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FAITH AND REASON, PART 2: PLATO’S “LINE”
Plato's Republic provides some excellent clues to the character of Western civilization
and culture. The point is not whether he was right or wrong about how knowing works
but that his account of the mind and of knowing has been at the foundation of European
thinking for two and a half thousand years. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that all of
Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato.
Moreover, Platonist and neo-Platonist thinking provided the major theoretic
framework not only for the secular world, but it was the primary and virtually unrivaled
point of reference through which western Christianity rationalized itself until the
intrusion of Aristotle in the High Middle Ages. For the religious consciousness generally,
the Platonic vision remains an especially important approach to knowledge, as we shall
see.
Focus here will be on the place in the Republic (509d 6-511e 5) where Plato
identifies four kinds of knowing activity and discusses their relationship to one another.
In the history of philosophy this has been known as "Plato's Line." It can be represented
graphically (see chart).
NOESIS
ARCHAI
Meta-physics
First Principles
DIANOIA
METHOD,
LOGIC
REASON
MATHEMATIKA
DOXA
PISTIS
ZOA
KNOWING
FROM DIRECT
EXPERIENCE
KNOWING
DIRECT
PARTICULAR
THINGS
EPISTEME
ABSTRACT
THINKING
LEARNED
CONCLUSIONS
EXPERIENCE
EIKASIA
EIKONES
IMAGING,
IMAGINING
SYMBOLS, ARTS
(IMITATIONS)
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Initially, we will use Plato's Greek terms for the components of his account. The
English words have been argued about in many contexts, and they are open to too many
meanings in popular usage. While I will disagree somewhat with Plato’s evaluation of
Let us work through this diagram a step at a time. It will be useful to pay close attention
to the diagram as the discussion moves along.
1. Notice that in the left hand column there is a division into two "states of
mind." 1. The first is called episteme (epis-TEY-mey). The second is called
doxa.
2. In Plato’s way of thinking, episteme is a "higher" state of mind because it
knows what it knows. This state of mind is reflective, conscious; what it
thinks is clear and distinct.
3. Doxa, on the other hand, is a less clear state of mind, less defined. It has
commonly been translated as “opinion,” as we saw in our discussion of
Parmenides. I prefer to translate it as “common sense.” What I am assuming
here is that most of the time we do not go about saying things that we know
are stupid, nonsensical or irrational. Most of the time we speak and think out
of what makes sense given our experience.
4. Episteme and doxa are each divided into two kinds of knowing activity:
Episteme includes noesis and dianoia. Doxa includes pistis and eikasia.
Episteme is, for Plato, the highest and truest level of knowing. It is the state of
mind that understands ideas, the forms, the patterns that give order and shape to all
things. As such these ideas are abstract which are purely mental, beyond the limits of
sense experience. I might see some round thing . . . a ball, an orange, the moon, but to
grasp the idea of round-ness or circularity is to reach a more general state of knowing.
When the idea or concept is grasped, it can no longer be con-fused with something else.
For example, circularity, triangularly and linearity are clear and distinct ideas. As
ideas they are in no way altered and in no way dependent on the appearance or the
absence or the number of round things in experience. They describe equally all things
that participate in the appropriate idea or form (although each particular round thing will
only approximate the idea. None will be perfectly round.
A central theme of The Republic is the search for the idea of justice. The old
traditional order based on stories like those of the Homeric epics had been breaking up
for some time. In a way the Greeks were victims of their own success. Expansion of
Greek involvement with other peoples eroded the ancestral sense of identity. The
common sense of an earlier time was being displaced by a wide variety of alternate
narratives. There needed to be some basis of discussion that would allow people with
different stories to talk to one another about important issues.
Plato wanted to establish criteria (principles) by which one could describe (and
bring about) a discussion of what could constitute a just society. To get a political order
based on something besides the will of the strong or the expedients of getting along with
the boss requires something like an idea of justice, i.e., something based on clearly
understood principles and procedures. It involves getting people to transcend the
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particularities of their individual or group experiences to achieve a clear definition of
what needs to be accomplished.
