrogative, not affirmative, which may accomodate three punctuations: either two question marks as with Adam, or a comma or a semi-colon after on de ou, and a question mark at the end of the line. As far as translations are concerned, it can be seen hereafter that all quoted translators consider the first part of the line as an affirmation of Socrates (period after on de ou, or, for Jowett, a semicolon and a period at the end, meaning that the whole line is affirmative, and that Jowett, Shorey, Bloom and Grube put a period at the end of the line, making the whole of it affirmative, not interrogative):
- Jowett: "Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot make true existence, but only some semblance of existence; and if any one were to say that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any other workman, has real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth." (in the previous line, he translated ho de phamen einai ho esti klinè as "which, according to our view, is the essence of the bed");
- Shorey: "Then if he does not make that which really is, he could not be said to make real being but something that resembles real being but is not that. But if anyone should say that being in the complete sense belongs to the work of the cabinet-maker or to that of any other handicraftsman, it seems that he would say what is not true." (in the previous line, he translated ho de phamen einai ho esti klinè as "which we say is the real couch, the couch in itself");
- Cornford: "If so, what he makes is not the reality, but only something that resembles it. It would not be right to call the work of a carpenter or of any other handicraftsman a perfectly real thing, would it?" (in the previous line, he translated ho de phamen einai ho esti klinè as "what we call the Form or essential nature of Bed");
- Bloom: "Then, if he does not make what is, he wouldn't make the being but something that is like the being, but is not being. And if someone were to assert that the work of the producer of couches or of any other manual artisan is completely being, he would run the risk of saying what's not true." (in the previous line, he translated ho de phamen einai ho esti klinè as "which is what we, of course, say is just a couch");
- Grube: "Now if he does not make that which is, he would not be making what is, but something which is like what is, but is not that. If one said that the work of the carpenter or that of any other craftsman is completely real, one would risk saying what is not true." (in the previous line, he translated ho de phamen einai ho esti klinè as "what we call the truly existent bed,");
- Grube/Reeve: "Now, if he does not make the being of a bed, he isn't making that which is, but something which is like that which is, but is not it. So, if someone were to say that the work of a carpenter or any other craftsamn is completely that which is, wouldn't he risk saying what isn't true?" (in the previous line, he translated ho de phamen einai ho esti klinè as "which is our term for the being of a bed");
- Reeve: "Now, if he does not make what it is, he is not making what is, but something that is like what is, but is not. So, if someone were to say that the product of a couch-maker or any other handicraftsman completely is, he probably would not be speaking the truth?" (in the previous line, he translated ho de phamen einai ho esti klinè as "which we say is what a couch is").
Besides, most of them see this line as dealing with a question of "existence" or "inexistence" and use words (in red in the translations) such as "exist" and "existence" (Jowett), "real","reality" and "really" (Jowett, Shorey, Cornford, Grube), implying that they give the verb einai ("to be") an "existential" meaning and assume degrees of "reality", whatever that means, which is not the case for Plato. Plato's problem is not the greater or lesser "reality" of what is called "bed" (or "seat", or "table", or any other name), but the greater or lesser relevance of that name for what it is applied to. His purpose is to try to clarify the difference there is between "what 'bed' is", questioning the meaning of a word, and "what is a bed", questioning the relevance of a name for what it is applied to, the two possible meanings of the Greek words ho esti klinè, which implies understanding that a name is not what it is the name of, but a mere "sticker" associated with it by mere shared convention, which, by itself, teaches us nothing whatsoever about what it is the name of, which is precisely what makes the difference between the mindset (pathèma) associated with the second subsegment of the segment of the line of Republic VI representing what is perceived by intelligence (noûs), the one called noèsis ("intellection") in the analogy of the line and epistèmè ("science/knowledge") in its recalling toward the end of book VII in the discussion on dialektikè, and the one associated with the first subsegment, called dianoi ("discursive/wandering thought"), where words are used without questioning their relevance, as if it was obvious they were what they only point at, in the same way the difference between the two mindsets (pathèmata) associated with the two subsegments of what is seen was whether or not one is conscious of the fact that all one sees through one's eyes is only images of what is at the origin of those sights, not the "things" being seen themselves. This clarification will come with the identification of three "kinds" (eidè) of "things" called "bed" (or whatever) in the ensuing discussion, the idea of bed itself, material beds one can lie on to sleep, manufactured by bed-makers, and mere images of beds on paintings, reflexions or other, on which one cannot sleep, but, before making this clarification, Plato plays the sophist to point at the problem by puzzling Glaucon and his students/readers with deliberately hard to understand abstract considerations in the manner of Parmenides, playing with the verb einia ("to be") without attributes, or rather with implied attributes, which opens the door to all sorts of sophistry. (<==)

(30) "And if someone were to say to be perfectly being the product of the producer of seats(/beds) or some other manual laborer, would he run the risk of not telling the truth?!... translates, as for the first part of this reply (see previous note), in an almost literal manner and without adding the attribute called by to on ("the being / what is"), left implicit by Plato, the Greek teleôs de einai on to tou klinourgou ergon è allou tinos cheirotechnou ei tis phaiè, kinduneuei ouk an alèthè legein; (word for word: "Perfectly and be being the of_the producer_of_beds production or of_other some manual_worker if someone said, he_runs_the_risk not possibly true tell"). The important word in this part of the sentence is the one that is highlighted by its position at the beginning of the sentence (a position that is impossible to maintain in English), teleôs, an adverb formed from the root telos, which means "completion, end, achievement", via the adjective teleios (or teleos), which means "accomplished, perfect". This reference to "perfection" brings us back to the question of what an idea is and what constitutes "perfection" in the adequacy of an instance to the idea of which it is an instance. Should the "perfection" of the production of a seat(/bed)maker, or of a maker of anything else, be assessed according to a logic of image vs. model, like that of a painter, or according to a logic of adequacy to a principle of intelligibility? If we think of the idea as a unique "model" to which the craftsman's production must resemble as much as possible, a "model" that would represent perfection for what the idea is the idea of, this implies that there would be only one way of perfectly instantiating (teleôs) this idea, but it also and above all implies, whether we like it or not, that the idea is thought of as the most perfect instance of what it is the idea of, that is to say, as an instance among others of what it is the idea of, so in the case of a material production, that it is itself material or, short of being material, that it be a specification for material realization with all the necessary dimensioned plans and all the needed information on the nature and qualities required of the materials to be used, etc. (this is indeed what bothers many scholars regarding this section of the Republic and makes them hesitate to accept that there can be an idea of seat(/bed) or of anything material in the sense that they suppose Plato gave to this word in the context of his supposed "theory of eidè/ideai"). Yet it is obvious that what the craftsman seeks to apprehend by looking toward the idea of seat(/bed) is not a particular seat(/bed), whatever it may be, which would still be only a particular way of instantiating this idea among a multitude of other possible instantiations, having each a greater or lesser "perfection" (technique) in their realization: a four-poster bed may be more or less "perfect", just like a camp bed, a child's bed or a hospital bed, and there is no reason to consider that a four-poster bed is inherently more perfect than a camp bed, a child's bed or a hospital bed, each of which meets a different need implying different criteria of "perfection" depending on the uses it is intended for, but all of them "perfectly" correspond to the idea of bed which is to allow to lie on it, even if some are more solid, or more comfortable, or more aesthetic, in short technically more "perfect" than others (according to criteria that can change from one country or one era to another), since the idea of seat(/bed) does not "include" any specific information on shape, materials, colour, dimensions, style..., but only specifies the purpose (telos) of a seat(/bed). As soon as this purpose, this telos, is perfectly (teleôs) satisfied by the object produced, it perfectly (teleôs) implements the idea of which it is an instantiation. It is because they did not understand this and could not completely get rid of the logic of the "model" that Aristotle and those who have followed him to the present day did not understand Plato's words and ended up with the "theory of forms/ideas" making ideai "models" in a heaven of pure ideas of which the material world would only be a pale copy devoid of intelligibility because changing and material. This understanding of ideai as "models" is a logic in which each idea is independent of the others and sufficient for the production of multiple instances of what it is the idea of. But ideai are not what is accessible to the human mind of supposedly "perfect" (teleios) models of what they are the idea of, which it would be enough to reproduce as exactly as possible to produce as perfect an instance as possible, but nodes in a network of relations that includes them all, and they can be understood only by the relations they maintain with one another and that give them meaning in the whole that they form together and not a particular appearance. The idea of seat, or of bed, like any other idea, can be instantiated in many ways, all compatible with this idea, but incompatible with each other: a material bed cannot be both a baby bed and a king size bed, a bed intended to stay in the same place in a bedroom and a folding cot, etc., and yet all these beds correspond perfectly to the idea of bed. And in the same way, a "beautiful" thing cannot be both beautiful to the eyes, like a beautiful painting (which does not produce sounds) or a beautiful girl (who can be beautiful to look at but have a piercing voice that is unpleasant to hear), beautiful to the ears, like a beautiful piece of music (which we do not see, but which we only hear), and beautiful in the moral sense, as a beautiful action (of which we have not necessarily been a direct witness), even if all of them exhibit instances of the idea of "beautiful" (cf. Greater Hippias). The idea of seat(/bed) is of a purely intelligible order since it is the principle of intelligibility of that which it is the idea of. It makes us understand what a seat(/bed) is intended for, what its telos ("finality") is, whatever material "form" it may take, through the relations it maintains with other ideai such as anthrôpos ("human being"), "position", "lying", "sleeping", "horizontal", "resting", etc., in logoi which, as logoi, are not what they seek to render intelligible for us (the sentence "a seat(/bed) is a piece of furniture on which a person can sit(/lie) on" is not a seat(/bed) in the sense that these words have) since, whatever the idea in question, it makes itself understood by us, human beings, through immaterial logoi, or rather, through relations conceived in our mind (noûs) between the eidè that we associate with the words we use in these logoi, by trying as much as possible to free ourselves from the visual images that we associate with these eidè out of habit (since in our early childhood, when we learned to speak, they referred only to visual images), precisely so as not to be constrained and restricted by these images in our understanding. This is what Socrates means when he speaks, in the analogy of the line, with regard to the second sub-segment of the intelligible, of "what logos itself can reach through the power of dialoguing (hè tou dialegesthai dunamis)... without making also use in any way of anything sensible, but with eidè themselves, through them, into them, it ends also into eidè" (511b3-c2). Eidè and not ideai, because ideai, as I have already said, are the objective targets of what we represent to ourselves in our minds (noûs) of human beings through eidè.
That this reply of Socrates is indeed about ways of speaking and not about the greater or lesser "reality" of what is at stake is shown by the two words that end it: alèthè legein, "tell the truth". The risk of not telling the truth that Socrates evokes here is entirely dependent of the way in which the initial teleôs ("perfectly") is understood. Once we have understood that the "perfection" mentionned here is not the material perfection of the craftsman's work, which will alsways only produce a perishable seat(/bed), more or less solid, more or less well fitted together, more or less elegant..., but its adequacy to its purpose (telos) which is that one can sit(/lie) on it, there is no reason why we should not admit that all objects that satisfy this requirement are "perfectly" (teleôs) "seat(/bed)", though perishable. The "heaven" of ideai pictured in the allegory of the cave by the starry sky is not a "model" of our material world in which each element existing in multiple instances in it would exist only in as perfect an examplar as possible that would appear to us as an idea, but a network of relations between the stars/ideai that gives meaning to the whole they form and in relation to which the greater or lesser "truth" of the logoi, said, written or merely thought, that we produce and that purport to account with the words we use for the relations between the ideai to which these words are supposed to refer through the mediation of the eidè that each one of us associates with them and whose targets are these ideai.
In 596a6-7, at the beginning of this discussion, where Socrates related plurality, noun and eidos, the name was attributed to the multiple instances of a plurality, not to the eidos, which was simply associated with it as a criterion for selecting what the name was suitable for. The introduction of the idea does not change this way of seeing things since the idea is the objective target of the eidè that each of us uses to understand the words we use, a target which, precisely because it is objective and not produced by anyone of us as is the case for eidè, allows us to understand one another when using these words, since all the eidè that everyone associates with these words are approximations of the same targets, these ideai. These ideai therefore play the same role as the eidè in the initial sentence and therefore do not call into question the fact that the names are attributed to the multiple instances of the plurality with which the name is associated. Simply, when this attribution is made on the basis of the idea (assuming that one has fully understood this idea) and not on an eidos cobbled together by a human being without necessarily respecting the natural articulations (cf. Phaedrus, 265e1-3), it is done according to truth.
All this shows how difficult it is to understand the relationships that exist between an idea, its instances, the names that are attributed to these instances and the eidè that reflect for each person at a given moment in one's life the understanding one has of the words one uses (especially when one inherits, as is still the case today, of a tradition of more than two thousand years of incomprehension initiated by Aristotle) and how much more difficult this understanding would have been if Plato had not gone through the simple case of the products of human industry, for which it is easier to admit that the idea, purely intelligible, is not the supposedly perfect instance among all the other instances, all material, of that of which it is the idea, and had decided to make them understood directly in the case of abstract notions such as beautiful, just or good, even if these are also instantiated, as qualities and no longer "objects", for us, embodied souls, at least, only in the material world of which we are a part, the only one of which we can speak and which we can try to understand, provided that it is admitted that it is intelligible. (<==)

(31) Glaucon's answer to Socrates here, although emphatic in the agreement with Socrates on the fact that the one he evokes "runs the risk of not telling the truth" (the initial oukoun ("certainly not") of his answer bounces back on the ouk de ouk an alèthè legein ("not telling the truth") by reinforcing it, so that "certainly not" must be understood as meaning "certainly (he would) not (be telling the truth)") contrasts with his other answers in the section here translated, on the one hand because it is more developed than most of the others, which are often limited to one, two or three words of approval, questioning or astonishment, and on the other hand because it is the only one in which Glaucon does not express his own opinion, but hides behind what he presents as opinion (hôs an dokeien, word for word "as possibly it_would_seem", translated as "as it would seem") of other people, in this case people whom he describes simply as tois peri tous toiousde logous diatribousin, word for word "to_the (plural) regarding the such logoi spend/waste_time", which I have translated as "those who spend/waste time in such discussions". The verb used, diatribein, which etymologically means "to completely (dia) rub/wear out by friction (tribein)", and by analogy "to spend/waste one's time" from the idea of "to use" the time one has, is ambiguous and can be understood both in a positive way ("to spend (one's) time", for example in serious studies) and in a pejorative way ("to waste (one's) time", for example, in sterile discussions conducted for the sole pleasure of arguing and contradicting). This response, based on opinion (the verb dokein he uses is the verb from which doxa, the Greek word meaning "opinion") is derived) from others suggests that Glaucon seems to have understood the somewhat parodic character of Socrates' last reply, in which he began to use, in conditional and not assertoric form, sophist-like formulations riddled with uses of the verb einai ("to be") without explicit attributes in close forms (ho esti, which could be translated as "what *** is" as well as "what is a ***", and to on, "the being", that is to say "what is") whose meanings can easily be confused, and no longer knows whether to take it seriously or not. Thus formulated, his answer is acceptable whether Socrates expressed his true opinion or whether he actually mocked the sophists. In short, he sits on the fence (and what's more, his answer might as well be understoot as meaning "Certainly not! He would run no such risk at all (of not telling the truth)", that is, "He would tell the truth"). (<==)