LEVEL 4: NOESIS
There are countless ideas besides the idea of justice. The academic state of mind
is full of them. Abstract ideas, their inter-relationships and their management constitute
academic disciplines. So one goes to school and studies the laws of motion, the theory of
relativity, personality types, literary criticism, art history, the theory of supply and
demand, principles of accounting, organizational structure and behavior, systems
analysis, human resource management, computer science, data structures, and a whole
host of other ideas of which Plato never dreamed.
Let us look at the chart. The right hand column lists the objects of knowing, the
outcomes of the activities of the two states of mind. On the level of noesis, Plato
identifies the object of knowledge as the archai. These are the first principles, the
original forms, the ideal essences or patterns that underlie everything. Philosophers refer
to this kind of knowledge as met-physics, things you think about after or beyond
thought about the nature (physis) of things we know from experience and reason.
Noesis is an activity of mind that grasps, understands the archai. Noesis seeks to know
the ultimate conditions in reality that make knowing possible
Plato seems to have thought that these fundamental ideas (archai) were existing
entities -- at least ideas like the One, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Aristotle had
a lot of trouble with this. But it doesn't change the fact that noesis is a distinctive state of
mental activity and that Plato did a masterful job of describing it. Since our primary
purpose here is not to do philosophy of metaphysics, we can put further discussion of this
level aside for some other time.
LEVEL 3: DIANOIA
There is another mental activity that belongs to episteme: dianoia. This is a kind
of knowing activity that moves from questions to hypotheses to conclusions by formal
argument or reasoning. We might understand it as being "logical" the way
mathematicians are. It is methodical, operating according to certain explicit rules and
procedures. We are in that state of mind when we perform the act of balancing our
checkbooks. It is a less fundamental kind of knowing, in Plato's view, but it is still "real"
knowledge. We have to acquire a great deal of formal skill to do it well, but once we
have “discovered” something, we can check and recheck (verify) our conclusions. We
can “prove” (test) the outcomes (mathematika). Further, in principle, anyone and
everyone can do it exactly the same way as everyone else does.
An example: astronomers knew about the existence of the so-called planet Pluto
long before it was directly observed. They figured out all kinds of things about Pluto, its
size, mass, orbit and so forth because of measured variations in other planets' behavior
when related to the theories of physics. This procedure for discovering things we don’t
know already or for verifying what we think we know is called dianoia.
So dianoia is a kind of "real" knowledge, of episteme. Such scientific knowing is
a key element in the development and implementation of theoretic knowledge. Plato's
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work illustrates his search for episteme through noesis and dianoia, the development and
application of a theory of knowledge.
In the right hand column on level 3, we see that the object of dianoia, what is
known in that activity, is referred to as mathematika: learned conclusions reached
through formal reasoning dianoia). As already indicated, this is most obvious in
mathematical thinking because the formality is purest and most controlled in
mathematics. But it applies to all forms of disciplined reasoning, to all inquiry governed
by methodical procedures. All sciences, all academic fields, in so far as they attempt to
find conclusions by reason, method, logic, are engaging in the state of mind, the kind of
knowing that Plato calls episteme.
Another way of saying this is that such knowing is explanatory knowing in the
strict sense of the term. Explanation means literally "to (put or lay) out on a plane (flat
surface)." The diagram we have been using is a kind of "ex-planation." Episteme is an
"ex-planatory" state of mind. Dianoia is one way of acting in that state of mind. Science
is always trying to explain things. Theories are attempts to "ex-plain." This book is an
extended exercise in "ex-planation."
Dianoia works from hypotheses, assumptions: “If this, then that.” One makes
hypotheses [hypo- = “less than” + thesis = “a stand”) and then applies method to data to
find out how the hypothesis works out.
Inevitably there are many possible explanations for anything. Explanations
might also be good explanations or poor explanations. Some explanations are better than
others. In any case, explanations never explain things exhaustively. They always select
and assume some hypothetical pattern or form as the basis for the explanation. The
investigator’s attention will focus on some aspects of a situation and not on others. A
methodical approach will also carefully manage and select the data it includes. The
various academic fields of study have their own ideas about what counts as data,
Psychologists attend to individuals, sociologists to groups, and so on.