(32) "If this too has a chance of being something obscure from the standpoint of truth" translates the Greek ei kai touto amudron ti tugchanei on pros alètheian (word for word, "if also this obscure something has_a_chance being from_the_standpoint_of truth"). Amudros, of which amudron is the singular neuter accusative, means "obscure, dim, faint", as opposed to saphès ("clear, plain, distinct, manifest") or enargès ("visible, manifest, clear, distinct") and it is used here to characterize a relationship to truth (alètheia), a word derived from alèthès, whose etymological meaning is "not hidden". The first question raised by these words is to determine what the touto ("it") refers to, which Socrates says here has a chance (tugchanei, in which we find the root tuchè which means "fortune (good or bad), providence, fate, chance") to be obscure in relation to the truth. So let's start by seeing, once again, what the translators think, by placing their translation of these words in their immediate context (I underscore the part of their translation that concerns the words mentioned above by bolding their translation of touto and I put in bold red characters their translation of teleôs on in Socrates' previous reply):
- Jowett: "If any one were to say that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any other workman, has real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth.
At any rate, he replied, philosophers would say that he was not speaking the truth.
No wonder, then, that his work too is an indistinct expression of truth.";
- Shorey: "But if anyone should say that being in the complete sense belongs to the work of the cabinet-maker or to that of any other handicraftsman, it seems that he would say what is not true.
That would be the view, he said, of those who are versed in this kind of reasoning.
We must not be surprised, then, if this too is only a dim adumbration in comparison with reality.";
- Cornford: It would not be right to call the work of a carpenter or of any other handicraftsman a perfectly real thing, would it?
Not in the view of people accustomed to thinking on these lines.
We must not be surprised, then, if even an actual bed is a somewhat shadowy thing as compared with reality.";
- Bloom: "And if someone were to assert that the work of the producer of couches or of any other manual artisan is completely being, he would run the risk of saying what's not true.
Yes, he said, at least, that would be the opinion of those who spend their time in arguments of this kind.
Therefore, let's not be surprised if this too turns out to be a dim thing compared to the truth.";
- Grube: "If one said that the work of the carpenter or that of any other craftsman is completely real, one would risk saying what is not true.
That, he said, would be the opinion of those who busy themselve with this kind of discussion.
Let us not be surprised then if his bed too is somewhat obscure in comparison with the truth";
- Grube/Reeve: "So, if someone were to say that the work of a carpenter or any other craftsamn is completely that which is, wouldn't he risk saying what isn't true?
That, at least, would be the opinion of those who busy themselves with arguments of this sort.
Then let's not be surprised if the carpenter's bed, too, turns out to be a somewhat dark affair in comparison to the true one. ";
- Reeve: "So, if someone were to say that the product of a couch-maker or any other handicraftsman completely is, he probably would not be speaking the truth?
That, at any rate, is what those who occupy themselves with such arguments would think.
So we shouldn't be surprized if it also turns out to be somewhat dim in comparison to the truth.".
As we can see, Jowett, Cornford, Grube and Grube/Reeve explicit what they think the touto refers to by adding the word "bed' or "work". Shorey, even though he leaves his translation for touto open, shows that he understands it as refering to the work of handycraftsmen by replacing the final reference to truth (alètheian) by a reference to "reality". Bloom also leaves his translation of touto by a mere "this" open but, by translating amudron ti by "a dim thing" rather than by "something dim" ("something" may refer to words or to thoughts, and not only to "things"), he strongly suggests that the reference is to the bed. And the translation by "it" of Reeve weakens the touto by removing the need of questioning what it refers to and invites us to assume it is what was previously talked about, that is the work of handicraftsmen. And all of them see the problem posed by Plato revolving around the more or less perfect "reality" or "completeness" of a craftsman's production, in an "existential" perspective. The problem is that "truth" is not a property of an object: an object as such, short of any logos about it, is not more or less what it is, is not more or less "real", it is what it is, period! Truth is a property of a relationship: either of the relationship between an image and its model from the standpoint of resemblance, in the visible realm, or of the relationship between words and what they are applied to from the standpoint of relevance, which is evaluated not in the absolute, since a word has only a purely conventional relationship with what it names, as shown by the fact that it changes from one language to another (we learn nothing from the word bed, or couch, or couche, or lit, or cama, or cauce, or letto, or klinè, or from the word seat, or chair, or chaise, or siège, or silla, or sedia, about what this word designates), but by the relevance of the relationships that a logos establishes between words and what they purport to refer to. The question "Is this object really a seat(/bed)?" does not make sense in itself as long as we do not specify what "seat(/bed)" implies and verify whether or not the object to which whe purport to apply this name meets these requirements (in this case, that one or more people can sit(/lie) on it to rest(/sleep). And Socrates did indeed pose the problem as a problem of legein, of "speaking", of "telling (or not) the truth" (alèthè legein, 597a7). And as we have seen in note 29, when Socrates uses the expression to on ("the being/what is") in opposition to ho esti ("what is/what is"), he always implies klinè ("bed"). And so when he speaks of teleos on ("perfectly being"), we must again imply klinè: "being perfectly (bed)" (teleôs on (klinè)) means "perfectly corresponding to the purpose (telos) of a bed" and the "truth" that is in question is the truth of the logos which qualifies the work of the craftsman as a "bed", and not the greater or lesser perfection of his work in relation to who knows what criteria of perfection, which means that the touto refers, not to the work of the craftsman, but to Socrate's words questioning the relevance of the attribution of the name "bed" (klinè) to his work. What is at stake, and which, in fact, remains more or less "obscure", is the very notion of idea, and what constitutes, in each case, the idea of something particular to which we give a name to speak of it. Does the idea refer to a model analogous to that of a painter when painting from nature, or to principles of intelligibility that take for us the form of logoi establishing relations between what it is the idea of and other "things" (objects, actions, qualities, etc.) that help us understand what it is the idea of? If the idea were perfectly clear to everyone and it was enough to look toward it, as Socrates says that the producer of seats(/beds) does to make a seat(/bed), to understand perfectly what each word means, we would have no problem understanding each other and we would not need to posit (tithesthai, 596a7) eidè and to adjust them as we adapt the meaning we give to words based on our growing experience. And it is indeed the fact that this is not the case that explains the apparent failure of the so-called "Socratic" dialogues to come up with a "definition" of the notion being investigated. "Things" are not the words with which we cloak them, and the boundaries between words, being defined by relations with other words, can only remain blurred: is a bed on which I put a suitcase and piles of clothes that I want to put in the suitcase still a bed or does it become a table? Is a park bench on which I lie down to rest for a while in a public park still a bench or does it become a bed? Is a pull-down bed that is upright in a recess in a wall of the bedroom where it is installed still a bed or does it become a section of wall?... It is this kind of question rather than questions about the comfort, sturdiness and perfection of the realization that Socrates might have in mind when he wonders whether a piece of furniture shown to him is indeed a "real" bed and responds perfectly to the idea of bed or not. The problem is that most people, starting with Aristotle, cannot completely get rid of the understanding of the idea as a model and reduce it to mere explanatory logoi about purpose and not of perfection in the implementation of what it is the idea of, even though they conceive this "perfection" as implying immateriality, immutability and "existence" outside time and space, which is incompatible with the very notion of "implementation." So long as we have not understood that the idea of a seat(/bed) is not a seat(/bed) and that it does not refer to a particular instance, however perfect, of a seat(/bed), and more generally, that the idea of X is not an X and that it does not refer to a particular instance, however perfect, of X, we cannot understand Plato. And so long as one has not understood that words cannot have the rigorous precision that one would like them to have, one cannot become dialektikos in the sense that Plato gives to this word, that is to say, capable of using logos in the dialegesthai, despite all its imperfections, but being conscious of them and knowing how to go around them, to understand our world as it is and not an ideal world that does not exist, and knowing how to determine what is good for us, individually and collectively, in order to be able to live "well" in it, to lead a "good" life in it by making the most of what nature has given us, both as a member of the species (eidos) anthrôpos ("human being") and as this particular anthrôpos living in a particular context in time and space. To give a definition of anything, Aristotle's favorite game, is to try to link in logoi the name given to it with as few other words as possible, which can only curb the richness of what one seeks to define and assumes that all the words being used are "defined" with the same rigor and that everyone understands them in exactly the same meaning, which is obviously an impossible task. To dialogue, as Socrates does in the Euthyphro about piety, or in the Greater Hippias about beauty, or in the Republic about justice, is to shed light on that notion both by showing its richness and by highlighting the limits of language in order to lead us to realize that what we must seek to better understand is beyond words and cannot be confined to words, admitting that one can never have an absolutely perfect understanding of them.
Finally, and without contradicting what I have just said, we should take note of the care that Plato takes in choosing his words (it is not because words are not perfect that they should be used haphazard, and mastered accuracy, when one is aware of one's limits, has its place in a discussion). At the end of the previous line, where telling or not telling the truth was at issue, he used a verb kinduneuein (kinduneuei, which I translated as "he would run the risk"), which evokes the idea of risk, of danger (kindunos, from which the verb derives): to speak is indeed to take risks, that of saying stupid things, but also that of being contradicted and ridiculed by opponents (this is exactly the risk that Glaucon refuses to take in his previous answer by hiding behind the opinion of other people, anonymous moreover so that they do not risk turning against him). Here, where what is at issue is the difficulty of properly apprehending ideai and the very notion of idea, he uses a verb, tugchanein (tugchanei, which I have translated as "has a chance"), built on the root tuchè which means "fortune (good or bad), providence, fate, chance", to suggest that the more or less "obscure" (amudron) character of each person's understanding of the notion of idea and of the ideai which the words he uses refer to depends largely on his past experience and on the education he has received, which depend largely on the twists of fate (tuchè).
And when Socrates says that we should not be surprised (mèden thaumazômen, "let us not be surprised") at the obscurity of these notions, one may wonder whether he is speaking seriously, just as one might also wonder whether, in his previous line, he was speaking seriously when suggesting that to consider the work of a craftsman to be "perfectly" (teleôs) what it is given the name of ("seat/(bed)" or something else) was not telling the truth, when we know that for him, as he says in Theaetetus, 155d1-5, the thaumazein (the fact of being astonished) is the beginning of philosophy (cf. note 19). Not to be surprised by the obscurity that surrounds ideai and to make do with it is to close the door to philosophical investigation and to the possibility of becoming dialektikos. (<==)

(33) Socrates successively mentioned several kinds (eidè) of people who can be considered as "creators" of seats(/beds): starting from the case of images in a mirror in a presentation intended to pique curiosity by holding the key of the "mystery" till the end, he introduces the painter, also creator of an image of a seat(/bed), then the craftsman, whom he had previously described as "looking toward the idea (of seat(/bed))" in order to produce one. In both cases, therefore, that of the painter and that of the craftsman, it is by "looking toward" something else that the "creator" produces what he produces, which means that we end up with three "kinds" (eidè) of "things" that we are used to associate with the word "seat(/bed)", the image visible on the painting representing a seat(/bed) produced by a painter (or the reflection in a mirror of a seat(/bed) present next to the mirror produced by any person holding a mirror), the seat(/bed) produced by the craftsman by also "looking toward" something else (the idea) and finally the idea of seat(/bed) that the craftsman "looks toward" to do his work. And Socrates has just said that deciding whether the seat(/bed) made by the craftsman, who was not the producer of the idea of seat(/bed), deserved the name of "seat(/bed)" more than the image painted by the painter was not obvious, implicitly suggesting that, if it too was the result of the "copy" of the idea of seat(/bed) by the craftsman, it was just as much an "imitation" as the seat(/bed) painted by the painter, in short, that only the idea of seat(/bed) serving as a "model" for the craftsman fully deserved the name of "seat(/bed)", was teleôs ("perfectly") seat(/bed). Now that the characters and accessories are in place, Socrates, recalling, through the use of the word mimètès ("imitator"), the starting point of the discussion, what mimèsis ("imitation"), in its broadest sense, is proposes to Glaucon to look among the characters evoked, painters and craftsmen, which one(s) can be qualified as mimètès ("imitator"), implying that it is easier to understand the notion of "imitation" (mimèsis) by looking at the creative process rather than at the finished product. In other words, he proposes to investigate what types of creative activities make the person who practices them an "imitator" (mimètès) and therefore one's activity a form of "imitation" (mimèsis), which amounts, in the case at hand, to determining whether the fact that the craftsman making the seat(/bed) "looks toward" the idea of seat(/bed) makes one an imitator in the same way as the painter, which amounts by induction to asking what the idea of seat(/bed) is in relation to the other "kinds" (eidè) of seats(/beds), the painted images of seats(/beds) and the seats(/beds) made by the manufacturers of seats(/beds), and whether, in fact, it plays the role of a "model" for the craftsman in the same way as the seats(/beds) produced by the craftsman serve as a model for the painter, which would suppose that it "pre-exists" to it. But if the idea has no relation to time (and space), does "pre-existing" have any meaning in relation to it?... (<==)

(34) "something like these three seats(/beds) appear" translates the Greek trittai tines klinai autai gignontai (word for word: "three some seats(/beds) those are_produced/appear"). It seems to me that Plato deliberately avoids the word eidè ("kinds"), which he reserves for the conclusion in 597b13-14, when he finally uses the words trisin eidesi klinôn ("three eidè of beds"). He has been floating a trial balloon in 597a1-2 by talking about the eidos ("kind") of seat(/bed) that constitutes the idea of seat(/bed) that is not produced by the seat(/bed) manufacturer (see note 28) and which is going to be the first of the three "kinds" he has in mind, but at this point, so as not to make things harder to understand, he prefers to keep this term for the end, once the three "kinds" of seats(/beds) have been presented through three examples. And in fact, when he speaks here of "three seats(/beds)", he has in mind, as the sequel will show, the instances of seats(/beds) that have been mentioned above: the seat(/bed) painted by the painter taken as an example, the seat(/bed) made by the seat(/bed) manufacturer that has been mentioned, and finally the idea of seat(/bed) which the seat(/bed) manufacturer looks toward in his work. He is not yet generalizing. Indeed, these instances are indeterminate, since he is not talking about any specific painter or craftsman nor about any one of their specific creations, but the fact remains that they are considered here in their unity: a painted seat(/bed), a manufactured seat(/bed) and an idea of seat(/bed). It is only later, when he has specified what characterizes each of these three seats(/beds), the kind of creator who produces them, that he will come to speak of three eidè ("kinds") of seats(/beds). It is therefore unfortunate that some translators introduce at this point a word that constitutes a possible translation into English of eidos, even if it is in a sense that they do not consider as "technical", that is to say as linked to their "theory of forms/ideas", but this does not seem to them to be a problem since they do not consider the eidè of the expression trisin eidesi klinôn ("three eidè of seats(/beds)") as having this "technical" meaning either (since for them eidos in the meaning that they consider "technical" is synonymous with idea), whereas it is precisely through a calculated use of eidos that Plato wants us to understand the continuity of meaning that he assumes for this word between its use in 596a6 in what I have called its pseudo-definition, and its use in 597a2 and 597b14, to make to understand the difference he makes between eidos and idea.
Thus:
- Cornford: "We have here three sorts of bed" (and at 597b13-14, "three kinds of bed");
- Bloom: "There turns out, then, to be these three kinds of couches" (and at 597b13-14, "three forms of couches");
- Grube: "There are then three beds of a kind;" (and at 597b13-14, "three kinds of bed");
- Grube/Reeve: "We get, then, these three kinds of beds" (and at 597b13-14, "three kinds of beds");
- Reeve: "Well, then, we have these three sorts of couches" (and at 597b13-14, "three kinds of couches").
It will be noted that if all except Bloom use the same translation ("kind") for the explicit eidè of 597b14, only Grube and Grube/Reeve use the same word ("kind") where eidè does not appear in the Greek. (<==)

(35) "One, the one being in nature" translates the Greek mia men hè en tèi phusei ousa (word for word: "one on_the_one_hand the in the nature being"). Mia, "one", feminine of eis ("one" in the numeral sense), refers to klinai, plural of klinè ("bed"), which is feminine in Greek. As I indicated in the previous note, we are still talking about only three instances of beds.
But what is interesting here and poses a problem to scholars is the expression used by Socrates to describe the first bed, "the one being in nature", en tèi phusei in Greek, which translates literally as "in THE nature", implying that phusis ("nature") refers to a unique something. And it should be noted that Plato didn't write phusei alone, an adverbial use of the word phusis in the dative, meaning "by naturre / naturally", as he does later, at 597d3 when writing that this bed was created "unique by nature" (mian phusei), but indeed en tèi phusei, which has a different meaning. And what's more, he sticks to this wording in a similar context a few lines later, at 597c2.
Cornford translates these words by "in the nature of things" and Reeve, which, like all other translators I have consuted, translates them by "in nature", add a note saying: ""i.e., that is in its nature a couch. See 597c2 and 490b3." If all the English translators I have consulted except Cornford translate them by "in nature", French translators are more reluctant to accept a literal translation of the Greek words, which would be "dans la nature" in French, as can be seen below:
- Chambry (Budé) : "l'une (des trois formes de lits) qui est la forme naturelle";
- Robin (Pléiade) : "un (lit), celui qui est naturel" (with a note saying: "il n'y a pas en effet d'ouvrier humain qui puisse produire la forme du lit, c'est-à-dire le lit qui, au lieu d'être un effet de l'art, d'être un lit artificiel, est le lit naturel, autrement dit le lit idéal : la vrai Nature pour Platon est le monde des essences intelligbiles, des Idées" ("there is indeed no human craftsman capable of producing the form of bed, that is to say, the bed which, rather than being the product of art, being an artificial bed, is the natural bed, that is to say the ideal bed: true Nature for Plato is the world of intelligible essences, of Ideas"));
- Baccou (Garnier) : "l'une (des trois sortes de lits) qui existe dans la nature des choses" (the French equivalent of Cornford translation);
- Pachet (Folio) : "le premier (genre de lits) est celui qui est dans la nature";
- Cazeaux (Poche) : "L'une (des trois réalités du lit) existe dans le fond originel du monde";
- Leroux (GF Flammarion) : "Le premier (des trois lits distincts) est celui qui existe par nature", with a note adding: « Et non pas "dans la nature", puisque le premier lit est la forme du lit, œuvre divine. Comparer avec le juste "par nature", VI, 501b. Toute la nature, dans sa richesse, est déjà une imitation du monde des formes, monde auquel Platon réserve la réalité de l'unique nature véritable. Voir Phédon, 103b, et Parm., 132d : "Alors que ces formes sont comme des modèles qui subsistent dans leur nature, les autres choses entretiennent avec elles un rapport de ressemblance et en sont les copies ; en outre, la participation que les autres choses entretiennent avec les formes n'a d'autre explication que celle-ci : elles en sont les images" (trad. L. Brisson). » (And not 'dans la nature', since the first bed is the form of bed, divine work. Compare witht the just "by nature", VI, 501b. All the nature, in its wealth, is already an imitation of the world of forms, a world to which Plato reserves the reality of the unique true nature. See Phaedo, 103b, and Parm., 132d: 'Alors que ces formes sont comme des modèles qui subsistent dans leur nature, les autres choses entretiennent avec elles un rapport de ressemblance et en sont les copies ; en outre, la participation que les autres choses entretiennent avec les formes n'a d'autre explication que celle-ci : elles en sont les images'" (trad. L. Brisson).)).
As can be seen, only Pachet sticks strictly to the Greek. To understand what is problematic for translators and commentators, it should be remembered that the word phusis derives from the verb phuein, which means "to beget, produce, grow, be born, spring up" and therefore evokes an idea of development: thus Benveniste, quoted by Chantraine in his Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque in the section devoted to phusis in the entry on phuomai, defines phusis as "accomplissement (effectué) d'un devenir (accomplishment (carried out) of a becoming)", "nature en tant qu'elle est réalisée, avec toutes ses propriétés (nature to the extent that it is realised, with all its properties)". "Nature" in English has a similar etymology, from the Latin natura, derived from the verb nascere, which means "to be born", one of the meanings of phuein, via the supine natum, but no one remembers that, behind the word "nature", lies the idea of "to be born". It is therefore a bold statement on the part of Robin to affirm in the note quoted above that "la vrai Nature pour Platon est le monde des essences intelligbiles, des Idées (true Nature for Plato is the world of intelligible essences, of Ideas)", which amounts to saying that the pure intelligible, the "world of Ideas" that he believes he finds in Plato, is something that is born, short of turning upside down the word phusis! As for Leroux, who also wants to see in the world of forms ("monde des formes") the world to which Plato reserves the reality of the unique true nature ("monde auquel Platon réserve la réalité de l'unique nature véritable"), he translates as if Plato had written phusei and not en tèi phusei, and goes so far as to justify his translation in a note on this betrayal of the text by specifying "Et non pas "dans la nature", puisque le premier lit est la forme du lit, œuvre divine (and not 'dans la nature', since the first bed is the form of bed, divine work)" which amounts to saying: "Plato cannot have written what he wrote, since it is contradictory to what I think he should have written according to the idea I have of his doctrines, so I correct him in my translation." And he justifies himself by referring to Socrates' words in the Parmenides, saying that eidè are models of which the rest (ta alla, "the other [things]", i.e. those of the sensible world) are images, and which I prefer to quote in my translation: "d'une part ces eidè se tiennent (estanai) comme modèles (paradeigmata) dans la nature (en tèi phusei), d'autre part les autres [choses] leur ressemblent (eoikenai) et en sont des copies (homoiômata), et cette participation (methexis) par les autres [choses] aux eidè en arrive à n'être pas autre chose que d'être faits à leur ressemblance (eikasthènai) (on the one hand, these eidè stand (estanai) as models (paradeigmata) in nature (en tèi phusei), on the other hand, the other [things] resemble them (eoikenai) and are copies of them (homoiômata), and this participation (methexis) by the other [things] in the eidè comes to be nothing other than being made in their likeness (eikasthènai)", relying on a faulty translation by Brisson, who translates en tèi phusei as "in their nature", which changes its meaning, to justify his betrayal of the Greek text here. But that's not the worst! The Parmenides, although it is considered to be later than the Republic, both in the traditional order in which the dialogues would bear witness of the evolution of Plato's thought as he wrote them, and in the pedagogical order of my tetralogies, adapting to the progress expected from the reader by an elderly Plato writing all his dialogues late in life with an overall plan fixed at the beginning and holding the same positions from the first to the last of them but by adapting the presentation in confrontations with other possible positions according to the level which the reader is supposed to have reached at this point in his progression through the dialogues, stages a young Socrates, whose theses are not yet mastered, in front of an elderly Parmenides who defends his own theses, not those of Socrates, theses that this young Socrates, not yet sure of himself (if he ever was!), has difficulty countering. There is therefore no proof that the positions suggested by a young Socrates are the same as those presented in a more confident way by an aging Socrates in the Republic, and in particular in the text here translated. A first thing should alert us, namely, the fact that what is at issue in the quoted remarks are eidè and not ideai, and that Parmenides does not differentiate between the two, as is shown by the fact that, in the exchanges that immediately precede the quoted text, he changes word from one line to the next to obviously talk about the same thing: he uses idea at 132c4 and eidos in his next line, at 132c10. In my opinion, the thesis presented at this point by Socrates in the Parmenides is indeed the supposed "theory of eidè/ideai" where these two words are synonymous and which conceives them as "models" of sensible realities, but presented as a still problematic explanation of a young Socrates who is not yet the Socrates of the other dialogues, and in particular of the Republic, which Plato has him present here as a prelude to the "dialectical" trilogy Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman, which constitutes the culmination of the five previous propaedeutic tetralogies, in a dialogue, the Parmenides, whose purpose is to stage the vacuity of discussions on "being" (to on) and "non-being" (to mè on) when the verb "to be" (einai) is used in an absolute sense without explicit attributes (the supposed "existential" meaning) though it has no other function than to introduce attributes and has no meaning by itself, not because it would correspond to the difficulties that Plato would have discovered lately with this "theory" supposed to be his at the time he wrote this dialogue, but because he had known from experience for a long time that it corresponded to a natural tendency of those who begin to reflect on "ideas" (eidè/ideai) and that it was necessary to bring to light their weaknesses before getting down to serious business with the Sophist, for people who were supposed to have already in their possession the arguments to go beyond it, in particular the central images of the Republic (parallel of sun and good, analogy of the line and allegory of the cave) and the text on the three kinds of seats(/beds) here translated. As for the question whether this "theory" of eidè/ideai as "models" of sensible "realities" that would be "images" of them was that of the historical Socrates until the end of his life or he had ended up arriving at the sort of understanding that Plato makes him present in the Republic in particular, which distinguishes eidè, products of the mind of individuals which differ from one person to another and for each person from one moment of one's life to another, from ideai, objective principles of intelligibility and distant target of eidè, it is a question regarding the history of thought, with no bearing on the understanding of Plato's dialogues, and even less on the understanding of the world to which he purports to contribute by inviting his readers to a "dialogue" with his dialogues. In short, the only problem worth our attention is to try to understand what Plato's Socrates means when he says that the idea of seat(/bed) is en tèi phusei ("in nature").
It seems to me that what he wants to suggest by using the formula "in nature" (en tèi phusei) rather than "by nature" (phusei alone) is that ideai can only be understood in the whole that they all form together, through the relations they maintain with each other and in their relation to the sensible world of which they provide, not the model, but the principles of intelligibility. This was already what their representation by the stars in heaven, which are individualized for us only by their relative position in relation to one another, wanted to suggest in the allegory of the cave. If we think about it without a priori, the notion, the idea of klinè ("bed") is inseparable from that of anthrôpos ("human being") made of flesh and blood, born, growing and dying on this earth as a bipedal animal who get tired from working and moving and needs to sleep from time to time, who is also endowed with hands which allow them to build artefacts (skeuè) and an intelligence which allows them to manifest a great creativity in this domain (much greater and more varied than that displayed in birds to build nests or certain animals to set up dens). In other words, even the idea of klinè (bed) (in the usual sense of the English "idea", most likely directly inherited from Plato's use of idea) only makes sense in the nature we are a part of and becomes productive, seen through the idea we have of it, only because we are inspired by it to make material beds (klinai). The allegory of the cave was intended, among other things, to make us understand that the visible world is also intelligible when we analyze it by means of logos in terms of eidè allowing us to free ourselves from time and space and to reason on sets, on pluralities (the ta polla of 596a7), and not on instances located in time and space. And it staged for us what allows us to find our way in our world, provided that we free ourselves from the prison of the eyes as the only source of knowledge and raise our heads toward the intelligible "heaven", through the image of the starry sky that allows navigators to find their way in the open sea and of the sun/good that enlightens for the mind all that constitutes our world of which it and the starry sky are parts of. And so, just as the heaven which illustrates them in the allegory of the cave is part of nature, the ideai are indeed in nature, of which they are the principles of intelligibility and not models to be copied, because if "nature" is no longer there, there is nothing left to be understood and no one to understand... nothing! And they are not models to be copied for the simple reason that they are principles of intelligibility and not examplars, no matter how perfect, of what they are the idea of. As I have already said, one does not sit(/sleep) on the idea of seat(/bed), which is that of something material on which material and mortal beings can sit(/lie) down, since an idea is by nature immaterial, without relation to time and space, and only intelligible. It is accessible only to the "eyes" of the mind in a process of understanding that takes place over time and involves changes in the mind of who seeks to understand. (<==)

(36) "A god has produced it" translates the Greek theon ergasasthai. Theon, without an article, is the accusative of theos ("god") which is in Greek a common noun, not a proper noun, since the Greeks of the time of Socrates and Plato worshipped a multitude of gods who each had one or more "proper" names (Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Hera, etc.). Thus, the proper translation is "a god", without a capital letter to "god", the absence of the definite article ho ("the") being rendered in English by the indefinite article "a", which does not exist in Greek. Translating as "God" without an article and with a capital letter, as Jowett and Shorey do, is both an anachronism and a betrayal of the Greek text.
A few lines later, in 597c1, Socrates will use the formula ho theos, "the god", but at this point, the definite article is justified since it is a reference to the god already mentioned, even if his identity is not specified. By attributing the paternity of the idea to a god, without further details, Socrates confirms that it is not the production of any human being, but that it is nevertheless the production of a being endowed with intelligence, and therefore acting with a purpose, which implies that his creations are intelligible. His problem at this point is not to try to identify this god, which would not teach us much, if anything at all, about his creations, but to guarantee the intelligibility of the ideai despite the fact that they are not the work of human beings. And what is important to him is to show clearly the uniqueness of each idea, which does not depend on the identity of the god who created them, but only on his divine nature and his objectives in creating them. (<==)

(37) After speaking of "producer" (dèmiourgos), then of "manual worker" (cheirotechnos), then of "creator of beds" (klinopoios), then of "producer of beds" (klinourgos), Socrates introduces yet another new term, that of tektôn, whose primary meaning is "woodworker", i.e. "carpenter" or "joiner", and whose meaning can be broadened to other kinds of work. It may be thought that, in the context of this discussion, this variation in the names of the manufacturer of beds taken as an example, which contrasts with the constancy in the naming of what he makes, klinai, always called by the same name, is not a pure stylistic effect, but is also a way of discreetly suggesting that, if eidos is what an onoma ("name") is associated with, eidos and name are two distinct things, since multiple names can be used, which no one doubts refer to the same category of people in this context, that of "bed makers", specifically designated by two distinct but obviously synonymous words, klinopoios, and klinourgos, and more broadly by words, dèmiourgos, cheirotechnos and tektôn, which each include a more or less broad category of workers of which the "bed makers" are a part. This gives us through examples an instance of the problem of what Aristotle will call, precisely by seeking to specialize the meaning of eidos, "genus" (genos) and "species" (eidos), where the genus is a grouping of species. Here, if we want to classify these terms from the most general to the most specific by their respective etymologies, it is dèmiourgos (which I have translated as "producer") which is the most general term, since it refers to any kind of work (ergon) carried out for the "people (dèmos)", i.e. any profession offering services in the broadest sense to the public, and not only manual activities, since in Homer the word is used to designate a soothsayer, a doctor, a carpenter, a herald; cheirotechnos is more restrictive, since it clearly restricts the activity to manual work (cheir means "hand"), but is still open to a wide range of manual activity, since a word of similar formation cheirourgos (the same -ourgos as in dèmiourgos, derived from ergon, "action, activity, work") has ended up specialising to designate a "surgeon", a word derived from the Old French word "cirurgien" (become "chirurgien" in Modern French) which is the pure and simple transcription in French of the Greek word; even more specialized is the term tektôn ("woodworker", i.e. mainly "joiner" or "carpenter", the only one of these five words which is a primary root and which therefore does not "speak" by its composition), which limits manual work to woodworking, even if, by a movement contrary to that which has changed the meaning of dèmiurgos, his register of meaning has broadened to that of "craftsman" in general; and eventually, when we come to a word specific to the activity we are talking about, which is limited to the manufacture of beds and nothing else, it is not one, but two words that Socrates uses: klinopoios, etymologically "creator (poios, derived from poiein, "to make, create, produce", which I have chosen here to translate as "to create", cf. note 14) of klinai ("beds")", and klinourgos, etymologically "producer (ourgos, derived from ergon, "work, production", which I have chosen here to translate as "production", cf. note 14) of klinai ("beds")". These variation of vocabulary on the part of Plato's Socrates are most likely intended to stimulate our reflection on these notions of genus and species, on the greater or lesser specialization of words and on the problem of synonymy (which invites us to clearly distinguish a word and the eidos associated with it, since the same eidos may be associated with multiple words and multiple eidè may be associated witht the same word) in the context of a reflection which indeed focuses on eidos. (<==)