Here's an illustration. Suppose we have a box full of rocks gathered from here and
there with no particular attention to anything other than the fact that they were rocks. We
selected to collect only rocks and not beer cans, sticks, or flowers. We bring the box
home and proceeded to "ex-plain" (lay them out) the contents on the dining room table.
How can we explain further? How many ways can you ex-plain them? We could, of
course, just dump them on the table in a heap and let it go at that. But let's suppose we are
trying to be scientific. We want to sort them into kinds and to assess what we have.
Which kinds? How many kinds? What will be the basis for the explanation? Is our
motive monetary? Or strictly educational? Or are we seeking certain materials for an art
project? Or to repair the rock wall in the back yard?
There are many possible motives and many possible explanations. We could
begin by sorting them out (ex-planing) them by size. Or weight. Or color. Or chemical
composition. Or hardness. Or perhaps we are interested in some aesthetic qualities. In any
event, we cannot explain them effectively until we have determined what we want the
basis to be. And once we select one feature, we will ignore the others.
Here it is critically important to grasp the relationship between this whole
discussion and the study of religious traditions. Plato's privileging of episteme,
his insistence that it is the only "real" or "true" way of knowing, has tended to discredit
religious knowing generally, to relegate it to the realm of mere “opinion.” Consequently,
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Western culture has a long history of conflict between "faith" and "reason," between
"religion" and "science."
We cannot blame this conflict entirely on Plato. In his day, the power and
presence of episteme was minimal. It was just emerging. This is not so today. But much
of the conflict between the ways of knowing is needless. Much of it is a consequence of
category mistakes.
COMMON SENSE KNOWLEDGE: DOXA, PISTIS, EIKASIA.
It is pretty clear that Plato launched an all-out attack on doxa (common sense)
knowledge. He wanted, especially, to run the poets, the purveyors of traditional
knowledge, out of his ideal Republic. It is also clear that the way things developed in
Western, European culture, there has been a longstanding battle to establish episteme as
the privileged form of knowing. This is important for our present discussion primarily
because it goes some way in explaining why people can be in many ways hostile toward
the traditional knowledge of religious traditions. The tendency remains, and it prejudices
the study of religious traditions in a variety of ways. Much of it is that they simply do not
have the appropriate common sense to understand it.
There are many reasons for Plato's devaluation of doxa. It was everywhere. In his
mind it was represented by all of society's powers -- the rulers, the religious leaders, the
educational authorities. Plato's teacher Socrates had been executed for "corrupting the
youth," which meant encouraging them to get into episteme and to question the power of
the establishment. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the battle still goes on in
and among segments of society.
From the perspective of episteme, it is not hard to understand why typically doxa
has been translated as "opinion," or, in some ways better, "public opinion.” "Common
sense" presents special problems from the viewpoint of knowledge. It refers, after all, to
“what people think,” to “what everybody knows,” to what a particular group takes for
granted. Aware as we are of prejudice, ignorance and biases of various sorts, our
suspicion of such “opinion” is often well founded.
But there is more to the story. If we translate doxa as “common sense,” it takes on
a different flavor. We perhaps recognize easily what it means for someone to lack
common sense. He or she just doesn’t “get it.”
Perhaps this is a clue. We are aware of a kind of knowing that originates and
operates quite unlike scientific reasoning. At the same time we are aware of the
importance of having such knowing. But it is hard to describe, let alone to define. It
seems to have all sorts of variability, and it is difficult to control. It is difficult to teach
common sense, particularly in a classroom. Practitioners in “the real world” often accuse
academic people of not having much common sense. And sure enough, there is always
the child psychologist who can't raise his or her own kids. And there's the newly
graduated MBA who runs the company into the ground.
Is "common sense” a legitimate -- even indispensable--kind of knowing? What
characteristics does the state of mind we call "common sense" possess? How is it related
to episteme?
1. Whereas episteme seeks the abstract and the general, common sense (doxa)
understands the concrete and the particular.
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2. There are as many "common senses" as there are concrete, particular human
situations. There is a "common sense" of the family, of the work place, of the political
arena, and even of the school. Yet the common sense of one family (mine) may differ
markedly from another (yours). And the fact that we can't explain it adequately makes
little difference.