(38) These three words, zôgraphos ("painter"), klinopoios ("creator of beds ") and theos ("god"), are used here by Socrates without an article, according to a way of speaking which, in this case, can be transposed as such into English, precisely for the reason that they do not each designate a specific individual who is not identified because he could be any member of the group that is designated by this name, but the group as such. This example allows us to see the difference in perception that there can be when it comes to the use of a common noun between a Greek for whom the use of the indefinite article is the exception (reinforcement by a word, tis, which is not strictly speaking an article but an indefinite adjective/pronoun, added after the noun) and an English person for whom the absence of an article is the exception: the English spontaneously thinks of the "common" noun as the name of a particular instance, while the Greek understood it more spontaneously as the "qualifier" of a class. And if I use the word "qualifier" rather than "noun" here, it is because another characteristic of the Greek that it may be important to keep in mind when reading Plato is that the distinction between noun and adjective was much less formalized than in our language, as shown by the ease with which the Greeks used the definite article before adjectives not followed by nouns, not only in the singular (substantivation, in our jargon), as in to kalon ("the beautiful"), which is at the center of the discussion of the Greater Hippîas, or in many feminine words ending in -è after which technè is merely implied, as with hè mousikè (substantivation of the feminine of the adjective mousikos, to speak of "the (technè) which has to do with the Muses", that is to say, in the general sense, the set of activities of the mind as opposed to bodily activities (gymnastics), and in the more specialized sense taken by its transcription in English, "music") or hè dialektikè (substantivation of the feminine of the adjective dialektikos, which means "which concerns dialogue, discussion", to speak of "the... ", the what exactly? and which has been transcribed in English in the form "dialectic" or "dialectics"), but also in the plural, in formulas that make translators tear their hair out because English requires a noun after the adjective, for better or for worse, as for example with ta kala ("the beautiful", implied "things"? which can in some contexts be reductive, because ta kala can also refer to beautiful actions, beautiful thoughts, etc.), or the replacement of the adjective by a noun, as for example with hoi polloi, word for word "the many", which often becomes "the people" or "the crowd" in translations. Thus, for a Greek, there is no grammatical difference between ti esti klinè; ("what is bed?") et ti esti kalon; ("what is beautiful?"), both expressions referring to a qualification that can be thought of as an eidos, an abstraction, and not as a specific material reality, whereas in English, a grammatical difference is made between "what is a bed?" (formal translation of ti esti klinè) and "what is beautiful?" (formal translation of ti esti kalon) which leads us not to think of "bed" and "beautiful" in the same manner: "bed" is first and foremost for us a more or less precisely defined instance of bed, whereas "beautiful" is an abstraction. (<==)

(39) The Greek word that I translate as "overseers" is epistatai, nominative plural of epistatès, a noun derived from the verb ephistasthai, which etymologically means "to set over, place upon" in the literal as well as figurative sense, which leads for epistatès to meanings revolving around the notion of "supervisor", i.e. someone who is "placed over" other people in a hierarchy: chief, commander, president, overseer, superintendent, governor, etc.
But this word can also be read as the third person singular of the present tense of the indicative of the verb epistasthai, which is undoubtedly a weakened form of ephistasthai whose meaning has evolved towards that of "to know", understood as meaning "to dominate one's subject", and from which epistèmè, meaning "knowledge, science", is derived. Yet, it is grammatically difficult to accept this reading, insofar as, if we read epistatai as a verb, its subject, treis houtoi ("these three") is a masculine plural while epistatai as a verb is the third person singular. Now, if the Greek accepts a verb in the singular with a subject in the plural, it is only in the case where the subject is a neuter plural, not a masculine, as is the case here. It is, however, as a verb that L. Brandwood's Word index to Plato lists this occurrence of epistatai and it is by a verb that it is translated by Jowett ("superintend"), Shorey ("presiding over"), Bloom ("preside over") and Reeve ("oversee"), but, in view of their translation, which does not take up one of the meanings of the verb epistasthai ("to know, be able to, understand"), but rather the meaning of the verb epistatein, a verb derived from epistatès which means "to be an epistatès, preside over", it must be assumed that in fact, they do read epistatai as a noun, but assume an implied eisi ("are"). If one wanted to read epistatai as a form of the verb epistasthai, one would have to translate: "painter, maker of seats(/beds), god, these three are knowledgeable for three eidè of beds".
Be that as it may, we can retain from this ambiguity that Socrates wants to suggest here both an idea of responsibility (epistatai as a noun) and an idea of competence, of knowledge (epistatai as a verb). ( <==)

(40) I have already commented in anticipation this use of eidos in note 28 to explain that, contrary to what all the translators consulted believe, there is no plurality of meanings for eidos in this page and that this word is not used as a synonym for idea everywhere except here. To be convinced of this, one shouldn't try to immediately translate the word into English, but rather to grasp what Socrates is talking about beyond words. Having started the discussion by presenting eidos as that which is associated with a plurality to which a unique name is associated (e.g. "seat(/bed)"), Socrates now tries to make us understand that several distinct eidè may be associated with the same name, not only in the case of words having several distinct meanings (for instance "crane" as a machine and "crane" as a bird), but simply because one may only be interested in the visual appearance of what one gives a name to (anything that has the appearance of a seat(/bed) for the eyes, whether it is a reflection, a drawing or a tangible object on which one can actually sit(/lie) down), or also in its actual use for what it is intended for (everything on which one can sit(/lie) down to rest(/sleep)), or even only to the idea / idea / concept / notion... common to all these objects beyond their material differences. What distinguishes this case from that of words having several distinct meanings is that, in this case, these different eidè are somehow "nested" within one another: all the seats(/beds) that satisfy the second eidos (one can sit(/lie) on them) also satisfy the first eidos (it has the visual appearance of a seat(/bed)), and the eidos corresponding to the idea of seat(/bed) is only the most accomplished form of the second eidos, its objective "target", but it differs from it precisely by the fact that, unlike the other two eidè, it is not produced by the mind of each one of us using this word, it is what each one seeks to reach with the help of one's eidè. If there is something of a copying process in this manner of seeing and understanding, it is not between the material seats(/beds) and the idea of seat(/bed), which would be their model, but between the eidos that everyone associates with the word "seat(/bed)" and the idea of seat(/bed), which may indeed be considered as the "model" of them all. But one thing must be clear: there is "nesting" in a certain sense in the instantiations of these three eidè of seat(/bed), but not in the eidè themselves, since the objective is precisely to gradually get rid of the visual characteristics that are attached to words at first, which are not part of the idea, a pure principle of intelligibility, in order to reach a point where only the principles of intelligibility are taken into account.
The question of the meaning(s) of eidos having been settled, there remains the question of the number of these eidè of seat(/bed). The fact that Socrates distinguishes three of them disturbs commentators who seek to draw a parallel between this text and the analogy of the line, where Socrates distinguishes four sub-segments, two in the seen and two in the perceived by intelligence. And if they attempt to draw this parallel, without succeeding, it is because it is quite easy to associate each of the three eidè of seat(/bed) distinguished here to one or another of the sub-segments: it is not difficult to associate the reflections of beds and painted beds with the first sub-segment of the seen, that of the images (eikones, 509e1), and the beds made by craftsmen with the second sub-segment of the seen, which Socrates describes as including, in addition to the living, "the whole family of what is fabricated" (to skeuaston holon genos, 510a6), and it seems natural to associate the unique idea of seat(/bed), the work of a god, with the second sub-segment of the perceived by intelligence, that of knowledge (epistèmè), even if Socrates' description of it is based on an approach and not on specific "objects", since the approach associated with this sub-segment is precisely the approach that is supposed to give access to the ideai, as shown by the allegory of the cave, where the progression of the freed prisoner culminates in the contemplation of the stars themselves. But once there, there is nothing left to associate with the first sub-segment of the perceived by intelligence, that of dianoia ("discursive / wandering thought"). And yet, what should be associated with it is present in this whole discussion, not as a fourth eidos of seat(/bed), but as what Socrates presents from the outset as associated with an eidos, and which is precisely the same here for the three listed eidè: it is... the word "seat(/bed)" (hedra(/klinè)) itself, the one which makes it possible to produce logoi relating to seats(/beds), and therefore to produce dianoia concerning them! And this dianoia, precisely as long as we stick to words and use them as "supports" (hupotheseis) without accepting to give an explanatoin of them (logon didonai, cf. 510c1-d3) and implicitly assume that to know the name of something is to know this "thing", cannot lead to ultimate knowledge, which must free itself from words, which are still only kinds of "images" of what they designate, to rely only on intelligible eidè without reference to visible images. As we can see, what distinguishes the four sub-segments of the line are not different objects, but different ways of conceiving the same "objects", either as only sensible (segment of the seen) by being interested only in their visible appearance (first sub-segment of the seen) or by taking into consideration the opinion of others regarding their worth for us without necessarily understanding the rationale behind them (second sub-segment of the seen) or as intelligible (segment of the perceived by intelligence) by sticking to the words (first sub-segment of the perceived by the intelligence) or by seeking to reach the ideai with the help of eidè that are purely intelligible and free of all references to the visible/sensible (second sub-segment of the perceived by the intelligence). Once again, we can understand why Plato, in attempting to make us understand notions as complex as those he associates with the words eidos and idea, chose his examples in the register of human craftsmanship and in objects that everyone has daily experience of, and we can only regret that the bright minds who care only for the ideai of the beautiful, the just and the good, the apt successors of the friends of eidè that the Elean Stranger stages in the Sophist, did not deign to attach more importance to this key text for a proper understanding of his thought, or rather, not his theories, but what he wanted us to understand, a text which constitutes a sort of conclusion to the three central images of the Republic, which are the parallel between the good and the sun, the analogy of the line and the allegory of the cave, simply because, for them, as for Hippias who loses his temper when Socrates speaks to him of pots and spoons in relation to beauty (Greater Hippias, 288b1-2), discussions on tables and seats(/beds) could not have a "philosophical" significance... (<==)

(41) Here, the Greek reads ho theos, with the definite article which has almost the meaning of a demonstrative: the god is the one who has just been mentioned, the one of whom it has been said that he alone could be the creator of the klinè ("bed") "being in nature", that is to say, in fact, the creatot of an ordered "nature" (phusis), of a kosmos, of a universe abiding by a certain "order" (kosmos in Greek), in which there are anthrôpoi ("human beings") who both need to sleep part of the time in a lying position and have the ability to design and manufacture artefacts intended to help them satisfy their needs in a more efficient way, and therefore, among other things, to sleep more comfortably than by simply lying on the ground, hence my translation as "this god".(<==)

(42) "Necessity" translates the Greek anagkè. For Plato, even the gods, whatever this means for him, do not escape a form of necessity that imposes itself on all and which does not originate in them. This is clear regarding the dèmiurgos of the Timaeus, the whole dialogue being organized to highlight the part which, in the creation of the Kosmos, is due to the intelligence of the dèmiourgos (ta dia noû dedèmiourgèmena, Timaeus, 47e4) and that which is due to necessity (ta di' anagkè gignomena, Timaeus, 47e4-5) which imposes itself even on him (see my plan of the Timaeus and the text that accompanies it (in French only)). (<==)

(43) "To completely produce" translates the Greek verb apergasasthai, aorist infinitive of the verb apergazesthai, formed by the addition of the prefix ap(o)- to the verb ergazesthai used by Socrates in 596c7, 596c9 and 597b6-7, built on the root ergon ("action, task, work") and which I have translated as "to produce" (cf. note 14). The prefix apo- adds to this verb an idea of completion, which suggests that the work of the god is complete, that there is nothing more to add to it. And this idea that the work of the god is complete as soon as he has produced only the idea of seat(/bed) must be understood by comparison with the case of the craftsman who produces a particular seat(/bed) (klinè tis) but not the idea of seat(/bed): the work of the god is finished as soon as he has produced the idea, and it is not necessary to see in him the "creator", even remotely, of all the individual seats(/beds) to consider that his work is finished, even if the multitude of individual seats(/beds) produces a multitude of appearances (eidè) which are all compatible with the idea of seat(/bed) but are not implied by it: nothing in the idea of seat(/bed) implies that seats(/beds) must be made of wood, or of stone or metal, or of something else that did not exist in Plato's time (it only implies that the finished work be sturdy enough to withstand the weight of the persons it is intended for), that they must have four feet, neither more nor less, that they must have such and such a width, etc., and yet the idea of seat(/bed) is complete without all these details. (<==)

(44) Socrates reuses here word for word the expression en tèi phusei that he had already used in 597b6. Regarding the meaning of this expression used to characterize the work of the god, see note 35.(<==)

(45) "Created unique only that very one [which is] what "seat(/bed)" is" translates the Greek epoièsen mian monon autèn ekeinèn ho estin klinè (word for word: "created one alone herself (feminine since klinè is feminine in Greek) this_one which is bed"). The words mian monon autèn ekeinèn ("unique only that very one") are feminine singular accusatives (monon is an adverb meaning "only") that refer to trittai tines klinai ("something like these three beds") of 597b5, in which klinai is the plural of klinè, feminine in Greek, as was already the case in the previous lines for the mia ("one") in 597b5 ("one, the one that is in nature"), 597b9 ("one indeed that the carpenter [produces]") and 597b11 ("one that the painter [produces]"). On the other hand, ho in the words ho estin klinè ("what 'bed' is") is a neuter and these three words reproduce the expression already used in 597a2 (with the final nu of esti(n), which does not change the meaning, as the only difference), where I had already translated it as "what 'bed' is", a formula which, as we have seen (cf. note 28), is the equivalent of hè klinès idea ("the idea of bed").
The emphasis here is on the uniqueness of this production, underlined by the redundant formula mian monon ("unique only") where mian is the feminine accusative of eis, which means "one" in the numeral sense, and monon is an adverb meaning "only". It is this uniqueness which makes this "kind" (eidos, 597a2) of "bed" specific, and Socrates will spend more time justifying it than he will devote to the other two producers of beds, the carpenter and the painter. (<==)