3. Common sense is a state of mind that comes from direct experience, from being on
the job, from having learned by trial and error.
4. Common sense is common, i.e., it is a sense of what is going on that is shared
amongst people who share a situation. Generally people know "what goes" and what
doesn't in their families, in their offices, in their classrooms. Newcomers and outsiders
might not. They have to be initiated. Children usually lack many kinds of common sense.
People who are older help them learn how to negotiate the world in which they live.
5. Common sense is based in community life and experience. Because I have common
sense in one situation doesn't mean I have it in another. As a matter of fact, I almost
inevitably will lack common sense when I enter some new situation. "Foolish" people do
things without common sense and don't seem to learn from their mistakes. The human
predicament always has lots of foolishness in it. We always try to find explanations for
our foolishness. There are many explanations. As a rule such explanations don't help us
much.
6. What we call “culture” is largely a generalized form of common sense. Reading a
book on French culture probably won't protect me from doing foolish things (from the
French point of view) when I go to Paris. Living in Paris for some time might.
7. It is very difficult to give one's common sense to someone else. It is relatively easy
to communicate the result of dianoia.
8. Common sense is often best expressed through stories and other art forms.
9. Common sense is ordered to practical living. As such, it values human experiences
and embodies them in tradition. Tradition is about handing on what we have found to
work and not to work.
10. Dramatically changing conditions can seriously disrupt common sense. Episteme
can aid but cannot replace common sense. Reading a book on friendship might help me
understand my problems with social life. But it won't substitute for friends no matter how
much I study.
LEVEL 2: PISTIS
As an activity of doxa, pistis commonly has been rendered in English as "belief."
Pistis is the Greek New Testament word most commonly translated as "faith" or "belief."
St. Paul denigrates the "wisdom of the wise" (the philosophers' episteme) in favor of the
"foolishness" (pistis) of the believer. But his use of pistis owes as much to Judaic
tradition as to the Greeks. And that's another story.
Plato was much earlier, and he was concerned less with the "religious" flavor of
the word (if the distinction would have meant anything to him at all) than in its reference
to a certain kind of knowing activity. This becomes more evident when we translate doxa
as "common sense," and pistis as a particular form of common sense.
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If we understand pistis as a knowing activity rooted in direct experience, we could
translate it as "the knowing of concrete particulars." Plato says that the object of pistis is
zoa, "living things," but we can extend that to all existing particulars.
Let's try an example. I might know (episteme) a lot about dogs by studying them,
reading books, research reports and the like. I might learn about dinosaurs or
Rhinocerotidae without getting near one on the hoof. But growing up around dogs,
having one for a pet or using dogs to hunt ducks would provide me with direct
experiential knowledge of dogs (pistis-zoa). This knowledge of dogs would be wedded to
the particular breeds of dog I have experienced and the particular animals (Fido, Buster. .
.) I have encountered of these breeds.
If you listen to people alertly, you will probably find them talking more about
this kind of knowing than any other kind. "Fords are lousy cars. I had one, and it was in
the shop all the time." "That's not my experience. I have one with a million miles and
never had a problem."
Both could be right. The speakers are talking about their own experience. If the
statement "Fords are lousy cars" is taken as episteme (noesis –mathematika) rather than
as doxa (pistis), considerable careful research would have to be done to prove or disprove
it. In the meantime, it would be merely a question ("Are Fords lousy cars?") or a
hypothesis to be demonstrated. ("True or False: Fords are lousy cars.") There are lots of
questions that we don't have the interest, the time or the resources to pursue this way. We
might be happy with some "opinions" from people we trust to have "common sense"
about cars.
But there are other questions that don't yield well to scientific inquiry (episteme).
These questions include existential questions: "Are you my friend?" "What is the
meaning of my life?" "Can Jesus save me?" "Did the Virgin Mary appear to Juan Diego?"
“Did the Buddha achieve nirvana?” It is pretty well fruitless to try to reduce such things
to noesis or dianoia. They are objects of doxa, common sense, and remain so, despite
the efforts of theologians and others to "explain" them. They are not mathematika to be
figured out or explained.