(46) "Two or more such [seats(/beds)] neither have been planted under [the action of] the god, nor can be born" translates the Greek duo toiautai è pleious oute ephuteuthèsan hupo tou theou oute mè phuôsin (word for word, "two such_ones or more neither have_been_planted by the god nor not can_be_born"). This part of the sentence states two negations, introduced by oute... oute... ("neither... nor... ") whose scope must be clearly distinguished. Each of the two negations applies to a different verb (the first one to the verb phuteuein, the second to the verb phuein) in a different tense (ephuteuthèsan is the third person plural of the indicative aorist passive of phuteuein, phuôsin, is the third person plural of the subjonctive aorist passive of phuein) and only the first implies ho theos ("the god"), not as the subject of the verb, but as the agent of the action implied by the first verb, introduced by the preposition hupo, whose primary meaning is "under", from which the meanings of "under the action of", "by the fact of", and finally "by" are derived.
However, for the translators I consulted, these specificities of the Greek seem anecdotal and they more or less ignore them in their translation, as can be seen hereafter:
- Jowett: "Two or more such ideal beds neither ever have been nor ever will be made by God" (Jowett tranlates as if hupo tou theou applied to both verbs and the verb was the same in both cases);
- Shorey: "But two or more such were never created by God and never will come into being" (Shorey respets the Greek text);
- Cornford: "At any rate two or more were not created, nor could they possibly come into being" (Cornford drops the reference to the god);
- Bloom: "And two or more such weren't naturally engendered by the god nor will they be begotten" (Bloom respects the Greek text);
- Grube: "Neither two nor more of these have been created by the god or ever will be" (Grube translates as if the verb was the same in both cases since he doesn't repeat it in the second part, which implies that "by the god" is also implied in it);
- Grube/Reeve: "Two or more of these haven't been made by the god and never will be" (same remark as on Grube alone);
- Reeve: "Two or more of these have not been naturally developed by the god and never will be naturally developed" (Reeve renders explicit the fact that he assumes the same verb in both cases, and implies also that "by the god" is also implied in the second part).
This is regrettable, because the formulation used by Plato implies two suggestions, one of which could have avoided many errors in the understanding of the relation of ideai with their instances.
The first verb form is ephuteuthesan, the third person plural of the passive aorist indicative of the verb phuteuein ("to plant"), derived from phuein through phuton, a general term designating everything that grows, in particular a "plant" (this is the origin of "phyto-" in words such as "phytosanitary", "phytotherapy" or "phytoplankton") and the Greek moves from phuton to phuteuein in the same way as the English moves from "plant" as a noun to "plant" as a verb. The use of the passive allows to isolate the author of this action, the agent, in a clause introduced by hupo ("under"), to make it clear that he is not involved in what the second verb describes. Moreover, the use of the preposition hupo, whose primary meaning is "under", makes it possible not to say too much about the mode of intervention of the god in this activity: the meaning can range from "by the god", in the sense that he he personally acting, to "under the responsibility of the god", without this necessarily implying his direct intervention in this action. My translation by "under [the action of] the god" renders the original meaning of "under" and stays open on any form of "action" on the part of the god.
The second verb form is phuôsin, the third person plural of the passive aorist subjunctive of the verb phuein, derived from the same root as phuteuein, but with a different meaning, which I translate as "to be born". This aorist subjunctive in a negative form expresses the idea of prohibition, of negative command, emphasized by the mè which precedes it, that is to say, of an impossibility which applies also to the gods, which calls to mind the tis anagkè ("some necessity") mentioned at the beginning of the line (cf. note 42), and this impossibility does not concern the specific activity supposed on the part of the god, "to plant" (phuteuein), but any activity that might result in these multiple copies being "born" (in the broadest possible sense), which is what the move from the verb phuteuein to the verb phuein, which is more general and applicable to any kind of birth or development, is meant to suggest.
And this leads us to the verb phuteuein, which I have translated as "to plant", a translation that may be surprising in such a context and that all the translators cited have avoided in favor of a more general meanings ("be made" (Jowett, Gube revised by Reeve), "be created" (Shorey, Cornford, Grube), "be naturaly engendered" (Bloom), "be naturally developed" (Reeve)), whereas "to plant" is the first meaning listed by the LSJ, and the one most in line with the meaning "plant" of phuton from which it derives. Of course, since it is a god, the temptation to give the word an analogical meaning that it can actually have ("beget, engender, produce") is great, but this is to forget that Plato likes to use images to make himself understood, especially when it comes to gods, which can only be spoken of by analogy. Yet, the choice of this verb is not the result of chance, since it is confirmed by the unusual name that Socrates will soon give to this divine creator, that of phutourgos (597d5), which I translate as "planter", in a way consistent with my translation of phuteuein as "to plant", a translation that is likely to make one smile compared to the translations by "natural author or maker" (Jowett), "true and natural begetter" (Shorey), "author of the true nature of Bed" (Cornford), "nature-begetter" (Bloom), "natural maker" (Grube/Reeve, Reeve).* Yet, it seems to me that by choosing these terms, and, through them, the image of gardening, Plato tried to substitute, for the understanding of the relationship between the ideai and their instantiations, the image of gardening to that of painting or sculpture, that is to say, the analogy of the seed which grows once planted in nature to that of the model which the painter or sculptor copies, a model which, moreover, in this case, would be in another world. To speak of a god as creator of ideai as models is to imagine a god who has foreseen everything in advance and whose "creations" (i.e. the multiple instantiations of the ideai produced by him) can only imitate in a necessarily deficient way the models that have come out of his mind, and this brings us back to the question raised in note 43 about the completion of his creation; to speak of a god who plants ideai as seeds is, on the contrary, to assume a god who gives initial impulses, without it being possible to foresee in advance all that will result from them, not because the development of his seeds is random and haphazard, but because these seeds only set a "framework" of development which imposes constraints on certain points but allows a great variability on others: an acorn will not give birth to willow leaves or pine needles, much less to horses or men, but only to leaves and flowers of oak, none of which, however, will be like any other. Another difference, which is decisive, as the sequel will show, is that the model from which the painter or sculptor is inspired is an instance of what he is the model for, which is distinguished from the other instances by its supposed perfection, but whose appearance it shares, whereas the seed is not an instance of what it will give birth to (an acorn is not an oak, nor even an oak leaf or flower, not even in miniature, and doesn't look at all like one). Of course, this "image" chosen here to make us understand what an idea is to replace the "image" of the model, precisely to distinguish the mode of creation of the craftsman who looks towards the idea from that of the painter which is also mentioned in connection with the third "kind" (eidos) of seat(/bed), is only an image and must no more be absolutized than the image of the model which has spoiled the understanding of what an idea is, but it has a certain number of undeniable advantages over the image of the "model", not the least of which is the fact that it is compatible with the infinite multiplicity of "appearances" that the multiple instantiations of the same idea may take for us without compromizing this idea. Another is that precisely, with the image of the "seed", we do not leave "nature" (phusis) for another "world": the seed is indeed "in nature" where it will be able to give birth to a "production" that is never exhausted and of which each new element is, within certain limits imposed by the idea, different from all the others. With this "image", it is no longer possible to think of the ideai as being part of another "world" serving only as a "model" for our own. The main flaw of this image is that it considers ideai as independent from one another and says nothing about the fact that ideai can only be understood through the relations they have with one another. Another flaw is that the product of the seed ends up producing other seeds similar to those of which it is the product (an oak tree ends up producing acorns), whereas the idea does not reproduce itself through some of its instantiations. But by nature, no image can show everything about what it is only an image of. The "image" of the heaven and stars used in the allegory of the cave to depict the ideai was more telling about the interdependence of the ideai with one another, but silent about the relationship that could exist between the ideai and their multiple instances. The important thing is therefore not to stick to a single image and to complement one with another. The image of ideai/models proposed by a still young Socrates in the Parmenides (cf. note 35) is one of those that must be abandonned in order to understand what ideai are, and the image of the "seeds" proposed here is one of those that could have been profitably substituted to it long ago if Plato's readers and translators from the beginning had not backed away from a literal understanding of phuteuein and phutourgos in the primary sense and had not preferred to understand this verb and noun in a more neutral analogical sense. (<==)

*After making the choice to translate phuteuein as "plant" and phutourgos as "planter", a Google search on phutourgos made me discover that I was not the first to have made this choice. I came across an article by Fulip Karfik published in n° 4 of Études platoniciennes, published in 2007 under the title What does and who is the demiurge in the Timaeus, in which the author mentions this section from Book X of the Republic, saying that Socrates "specifies that intelligible forms have, in their turn, for producer (poiêtês) a god whom he calls 'planter' (phutourgos)". In a note, he evokes the problems of interpretation presented by this passage and provides a brief bibliography on this question, which refers in particular to an article by Luc Brisson, Le divin planteur (phutourgós), in Kairos 19, 2002, pp. 31-48, in which Brisson gives a translation of this entire passage from the Republic (596a5-597e2) before commenting on it. And he effectively translates oute ephuteuthèsan as "n'a pas été planté (has not been planted)", and phutourgon as "planteur (planter)". The translation as "planter" or "gardener"is also found in other texts. But none of them draws the conclusions that I develop here, because all of them arrive at this text with a preconceived idea of what eidè/ideai are, which they are not willing to question.

(47) What Socrates is trying to make us understand here is that it is in the very nature of an idea to be unique, of a necessity that even a god cannot escape. The background of this "demonstration" is what is called the "third man argument", which Aristotle opposed to Plato (the name "third man", ho tritos anthrôpos in Greek, is mentioned by Aristotle in Metaphysics, A, 990b1 and Z, 1039a3 as referring to an argument supposedly known by this name, since he does not even bother to detail it), but which Plato himself presents as one of the arguments that Parmenides opposes to Socrates against the eidè/ideai, in Parmenides, 132a1-b2, and whose discussion in this dialogue leads to Socrates' exposition of the hypothesis of the eidè/ideai as models cited in note 35. The argument is presented as follows by Parmenides:
"I think that's why you think of each eidos as one: when a certain number [of beings] seem to you to be great, a certain unique idea probably seems to be the same when you look at them all, hence you believe that the great (to mega) is one."
"You're telling the truth," he said.
"But what? The great himself (auto to mega) and the other great [things] (talla ta megala), if in the same way, with the soul, you look at them all, will not some great one (hen ti mega) appear again, by which all these will necessarily appear great?"
"It seems."
"Therefore another eidos of greatness (megethous) will appear, begotten beside the greatness itself (auto to megethos) and the [things] participating in it (metechonta); and above all these again another, by which all these will be great; and now each of the eidè will no longer be one for you, but infinite in their multitude. »
(Note the imprecision of Parmenides' vocabulary, which clearly does not differentiate between eidos, idea, to *** (to mega, "the great"), auto to *** (auto to mega, "the great itself"; auto to megethos, "greatness itself"), and speaks indifferently of the great (to mega) and of the greatness (to megethos)).
The young Socrates who dialogues with Parmenides replies that perhaps "each of these eidè [might be] only a thought (noèma)" (Parmenides, 132b3-4), using a word, noèma, which seems to have been part of Parmenides' vocabulary but not of Socrates' in the other dialogues: in fact, there are only 11 occurrences of noèma in all the dialogues (see the page in the "Vocabulary" section of this site on noeton and related words (in French only), where they are listed), never in the mouth of Socrates except here, where 6 of these 11 occurrences are found, i.e. more than half; 2 other occurrences are in the Sophist, in the same quotation from Parmenides repeated twice (Fragment VII, 1-2), and the last three are in a quotation from Theognis in the Meno, in Agathon's speech in the Symposium, and in the mouth of the Elean Stranger in the Statesman. To this suggestion of Socrates, Parmenides answers that, if this is the case, "is it not necessary that those other things which [Socrates] declares to participate (metechein) in the eidè, should appear to [him] either as being made up of thoughts (ek noèmaton einai) and all to think (noein), or, being thoughts (noèmata onta), to be without thoughts (anoèta einai)" (Parmenides, 132c9-11), which can be paraphrased, remembering Parmenides' famous aphorism, "for to think and to be is the same" (to gar auto noein estin te kai einai, Fragment III), as "my dear Socrates, if you go in this direction and think that the eidè in which other things participate are thoughts, either you must come to the same conclusion as I do, that everything is thought, or else you must admit thoughts that do not think!" What is at stake at this point is the question of an objective "reality" that would trigger our thoughts without being them, of pragmata ("activities/things") that would be what they are regardless of what we may think about them, but that would activate these thoughts and could be known to us within the limits of what is possible for human thought/intelligence (noûs), indeed through eidè that would free them from time and space and therefore from the perpetual becoming into which at least some of them are dragged. And the Socrates staged by Plato in the Parmenides does not accept the thesis that thinking and being are the same thing, and therefore the dilemma that Parmenides proposes to him between "everything is thought and thinks" and "there is thought that does not think", but has not yet developed a coherent alternative, which is the one he proposes in the Republic in particular, among others in the pages translated here. And it is in response to this argument of Parmenides that he proposes the hypothesis of eidè/ideai as models mentioned in note 35, which, as Plato knows full well, when he writes the Parmenides, solves nothing and to which he has already given an answer in the Republic, precisely in the lines that concern us here.
But it it is important to realize that the answer to this argument is twofold. The answer to the argument as presented in the Parmenides is given implicitly by the distinction between the three eidè of seats(/beds): the idea of seat(/bed) is not part of the same eidos of seat(/bed) as the seats(/beds) made by the craftsman, it is not a "model" of seat(/bed) that would itself correspond to the idea of seat(/bed), an instance of seat(/bed) which one could sit(/lie) down on and which would only be distinguished from the seats(/beds) produced by human craftsmen by the fact that it would be a divine creation, and therefore supposed to be perfect, and therefore the argument does not apply. "Seat(/bed)" in English, or hedra(/klinè) in Greek, is not strictly speaking the name of the idea of seat/hedra (bed/klinè) (the god does not need names and does not speak one or another language), but, for human beings speaking English (for "seat(/bed)") or Greek (for "hedra(/klinè)"), of what this idea is the idea of. There is therefore no need to look for a common eidos that would justify the sharing of the name; on the contrary, it must be understood that the idea of seat(/bed) is not a seat(/bed), but only makes us understand "what [a] seat(/bed) is" (ho esti klinè), and that more generally, the idea of X is not an X but only makes us understand "what X is" (ho esti X). This being admitted, what Socrates does here is to turn the argument upside down to prove the uniqueness of the idea, by now reasoning on the eidos (i.e. "kind") of seats(/beds) that are created by the god, of which we do not yet know, at this point in the reasoning, whether there are one or several, but of which we only know that they are neither instances of seats(/beds) produced by human beings nor images of such instances, also produced by human beings (the two other eidè (i.e. "kind") of seats(/beds) listed), to show that, if the god created "in nature" (en tèi phusei) several such seats(/beds), according to what was said at 596a6-7, there would be for the god a unique eidos warranting his calling them by the same name in whatever language he might speak, and then it is this eidos that would be the idea of seat(/bed) and not his multiple creations, For, for the god creatign the ideai, there is no difference between eidos (in the sense of 596a6-7) and idea: the eidos being an approximation for each of us at a given moment in one's life of the idea which renders what we attribute the name we associate with this eidos intelligible, in the case of the god creating the idea, it is the eidos that he would associate with it which would be the idea itself. It should be noted that in this case the reasoning is not a reasoning by recurrence as is the case in the third man argument as used by Plato's Parmenides, but a reasoning based on the plurality of the creations that the god would consider as warranting the same name, whatever the number ("two such [seats(/beds)] or more", duo toiautai è pleious, 597c4): it is not the supposintion that the god would create a second "seat(/bed) in nature" which would lead to a third one appearing, and so on, but the fact that he creates any number greater than one, all direct creations on his part and not induced by the appearance of the previous one, which imposes the appearance of a unique eidos common to all these creations of the god as soon as he thinks them warranting the same name. In short, the uniqueness of the idea is a necessity (cf. anagkè at 597c1 and note 42) even for the god.
The answer to the third man's argument is therefore twofold:
- first stage (implicit): the argument as presented in the Parmenides does not hold because it is based on a misunderstanding of what an idea, as principle of intelligibility, is (the idea of X is not (an) X), because it does not distinguish the different eidè associated with the same name (the idea, creation of a god, the instantiations of this idea in the material world and the images of these instantiations which no longer correspond to the idea), of the difference between idea, principle of intelligibility, and eidos, a naming tool, and of the role played in regard to the idea by the name associated with it, which is not the same as the role it plays with regard to its instances (it is not strictly speaking its name);
- second stage (explicit): even if we straighten out the argument and consider only divine creations, the idea that founds for us the meaning of a given name, that is to say what is (ho esti) any instance warranting this name, can only be unique. (<==)

(48) "Knowing" translates eidôs, the perfect active participle of the verb idein ("to see"), the perfect tense, eidenai, of which is used in the sense of a present tense and means "to know": oida, the first person singular of the perfect of the active indicative of idein, means in the primary sense "I have seen", which becomes "(I have seen, therefore) I know". This participle eidôs is the form of the verb idein closest to eidos and it is probably not by chance that it is found in the mouth of Socrates a few words after he spoke of eidos at the end of the previous line. Eidos has meaning both in the realm of sight and in that of knowledge. It finds its origin in us in the purely visual appearance (eidos in the primary sense), but it is for the god who creates the Universe the principle of understanding that he puts at our disposal through the ideai which are the receptacle of his own knowledge as one "knowledgeable / knowing" (eidôs) and the target of our eidè. (<==)

(49) "Really" translates the adverb ontôs, used twice here by Socrates, both in relation to seat(/klinè) and in relation to poiètès ("manufacturer", cf. next note), that is to say, both in relation to the work and in relation to the worker. Ontôs is the adverb formed from the genitive ontos of the present neuter participle on ("being") of the verb einai ("to be"), and therefore means in the etymological sense "in the manner of a being", which could be rendered by the probable neologism "beingly" which transposes the formation of the Greek word into English. (<==)

(50) "Creator" translates the Greek poiètès, in a way that is consistent with my translation choices explained in note 14. This word has already been used at 596d4 in connection with the one that Socrates presents as a possible "creator" (poiètès) of the whole Universe and of himself before saying that he does so with the help of a simple mirror. The choice of this word here must be seen in the light of the fact that the starting point of this whole discussion on mimesis ("imitation") is a reminder of the laws laid down in books II and III concerning poetry (poièsis in the specialized sense) and poets (poiètai also in the specialized sense, cf. 595b4) which opens book X. Within a few pages, are mentioned the three main categories of poiètai ("creators"): creators by means of words (poiètai in the specialized sense of "poets"), creators of simple visual images with the help of mirrors or brushes, and finally the divine creator. (<==)

(51) "Really creator of what is really 'seat(/bed)'" translates the Greek ontôs klinès poiètès ontôs ousès. Klinès ontôs ousès (genitive as a complement to the noun "poiètès", which is in the nominative, despite the similarity of the endings in -ès) can be transposed word for word in English, with the help of a probable neologism, into "(creator) of beingly being 'bed'". Jowett translates as "a real bed", Shorey as "the couch that has real being", Cornford as "a real Bed", Bloom as "a couch that really is", Grube alone and revised by Reeve as "the truly real bed", Reeve as "the real couch". The problem with all these translations is that they all use an article, definite (Shorey, Grube alone or revised by Reeve, Reeve) or indefinite (the other three), before "bed" ou "couch" (their translation of klinè), which has the result of making the work of the god a bed/couch among others (indefinite article) or the bed par excellence (definite article), which is again a bed among others, whereas Socrates immediately afterwards insists on the fact that the god is not the maker of klinès tinos ("of a certain bed (among others)"), using the indefinite adjective tis (here in the feminine genitive tinos) which we have seen is what is closest in Greek to an indefinite article, which is therefore for a Greek of the time to say that what he creates is indeed not a bed: he creates an idea, not an instance of that idea. In short, here again we have the implied statement that an idea is not an instance of what it is an idea of, and therefore not a "model" either, which remains an instance of what it is the model of. And all of them read the expression from a heavily existential perspective that leads to devaluing, or even purely and simply denying, the existence, the reality, of the other beds: if it is the bed made by the god that is real, it is because the others are not! In other words, they all read klinès as the subject of ousès and ousès used absolutely, without attributes, simply modulated by the adverb ontôs which only adds to the existential register (ontos, from which ontôs is derived as we have seen, is the genitive neuter singular of the present participle of einai while ousès is the feminine genitive, since klinè is feminine in Greek). But the great flexibility of the Greek on the order of the words in the sentence, of which these five words, which intertwine the noun group ontôs poiètès and the complement group klinès ontôs ousès, give a good example, does not impose this way of understanding, and we can also see klinès as attribute of ousès and make it, no longer a noun designating an object, but a qualifier taken in all its generality, which gives in translation word for word: "of the being really bed", which I have tried to improve in more acceptable English as "of what is really 'bed'", in which klinè must be understood, as the rest of the reply shows, as opposed to klinè tis ("a certain bed", i.e. "an instance of 'bed'"). And with this understanding, the reality on which the ontôs insists is no longer the reality of one instance among others of klinai (understanding of the idea as a model), but the exhaustiveness with which the god conceives what the Greeks call klinè (understanding of the idea as "germ", cf. note 46): in order for him to be truly the creator of klinè ("bed"), and not klinè tis ("a certain bed"), the god must be, in a certain way at least, the creator of absolutely everything that will be given by the Greeks the name "klinè", otherwise he will not really have created klinè (ontôs). By creating a single idea (see previous line and note 47) of "bed", he "plants" (cf. ephuteuthesan, 597c4, and note 46) the "germ" from which all possible and imaginable beds can derive until the end of time, without having to imagine all of them individually in detail from the start. And if we want to be more rigorous, we must say that he did not create the idea of klinè, since klinè is a Greek name which designates several things that may have different names in other languages and/or in other places and at other times. He created/planted a world that includes the possibility for humans to lie down/recline (klinein) or to be laid for various reasons, including sleeping, but also, for peoples such as the Greeks, eating at banquets, or, once dead, to be laid in public before the funeral. Each of these uses responds to a distinct idea, even if in ancient Greek the same word klinè could be used to designate furniture corresponding to one or more of these uses, whereas, in other countries or at other times, people don't lie down during banquets or gives a different name to the furniture used to display the deads. The god has therefore not created three distinct ideai of klinè, but three distinct ideai independently of the name or names that are associated with them here or there in one language or another. And each nation at a given moment in its history approaches one or more of these ideai, each created/planted unique by the god (a piece of furniture for sleeping, a piece of furniture for banqueting, a piece of furniture for displaying the deads) through eidè that it associates with one or more names, taking into consideration possible visual resemblances between instances of these different ideai that may lead to sharing of names, not of ideai, as was the case for the Greeks in Plato's time, who used to banquet lying down, the visual resemblance between beds for sleeping and couches for banqueting and the identity of position (lying down) of their users, which led to the use of the same name, klinè, to designate these two pieces of furniture responding to two different ideai (furniture for sleeping, furniture for banqueting).
Thus read, the expression tells us nothing about the existence or non-existence of particular klinai or their degree of "reality", whatever that may mean, or of "perfection", according to criteria that remain to be specified, but only tells us that it is the god who created/planted, in potentiality, if not in actuality (to use an Aristotelian vocabulary whose origins it might be interesting to look for in Plato), everything to which the name klinè may be ascribed. (<==)

(52) "Gave birth to it unique by birth/by nature": I thus "translate" in two possible versions the Greek mian phusei autèn ephusen. Word for word, it is "one/unique (numeral sense) by-nature this_one il_gave_birth_to", that is to say "he gave birth to it (klinès ontôs ousès, feminine in Greek) unique by nature". If I propose two translations for phusei, "by birth" and "by nature", the second being the most natural, it is to make visible both the community of root that exists in Greek between the verb form ephusen ("he gave birth") and the adverbial form phusei (made visible in the translation "by birth") and the fact that Socrates reuses here in a different form (adverbial dative phusei) the same word phusis ("nature") that he used earlier in the expression en tèi phusei ("in nature", in 597b6 and 597c2) (made visible in the translation "by nature").
This being said, it should be noted that we find here the form phusei ("by nature") which some would have liked to see in 597b6 and 597c2 instead of en tèi phusei ("in nature"). What is en tèi phusei, in a phusis including both the visible and the intelligible realms, that is to say, the two segments of the line of the analogy at the end of Book VI, is the work of the god; what is phusei, by nature, necessary, is the fact that each of the ideai that make up this work must of necessity be unique.(<==)

(53) "Planter" translates the Greek phutourgon, singular masculine accusative of phutourgos, a rare word (at least in the texts that have come down to us), of which it is the only occurrence in all the dialogues, and of which there are a few rare occurrences in the tragic poets: one in Aeschylus where the word is applied to Zeus in association with patèr ("father"), autocheir ("who works / acts / does... with his own hand"), anax ("all-powerful master" when speaking of the gods) and genous tektôn ("carpenter/craftsman of the race [of men]") (Suppliant Maidens, 592); one in Sophocles, in the mouth of Œdipus calling himself phutourgos patèr ("father progenitor") of his children (Oedipus Tyrannus, 1482), and two in Euripides, one to designate Nereus as phutouron Thetidos ("progenitor of Thetis") (Iphigeneia in Aulis, 949) and the other to speak of ton phutourgon Priamon ("the progenitor Priam") (Trojan Women, 481). These uses suggest that this word was a literary word used by poets to speak of "father" in a less common way. But in fact, the primary meaning of this word, composed by the assembly of phuton ("plant") and ergon ("work"), as dèmiourgos ("craftsman") is composed by the assembly of dèmos ("people") and ergon, is "who works on plants", i.e. "planter, gardener", as shown by the meaning of related words such as phutourgeion ("nursery (for plants)"), phutourgein ("to work in the cultivation of plants, to garden"), phutourgia ("gardening"), and more generally the fact that most words starting with phut(o) have a meaning related to plants.
As I have already explained in note 46 in connection with my translation of ephuteuthesan, a form of the verb phuteuein which also derives from phuton ("plant"), at 597c4 by "have been planted", it seems to me that Plato's choice here of the word phutourgos to designate the god in his creative activity, when he had previously used other words that might also have been appropriate, as dèmiourgos (which he will have used by Timaeus in his myth about the god creator of the Universe) or poiètes, ("creator" in the general sense) must be understood as indicating that he wants this name to be taken in its primary sense of "gardener/planter" and not as a poetic license to designate any progenitor/creator (its derived meaning). It is not in Plato's habit to choose his words at random, especially when that word is used only once in all the dialogues, and moreover, in a passage where what is at issue is precisely the relevance of this word to best characterize the person being talked about with regard to the activity that best characterizes him/her. If he has chosen precisely this word and not another, it is certainly not so that it can be taken in a "debased" sense that would make it synonymous with several other words evoking the idea of creation or generation, but so that, on the contrary, it be taken in the specialized sense that distinguishes it from all these other words, that of "gardener/planter". To fully appreciate what is at stake behind the choice of this word, it is necessary to consider it in the context of the discussion taking place here: Socrates is interested in three types of "creations" of something that bears the same name, klinè ("bed"), in all three cases, that of the painter, that of the craftsman and that of the god in order to try to determine which one(s) are imitations, making their creator imitator, and which one(s) are not. Two do not really pose any problems, those of the painters, which are obviously imitations, and that of the god, which is obviously an original creation. There remains, then, the case of the activity of craftsmen, of which Socrates said at the outset that they create "by looking toward the idea" of what they seek to create (596b7), in the example chosen, beds. To know whether or not the craftsman is also an imitator, it all depends on what the idea is. If, in fact, the idea is to be envisioned as a model (as suggested by Socrates when he was still young in the Parmenides (cf. note 35)), then, yes, the craftsman is an imitator in the same way as the painter, even if he/she copies a different kind of model. If, on the other hand, as the image of the gardener implied by the word chosen by Plato's Socrates suggests, the idea is a "seed" sown by the god to "grow" in the "soil" of human minds and "bloom" there in an infinite number of ways that the god does not need to imagine in advance, then the craftsman is not an imitator, but a true creator, even if his creations are "in potentiality" in the idea "planted" by the god. In other words, by this choice of word understood in its primary meaning and not in an analogical sense, Plato, through the voice of his Socrates, invites us to substitute the image of the gardener who sows seeds to that of the painter who copies models to help us understand what ideai are. And he confirms that the ideai are indeed "in nature", just as seeds are sown in the garden that nature (phusis) indeed is, the one of which we are a part, not an ideal "nature" from which we and everything that "grows" (phuein, from which phusis is derived) would be excluded. (<==)

(54) It does not seem that Glaucon grasped all the implications of Socrates' choice of terminology (but he is not the only one)! Nothing in his answer echoes this idea of the god as "gardener/planter". He uses the verb form pepoièken ("he created"), the perfect active indicative of the verb poiein (which I translate in this page as "to create", cf. note 14), as if Socrates had spoken of the god as a poiètes ("creator" in the general sense, "poet" in the specialized sense) and not as a phutourgos ("gardener/planter") and he describes his creation as being made "by nature" (phusei), Socrates' expression in reference to the uniqueness of the idea, and not "in nature" (en tèi phusei), the expression he used in relation to the creative work of the god "planting" the ideai "in nature" (en tèi phusei), so that we do not see the link of consequence ("since for sure", epeidèper) between the word chosen by Socrates and the justification given by Glaucon, even though it is about the choice of the word phutourgos ("planter") that Socrates was interrogating him: is phutourgos really this specific name that best fits the one we are talking about, or should we choose another one? (<==)

(55) "Seat(/bed) producer" translates the Greek dèmiourgon klinès. Of all the terms successively used to speak of the manufacturer of seats(/beds) (cf. note 37), Socrates returns here to the most general, with which he had begun in 596b6. The word is built on the same model as phutourgos, which he has just used to describe the god, a word using the suffix -ourgos, derived from ergon ("work/production"), the first part of the word specifying the work being considered. And in the case that concerns us, this work, this production, is qualified not by its own nature, but by its addressees: the dèmiurgos is the one who works for the dèmos, for the people, that is to say, for other persons. If we remember that in book II of the Republic, Socrates places the origin of the polis ("city/state"), and therefore of the social life of men, in the need they feel to associate in order to share the work, each one specializing in a single activity that one will carry out for the needs of the whole community (cf. Republic, II, 369b5, ff.), the word dèmiourgos appears at 370d6 as the most general term to speak of any citizen based on his role in the city, that of working for the community of which he is a part, And all that remains to be specified is the work in which one specialized to qualify any particular citizen, in this case, the production of seats(/beds).
If, in the Timaeus, Plato has Timaeus use the word dèmiourgos in his myth on the creation of the world, it is because, in this dialogue, the perspective is totally different: the purpose is no longer to oppose the god who planted ideai to the human beings who will make at least some of these ideai bear fruit, but to propose to the rulers a model for the work that awaits them, that of organizing the life of men in society, which makes them the most important dèmiourgoi of all, those who are in charge of the most important work (ergon) for the dèmos ("people") since it conditions all aspects of their lives and therefore the possibility for them to reach happiness, and he suggests that they find this model in the work of the god creator of the Universe organizing the Kosmos (a Greek word meaning "order", as opposed to "disorder"). Under these conditions, describing this god as dèmiourgos also brings him closer to the work that awaits the rulers and encourages them to draw inspiration from him (it is this use of the word dèmiourgos that explains the meaning that its transcription in English took in the form "demiurge"; for the use of the term dèmiourgos in connection with the god creator of the Universe, see for example Timaeus, 29a2-3, where the words kosmos to refer to the work and dèmiourgos to refer to the craftsman producing this kosmos are found close to each other; Timaeus, 41a7, where the god addresses the subordinate gods, the Olympians, whom he has just created, calling himself dèmiourgos patèr of the works (ergon) he has created; Timaeus, 68e1-2, with the words ho tou kallistou te kai aristou dèmiourgos ("the craftsman of what is most beautiful and best"); but the creator is also called ho theos (the god"), as is the case here, in other places in the Timaeus, e.g. at 30a2, 30d3, 31b7-8, etc.). (<==)

(56) Here again "creator" translates the Greek poiètès (see note 50). (<==)

(57) "(Of) what is begotten three removes from nature" translates the Greek tritou gennèmatos apo tès phuseôs. Socrates uses the term gennèma (of which gennèmatos is the genitive singular), a name that designates the product of the action of gennan, a verb with the same root as gignesthai ("to become, to be born, to occur, to happen"), which means "to beget, to give birth, to produce", literally and figuratively. Socrates chose this new word, which no longer derives from the root of phuein, which rather evokes the idea of growth and which could not be more general, to speak with a single word of the three kinds of creation just mentioned, that of the god, that of the craftsman and that of the painter. As Socrates said when he spoke of the creation of the ideai by the god, this first creation takes place "in nature" (en tèi phusei, 597b6). Insofar as the painter does not start directly from the idea that is in nature, but takes as his model what has been created from the idea by the craftsman, in second place and therefore starting from nature, his production is indeed located in third from what has been generated in nature. But it should be noted once again that the starting point of all these successive creations, the ideai, is indeed "in nature", not in another world.(<==)

(58) "One who gives birth to the third from the king and from the truth" translates the Greek tritos tis apo basileôs kai tès alètheias pephukôs. This new wording, in which a king takes the place of the planter god and the truth that of the idea, may be surprising: what king would it be and what does the truth have to do with it, it being a property of logos, not of a "being" taken in isolation, whatever it may be, even if it is an idea.
Concerning truth, we can begin by noting that a creator of tragedies (tragôidopoios, etymologically "maker of tragedies", constructed from tragôidia ("tragedy") according to the same derivation as klinopoios ("creator of beds") from klinè ("bed"), which I translate as "creator of tragedies" as I translated klinopoios as "creator of beds") is a producer of logoi (the text of the tragedies of which he is the author) and that, therefore, as far as he is concerned, the problem of truth is not out of place. It remains to be seen, however, what is the sequence of ideas that leads Socrates to introduce these new elements, king and truth in place of god and ideai.
A first way of understanding this irruption of the king at this point is that it results from the replacement of the painter by the tragic poet, a replacement that is justified in that it is a return to the starting point of this whole discussion, the place of the tragic poets in the ideal city, from which they were banished so long as they practice imitation (cf. Republic, X, 595a-b),. The heroes of tragedies are often kings or persons of royal blood whose actions are connected with those of their kinsmen king, and kings being the most important personages in the city when what is at stakes is the good of all, and those to whom it is most harmful to impute blameworthy actions, at the risk of having them lose their authority, it is when they speak of kings and do not tell the truth about them that the creators of tragedies more justly incur banishment. In this line of understanding, "king" (basileus) would take the place of "seat(/bed)" and the king par excellence, the idea of "king", is found in the god creator and king of the Universe, whose kings reigning in cities are more or less successful approximations located at the second level compared to the king of the Universe, and the kings "created" by the creators of tragedies are therefore only copies in words of these kings of the second level, with the possibility that they don't reproduce the "truth" of their models, which do not even have the perfection of the "king" of the Universe, insofar as the poets who speak of them have not known them personally, far from it, and can therefore, in order to speak of them, only rely on ancestral traditions that may take liberties with the truth. They therefore present only a truth of the third order compared to the truth of what a king must be as described by the idea of king, which makes what a king must be in order to fully deserve this title intelligible.
But there is another manner of understanding this substitution (which is not incompatible with the first one), if we forget the particular case of the creators of tragedies and stick to the general case of the god "planter" of the ideai, of the craftsmen looking toward these ideai and of the imitators of the creations of the craftsmen, and suppose that basileus ("king") is another appellation of the god creator of the ideai. To understand this, let us go back to Socrates' approach to the three kinds of creators from the beginning. He began by attributing the "paternity" of the ideai to a god, knowing perfectly well that we cannot know anything about the gods and can only talk about them through images and myths. As I pointed out then (cf. note 36), when speaking of a god, Socrates wanted us to understand two things: on the one hand, that the ideai, unlike the eidè that each person posits for one's own use, are not the production of any human being; and on the other hand, that they are the production of a being endowed with intelligence, and even of an intelligence superior to that of human beings, since they are precisely principles of intelligibility. By describing this god as a phutourgos ("planter"), Socrates, as I explained in notes 46 and 53, wanted to suggest, through the image evoked by this word, that the relationship between the idea and its instances is similar to that between a seed and what is born from it, rather than to the relationship between a model and its imitations, by a painter for instance. The use here of the term basileus ("king") is intended to adjust and supplement the previous image with another image, which, moreover, sheds light on the meaning of the preposition hupo at 597c4 in the expression hupo tout theou (which I have translated as "under [the action of] the god"), when Socrates said that two or more ideai of seats(/beds) "neither have been planted under [the action of] the god": as I explained in note 46, the meaning of hupo tou theou can range from "by the god", in the sense that he does it personally, to "under the responsibility of the god", without this necessarily implying his direct intervention in this action. To speak now of a king is to imply that it is perhaps not the king himself who "plants," but that this work is done under his authority, but by subordinates: thus, in the myth of the Timaeus, the creator god is shown making by himself the human soul and sowing (espeiren, from the verb speirein, "to sow," Timaeus, 42d4) these souls on earth, the moon and the other stars in heaven, but then leaving the task of creating the bodies that would house them to subordinate gods earlier created by him (Timaeus, 42d2-43a6). But in addition, if we notice that a king's job is rather to draw laws than to do all the work himself, this points us to an understanding of the principles of intelligibility that the ideai constitute as something like "laws" of nature, made better understandable, as is the case for those devised by the three elders of the Laws, by prologues explaining their meaning and making the world that abides by them intelligible. Under these conditions, these ideai/laws of intelligibility take the form of logoi which explicit the relations existing between the different ideai and it is these logoi which constitute the criteria of truth for our own logoi. By this new image properly understood, Socrates implicitly introduces the problematic of the relations between ideai which, as I said towards the end of note 46, was absent from the image of seeds induced by the word phutourgos ("planter/gardener"), because, as I have just said, the notion of "truth" (aletheia) necessarily implies relations, a relationship between an "image" and its "model", or a relationship between a logos and what it claims to be talking about. An idea (or an eidos or a name) taken in isolation is not true or false, it is what it is, period. The idea of a seat(/bed) can be said to be true or false only if we think of it as part of a logos relating this idea to other ideai (that of "furniture", that of "sitting(/lying) down", that of "resting(/sleeping)", etc.), and then, yes, it becomes a criterion of relevance of the logoi that we can produce about it, and therefore the criterion of relevance of the attribution of the name associated with it to something, a piece of furniture or a painted image for instance. There is, then, in the first place, the idea, the principle of intelligibility which "positions" what it is an idea of in relation to other ideai, secondly, what conforms to this idea, and thirdly, that which reproduces the appearance, but only the appearance, of what conforms to this idea, without complying in all respects to this idea (one does not sit(/lie) down on an image of a seat(/bed)). The "truth" of an image of a seat(/bed) is therefore less demanding than that of what it is the image of, since it reproduces only certain aspects of it, those that are accessible to sight only, which are not the most important in the idea of seat(/bed), in fact, which have no place in it. (<==)

(59) "Each of the *** themselves in nature" translates the Greek ekeino auto to en tèi phusei hekaston (word for word "that itself the in nature each_one"), which is a very general formula for designating the productions of the god, since apart from the word phusis (in the dative singular phusei) it contains only one preposition (en, "in"), two articles (to, neuter without an associated noun, which in fact substantizes the whole expression, and tèi, a singular feminine dative associated with phusei), and three neuter pronouns (ekeino, "that", demonstrative pronoun; auto, "[that-]itself", personal pronoun; hekaston, "each", indefinite pronoun). The whole problem is that in Egnlish, it is difficult to translate it without introducing either a noun (most often "thing") or a verb ("is" or "exists"), or both, as can be seen below:
- Jowett: "that which originally exists in nature";
- Shorey: "that thing itself in nature";
- Cornford: "the reality that exists in the nature of things";
- Bloom: "the thing itself in nature";
- Grube: "what is real in nature in each case,";
- Grube/Reeve: "the thing itself in nature";
- Reeve: "what each thing itself is in its nature".
But adding a noun such as "thing" tends to "objectify" what Socrates is talking about in the most general terms, and using a verb, especially when the verb is "exists" or "is real", introduces an existential problematic which is not in the Greek, and, because a verb has a tense, a link to time which is absent of Plato's wording, which attempts to speak of something which is outside time and space in a language that is intended to be as neutral as possible. That's why I preferred to use the characters *** rather than a word to suggest what Plato lets unnamed in his wording..
That being said, it should be noted that, while Plato's Socrates managed to avoid any temporal connotation by not using a verb, he could not avoid a form of "localization" since he uses the preposition en ("in") in the expression en tèi phusei ("in nature"), of which it is the third occurrence in our section, after 597b6 and 597c2 (on this expression, cf. note 35). It is therefore interesting to follow the evolution of Socrates' vocabulary to speak of the "creation" of the god/planter/king of the Universe (whose name also changes, inviting us not to privilege any one of them to talk about something, or rather someone, who is beyond words and who can only be spoken of through images and myths). First, he uses a vocabulary which relates to us as observers, that is, taking a subjective point of view, by using a word, idea, derived from a root meaning "to see" in the primary sense, and he does so to clearly mark the difference between eidè, which are our creations, and these ideai, which are the creation of a god/planter/king, but adjested to human intelligence. Secondly, in 597a2, he introduced the expression ho esti *** ("what is ***") on the example of "bed" (ho esti klinè, "what "bed" is) by making it a kind of definition, not of the idea itself, but of what it makes intelligible for human intelligence. Here, finally, he abandons all reference to being (einai/to on) by limiting himself to a formula which takes an objective point of view on what is talked about, independently of the way in which we can perceive it, and avoids using any form of the highly problematic verb einai ("to be"), and it is ultimately the expression en tèi phusei ("in nature"), which some translators and commentators refuse to take at face value, which becomes the key to understanding what he is talking about. Thus, far from making the ideai the population of another immutable "world," distinct from our own, which is subject to change, he makes nature (phusis), that is, that which is subject to birth and growth, the "garden" of the ideai, the place where they are sown in order to bring order and intelligibility to its growth. In short, it is indeed our "world", our nature (phusis), which must be made intelligible, not a world of pure ideai distinct from our own. In the allegory of the cave, what represents the ideai are the stars in heaven, and, when introducing them, Socrates first names the heavens (ouranos), that is, the whole they are a part of, as if to make us understand that they can be understood only as a part of this whole, in which they are distinguished from one another only by the relative location each one occupies relative to all the others in this whole. What Socrates suggests here is that what heaven is the image of in the allegory is "nature" (phusis), and that the ideai are ultimately the constituents of this nature, considered, when they are designated by this name, from the point of view of the way in which they are perceptible to us as principles of intelligibility of this nature, the expression used here ("each of the *** themselves in nature") purporting to make us understand that the way we perceive them as ideai, i.e. by means of words and logoi, does not reveal them to us as they are in themselves (auta, plural of the auto used here), that is to say beyond the words by which we designate them, and even beyond the eidè that we associate with these words, which are but creations of human minds, with all the limits that this implies, and for which these ideai are only targets, without us even having the guarantee that our division into eidè corresponds to the division into ideai as it is in nature (cf. Phaedrus, 265e1-3). (<==)

(60) Socrates takes up here the distinction made by Glaucon at 596e4, when he said that the "creations" of the one who merely displays everything around him in a mirror are phainomena, ouk onta ("appearing to sight, not being"), opposing the verbs phainein ("bring to light, cause to appear, reveal, shine" and in the passive "come to light, appear", of which phainomena is the present passive participle in the nominative neuter plural, cf. note 25) and einai ("to be") by using these two verbs in the expression hoia estin è hoia phainetai ("as it is or as it appears to sight"). The translation of phainein by "appear to sight", rather than by the more usual "appear" has the advantage of bringing out what Plato's Socrates wants us to understand, namely, that the sight of anything, reflection, image or original, never shows us what it allows us to see as it is, but always presents us with an image of it (the one that is formed in the eye, no matter where or how) that does not reveal to us the whole of what it is the image of for sight. We are in the same situation here as in the analogy of the line and the allegory of the cave read in the light of each other: in the analogy of the line, Socrates opposes the two sub-segments of the seen by associating the one with images, of which he gives as examples shadows and reflections, and the other with the originals of these images, that is to say, the world around us, including us; but the allegory of the cave should make us understand that in fact, the images that Socrates has in view for the first sub-segment of the seen are all the images produced by sight, represented in the allegory by the shadows of objects protruding from the wall. In short, he wants us to understand that sight never shows us visible things as they are in themselves (auta), but as sight allows us to apprehend them, which, in particular, allows us to apprehend only their colored outer envelope, not what this envelope hides from sight. Here, we find the same progression: at first, Socrates amuses us by evoking a universal creator who limits oneself to producing images with the help of a mirror, that is to say reflections, one of the examples taken by Socrates about the first sub-segment of the seen of the analogy of the line; now Socrates considers the case of the painter who takes as his model a manufactured object, which is therefore not an image in the sense in which he understood it in the analogy of the line, but which is a manufactured object in the sense of the objects protruding from the wall in the allegory of the cave, thus an object casting a shadow, which is the only thing that a prisoner having no other means of apprehension than sight as long as he remains in his bonds can see of it, and he wants to make Glaucon understand that it is not because what the painter takes as a model is no longer a reflection of a seat(/bed), but a seat(/bed) one can sit(/lie) down on, that the eyes allows us to see it as it is. The eyes always show us only an image of it. What is opposed to this image provided by sight is that of which it is the image "as it is" (hoion estin). The question here is not whether it is, but how it is, and how it is in itself, "objectively", and not for an observer who apprehends it through an organ that is only receptive to certain aspects of what is observed (colour for sight, sound for hearing, smell for olfaction, etc.). In short, to apprehend anything as it is (hioion estin) is beyond our reach. But if it acts on our senses and our mind, it is because it is (something), and it is up to us to try to understand what it is as best our senses and mind/intelligence (noûs) permits us.
Glaucon's answer shows that he did not understand what Socrates had in mind. (<==)

(61) The subject of this sentence is in Greek hè graphikè, a feminine noun formed on the adjective graphikos, which means "relating to drawing, painting" by assuming the implied word technè ("art, craft, technique"), feminine in Greek, hence the feminine article hè, according to a process of which there are many examples in Greek: thus, hè politikè, "the art of what has to do with citizens, politics", hè dialektikè, "the art of what has to do with dialogue, dialectics", hè mousikè, "the art of what has to do with the Muses, music", hè gumnastikè, "the art relating to body exercises/gymnastics", to name but a few examples that appear in the Republic. Socrates is therefore speaking here of painting as an art/technique (technè), and not of a painting in the sense of a specific painting made by a specific painter, which explains my translation by "the pictorial [technique]", which uses an adjective in English as well. He probably wants to make us understand that what he is going to say is inherent to painting as such and not to the manners of painting of this or that artist, and this, whatever the subject chosen by the artist. And the verb of which hè graphikè ("the pictorial [technique]") is the subject is pepoiètai, the third person singular of the perfect of the passive indicative of poiein ("to create"): what is at issue here is not the creation of the particular painting that a painter produces, but the "creation" of the technique anyone uses to do so, the development of the processes used by painters to make their creations more similar to their models, or rather to the way in which we perceive these models, such as the techniques for rendering the effects of perspective and light, which were just beginning to develop in Plato's time (see for instance, on sculpture and not on painting, Sophist, 235d6-236a6). (<==)

(62) "To be imitated according to what is as it holds, or according to what appears to sight as it appears to sight": there is in the Greek an asymmetry in this part of the sentence which I think important to preserve in English. The Greek is indeed potera pros to on, hôs echei, mimèsasthai è pros to phainomenon, hôs phainetai (word for word "which_one_of_the_two according_to the being as it_hold to_be_imitated or according_to the appearing_to_sight as it_appears_to_sight?"). The two members of this alternative are indeed built on the same model (pros to... hôs...), but while in the second member it is the same verb, phainein, which is used twice, once in the present participle preceded by an article (which I translate as "what+verb in the present tense"), once in the present tense, in the first member, the verb changes between the present participle form, on, present participle of einai ("to be", where I translate to on by "what is" rather than by "the being" to keep the symmetry with the translation of to phainomenon by "what appears to sight", since a translation by "the appearing to sight" would be even more awkward than a translation of to on by "the being"), and the present tense form, echei, present tense of echein, a verb with a rather broad meaning, which covers in particular the meaning of "to have", but which can also mean "to possess, hold, keep". It is true that in certain expressions such as the one used here (hôs echei), echein has a meaning almost equivalent to "to be," and that one might translate hôs echei, as all the translators I have consulted do, by "as it is," but it seems to me that, if Plato has broken the symmetry, it is not without reason. What echei adds compared to a mere esti is all the "weight" of a "having" that we may possess, that holds in place and that we can hold in our hands: where hôs esti ("as it is") tells us nothing about what it refers to since it can apply to anything, including an illusion, hôs echei suggests that we are talking about something concrete that, contrary to a mere reflection, we can hold in our hands, which can be part of our "possessions". This is what I have tried to suggest by translating hôs echei by "as it holds". (<==)

(63) "Imitation of a vision or of truth", in Greek phantasmatos è alètheias mimesis. Phantasma (of which phantasmatos is the genitive singular) means "apparition, vision, dream, phantom", and is derived from the verb phainein used just before through the verb phantazein, "to make visible, present to the eye or mind" and in the middle phantazesthai, "to picture to oneself, fancy, imagine". This is one of the words that Socrates uses as an example of what he calls "images" (eikones) in the analogy of the line, at 510a1, to speak of reflections, further qualifying them by adding the words "on waters" (en tois hudasi), and which he uses again in the allegory of the cave, in alternance with eidôlon, but always with the precision "on waters" (en tois hudasi) to make sure there is no doubt about what he is talking about, to refer to reflections, first of men and other creatures present outside the cave (eidôla at 516a7), then of the sun (phantasmata at 516b5). The word does not always imply the unreal character of what it designates, but refers only to the visual perception that one has of something, real or imaginary.
The "truth" that Socrates has in mind here is that which constitutes the original, the model, for the image that the painter makes of it: the painting is all the more "true" the more faithfully it reproduces this original. The criterion of truth is therefore the model "as it is"; as it is, and not as it appears to sight: if the model is a cube whose all faces are the same solid red, the "true" colour for the painter's painting is the same red for all the faces of the cube, even if light conditions make the various faces appear each of a different shade of red, and if the shadow of another object located between the cube and the light is projected on one of its faces and gives it a different shade on certain parts in the shadow; similarly, the proportions between the dimensions of the model are what they are, and the "true" proportions are those of the model, regardless of the perspective that makes them appear different to us (see the section of the Sophist mentioned at the end of note 61). But Socrates is no doubt perfectly aware of the fact that, as soon as one seeks to reproduce a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface, it is impossible to reproduce it "as it is", and that, in order for the painting to resemble its model, one must reproduce, not what is, but what one sees, taking into account light and perspective effects. But this is still only the surface of things. To imitate the truth of the model would be to reproduce not only its appearance to sight, but also the matter, the smell, and all the rest of what makes it what it is, which I said in note 60 is inaccessible to us. What the painter seeks to reproduce is the way in which the object appears to sight, that is to say, a vision (in the primary sense of "what one sees"), which is only a small part of the "truth" of the model.
Through these considerations, Plato does not seek to denigrate pictorial techniques that seek to take into account the effect of perspective and to render the effects of light and shadow, but to make us aware of the limited nature of sight in order to make us apprehend things as they are: the painter who seeks to make his painting as similar as what we see can only do so by not respecting what the models he paints are in themselves; he must modify the colors, the proportions, and, anyway, reproduce in two dimensions, on the plane surface on which he does his painting, an original which is in three dimensions, and reproduce it with materials that are not those of which the original is made. The question, therefore, is not that of the fidelity of the painter's work to the appearance for us of his model, that is to say to the already defective image that sight gives us, but that of fidelity to what the model is in itself, independently of the way in which he appears to sight. But the model in itself is not more or less "true" than the painting that the painter paints of it, it is only the criterion of truth for the relationship between the image and its model. And it is so in itself and not through the other image provided by the direct vision of it, the one that is formed in the eyes of the observer (the shadows in the cave). (<==)

(64) In the previous line, Socrates was talking of "(the) truth" (hè alètheia), here he talks about "the true" (to alèthes), but it is always the same thing that is at stake: not no one knows what intrinsic "truth" of what is represented by the painter, apart from the fact that it serves as a model, but this model insofar as it is the criterion of "truth" for the image that is made of it. The notion of "true" exists only in relation to the image and what it "reveals" of its model (let us remember that the etymological meaning of alethes is "not hidden" and that, from this perspective, aletheia can be understood as an "unveiling"). But we must not confuse "true" with "real" or "existing". If the painter takes as a model a reflection in a mirror, it is this reflection that is the "true" in relation to his painting, and his painting will be all the more "true" the more faithfully he represents the reflection that serves as his model, even if this reflection has no consistency and is itself only an image. The distance between the image produced by the painter and the "true" is due only to the fact that, as Socrates says in the rest of the line, the painted image represents only a "little something" (smikron ti) of what the painter seeks to imitate, and as such, he lifts only a very small corner of the "veil" that more or less "hides" the model to the painter (and more generally the world that surrounds us to each of us, because of our nature which allows us to apprehend this world only through our senses and our intelligence as human beings), and that his painting therefore "reveals" to us only a very small part of the "truth" about what was used as a model. The opposition between phantasma and aletheia (between "vision" and "truth") should therefore not be understood as an opposition between true and false, but as an opposition between the whole and the part: aletheia would be the complete unveiling of the subject, whereas phantasma reveals only a very particular and very limited aspect of it, which is limited to the external appearance visible from a certain angle and under certain conditions of light and distance. There is therefore a part of "truth" in the painter's work, but only a very small one, and, as a result, his imitation is likely to mislead us in relation to what served as a model by (the painter or any other imitator) if we think we know more, or even everything about this model simply by having seen this imitation. And if this error is improbable in the case of a painting, where we know well that the painting is not the model reproduced, it becomes much more probable, and therefore the imitation more pernicious, in the case of poetry and tragedy, when we imagine that the author knows what he is talking about, that, for example, because Homer describes warlords in action, he had the skills of a general (cf. the immediate continuation of the section here translated, and in particular Republic, X, 599b9-e4), and is therefore justified in serving as an educator for all Greece, as was the case in the time of Socrates and Plato. (<==)

(65) In his previous line, Socrates spoke of mimesis, "imitation" in the sense of the act of imitating (mimeisthai), using the word that opened this entire section in 595c7 (cf. note 2). Here he speaks of hè mimètikè, implied technè, that is, the art of imitating as a whole, using a construction similar to that which he had used with hè graphikè in the previous line, explained in note 61. Hè mimètikè (which I translate as "the imitative [technique]" by analogy with my translation of hè graphikè as "the pictorial [technique]") is more general than hè graphikè ("the pictorial [technique]"), which is only a species of it along with, for instance, sculpture, or for Socrates, tragedy, which imitates human passions. (<==)

(66) "Thanks to this it completely produces all [things] because it lays hold of a little something of each one, and this [something is] an unsubstantial image" translates the Greek dia touto panta apergazetai, hoti smikron ti hekastou ephaptetai, kai touto eidôlon (word for word "thanks_to this all it_completely_produces because little something of_each it_lays_hold_of, and this (an_)unsubstantial_image").
"It completely produces" translates the Greek apergazetai, the third person singular of the present indicative middle of the verb apergazesthai ("to finish off, complete, bring to perfection"), formed by the addition of the prefix ap(o) to the verb ergazesthai, itself formed from the root ergon ("work, deed") and therefore meaning "to produce". The prefix ap(o) adds an idea of completeness, of completion, hence my translation as "it completely produces", in keeping with my translation of ergazesthai as "produce" (see note 14). What Socrates means here with this verb is that the painter considers his work to be complete, finished, brought to perfection, when, in his view, he has properly represented the appearance of what he seeks to represent as it appears to his sight from where he stands and under the lighting conditions existing there, even though his work represents only a part of the external appearance for a human observer of what serves as a model, the one which faces him.
"Unsubstantial image" translates the word eidôlon, which has taken the place here of the word phantasma. Eidôlon is a word of the same family as eidos, whose primary meaning is "image" as a reproduction of the features of someone or something, with the emphasis on the immaterial character of the image itself, as such, regardless of whether it is an image of something that actually exists, for example a reflection on water, or a pure product of the imagination. As I pointed out in note 63, eidolon alternates with phantasma in the allegory of the cave to speak of reflections on water or other reflective surfaces. It was the use of this term to designate an image of a god, particularly in the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, that led to the meaning that its transcription into English took on in the word "idol". The word can also designate, as early as Homer, a ghost or a shadow as those encoutered by Odysseus in Hades, the Underworld, the kingdom of the dead, as told in book XI of the Odyssey (cf., for occurrences of the word eidôlon, Odyssey, XI, 83; 213; 476; 602). Here, what this word refers to is the image formed by sight in the eyes of what we see, of all we see, whether it is a tangible material object or an image produced by nature, as a reflection, or by man, as a painting, represented in the allegory of the cave by the shadows that the prisoners see at the bottom of the cave. In other words, what serves as a model for the painter is always already an image, the one that is formed in his eyes of what he uses as a model, and, as he sees only that, he thinks he has finished (apergazesthai) his work when he has reproduced this unsubstantial image as best he can. (<==)

(67) "Naïve" translates the Greek euèthès, a name which etymologically means "of good (eu) character (ethos)", often used by antiphrasis to designate someone "simple-minded", "silly", a "simpleton", in short, someone "good-hearted" but who is easily fooled due to naivety and simplicity of mind. (<==)

(68) "Wizard" translates the Greek goès, a word derived from goan meaning "groan, weep, bewail" which initially referred to a magician who proceeds by shouting and incantation, and by extension a "sorcerer" or a "wizard". Socrates probably chose this term precisely because it designates someone whose wizardry is exercised through words. (<==)

(69) The Greek word translated as "universally wise" is passophos, composed by adding to the adjective sophos ("learned, wise") the prefix pan- ("all", whose final n becomes s by assimilation before the initial s of sophos), i.e. "learned in everything".
Reading this description of the passophos, one cannot help but think of Socrates' portrait of Hippias at Lesser Hippias, 368b-e, even if he does not use this word there (he however uses it in connection with Prodicus at Protagoras, 315e7, with Euthydemus and Dionysodorus at Euthydemus, 271c6, with Protagoras in Theaetetus, 152c8, with Homer at Theaetetus, 194e2): in it, he reminds Hippias of the portrait he heard him draw of himself "in the agora near the bankers' counters", where not only did he boast of being the most knowledgeable in most fields but also of being able to compete with all craftsmen since he claimed to have made himself everything he had on and about himself, clothes, jewelry, travel accessories, etc., which, by the way, also made him the most "unjust" of men based on the conception of social justice presented by Socrates in the Republic, grounded in the specialization of tasks for the greatest good of the community of citizens. (<==)

(70) "To submit to examination" translates the Greek exetasai, an active aorist infinitive of the verb exetazein, formed by the addition of the prefix ex to the verb etazein ("to examine, test") which adds an idea of completion ("all the way to the end"). Exetazein is therefore "to examine thoroughly, scrutinize" and the verb can be used to mean "to prove by scrutiny or test" a metal, a friendship or an alliance, or "to pass in review" troops. What the verb suggests here is that the naïve has not been able to submit the claims of his "wizard" to scrutiny to determine what was true in them. This testing of the interlocutor who claims to be wise is precisely Socrates' favorite activity, which is depicted in most of the dialogues. It does not require one to be more knowledgeable than the one being put to the test, but may consist in confronting the interlocutor with one's own contradictions or in bringing him to a point where he is forced to admit his ignorance himself. (<==)

(71) "Knowledge" and "lack of knowledge" translate respectively epistèmè and anepistèmosunè, nouns derived from the verb epistasthai, itself used twice before in this reply, and which I have translated as "to know" (Socrates also uses at 598c9 the form oiden, third person singular of the perfect oida of the verb eidenai ("to see"), which has come to mean "to know" (in the present, though being a perfect), under the implied assumption that if I have seen (oida) something, then I know it; to distinguish this form from the forms of the verb epistasthai, I have translated oiden by "has been acquainted with" rather than by "knows", which has the added advantage of translating a perfect by a perfect rather than by a present). Epistèmè covers the full range of what may be learned form the practical skill required by any craft or trade all the way to the most theoretical and abstract knowledge which makes the word end up being opposed to technè as theoretical or speculative knowledge to technical (an English word derived from technè) know-how of the craftsman or artist. From epistasthai also derives the word epistèmôn, which designates the person who possesses an epistèmè, the "learned", "the one who knows, who has expertise in a given field". And from epistèmôn derives the word epistèmosunè, which designates the quality of one who is epistèmôn, as dikaiosunè ("justice") designates the quality of one who is dikaios ("just") or sôphrosunè ("moderation, temperance"), the quality of one who is sôphrôn ("moderate, reasonable"). Anepistèmosunè refers to the opposite of epistèmosunè, by adding the privative alpha ("a") at the beginning of the word and an intervening nu ("n") to avoid the iatus. It should be noted that Socrates speaks of submitting to examination the epistèmè and anepsitèmosunè of the self-proclaimed universal scholar, and not the epistèmosunè and anepsitèmosunè, which invites us to consider that by anepistèmosunè he means the total absence of any knowledge whatsoever and that he admits, on the other hand, the fragmentation of the epsistèmai ("knowledge") that have to be submitted to the test individually, which is also explicit in what has preceded, where the so-called universal scientist speaks of knowledge in the plural. On the one hand, we have a multitude of tests for each specific area of knowledge (epistèmè) that the person claims to possess and, in the end, if all of them are negative, a single absence of knowledge (anepistèmosunè) resulting from these tests. And if Socrates speaks of epistèmè in the singular, it is to invite us to wonder whether this knowledge, which is fragmented into a multitude of domains susceptible to specific tests, is really fragmented and whether we can speak of "knowledge" (epistèmè) in the strongest sense for someone who masters only a part of all this fragmented "knowledge", which brings us back to Republic VII, 533d4-6, where Socrates, evoking the disciplines that have just been reviewed for the training of future philosopher kings (arithmetic, plane and spatial geometry, harmony, astronomy), speaks of them as "arts (technais) we have been reviewing, which we often called “sciences” (epistèmai) out of habit, but would require another name, connoting more clearness than “opinion” (doxa), but more obscurity than “knowledge” (epistèmè)". (<==)

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First published February 15, 2026 - Last updated February 15, 2026
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