Pistis is an important part of the common sense that we call “friendship,” the
experience of trust, of self-communication, of openness to the other, of fidelity to
relationship. In such kinds of knowing, the experience of the person who experiences
cannot be removed from the equation. It cannot be treated simply as an abstraction. Of
course, that does not make it less real, less true, and less significant.
Religious traditions are especially interested in pistis. As noted earlier, “religion”
does not exist as a thing you can find in a parking lot. “Religion” is an abstract idea that
we use to point to certain kinds of human experience. Particular traditions of
comprehensive concern do exist and are observable. The primary focus of these traditions
is not theory, not even religious ideas, but a particular kind of common sense. Religious
traditions are interested in what works. Some religious traditions have developed
"theologies," attempts to formulate ideas and to explain (episteme) their relationship,
coherence and viability. But theology always remains subordinate to pistis, to the
essentials, foundational experiences which constitute the tradition.
Theologies always derive from the common sense of the persons who do it and the
tradition experience of the tradition they purport to explain. Changes in theology usually
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accompany changes in the common sense of a community and are often accompanied by
considerable controversy.
Pistis (in the religious context) is an approach to the Holy understood as lifegiving power. To perform in this state of mind is to experience everything under the
aspect of the Holy and to seek to live in constant holiness, close to the power of your life
and being. People often think of this way of knowing as a matter of simply entertaining
certain "beliefs," propositions, creedal statements or the like. But religious pistis is more
properly understood as situated in an attitude of commitment, an orientation of one's
whole self toward another or toward others based on some significant direct experience.
LEVEL 1: EIKASIA
If episteme is grasped, stored, and expressed in methods, ideas, theories,
explanations, doxa is embodied, stored, and expressed in symbol (eikones). Plato knew
this clearly. This is why he wanted to run the poets out of his Republic. Their old
(Homeric) stories (eikones) seduced people into obsolete common sense (pistis).
The epistemic state of mind strives for maximum ex-plicitness. It wants to foldout
or un-fold what is covered over, to dis-cover. Something ex-plicated is torn out of the
density of concrete relationships, abs-tracted ("drawn away") and generalized. Symbols
(syn-ballein = to throw together) work in the opposite manner. They throw things into
concrete ("grown together", entangled) forms of expression. They are implicit ("folded or
tangled in") and therefore full of implications.
We have seen what epistemic (noesis and dianoia) activities of mind produce.
What is produced by the mental activity called eikasia? We can see but also hear, touch,
taste, smell, and feel such forms because they come to us through all the senses. All of
the arts (as opposed to the sciences) involve us in concrete experience. Dance, sculpture,
architecture, painting, music, story, poetry -- even the art of cooking, the arts of wine
making and tasting are all iconic or symbolic forms of activity, thought, experience.
Eikasia is the mental activity we call "imagination," making images. Its object,
what it knows, is images, eikones ("icons"), symbols. Plato called them "shadows"
because they lacked the clarity, distinctness and (for him) the reality of ideas. Instead of
having a clearly defined single meaning, they are full of meanings. They convey not only
abstract meaning, but also draw the knower into the experience that bears the potential
for meaning. Myth and ritual are important religious forms of eikasia.
It should be emphasized that art and science often can work together.
Technology (literally "skill-talk") is a result of such co-operation. But it is important not
to confuse these states of mind and mental activities. They are easily confused because
our own mental experience is a seamless web. We do not readily advert to the constant
movements of our consciousness from one state to the other; from one activity to the
other although we can readily enough see the differences in our experience when we do
advert to them.
Thus, our science is always colored by our doxa, not only in what we decide to
pay attention to but in the questions we ask and the method we devise. It is from our
direct experience that matters of importance arise in our awareness. It is also from our
direct experience that our sense of value and appropriateness arises. The culture we
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belong to shapes our sense of what is important. Our cultural formation sets up the
framework in which we interpret our experience. In fact, it determines in fundamental
ways what our experience is, what counts as relevant experience, what is worth attending
to.
These confusions can be seen within the Euro-American culture itself. A
classic example of confusion of episteme and doxa is still evident: the ongoing conflict
between the advocates of a scientific account of world origins and the advocates of the
six days of creation account in Genesis. One simply does not have to choose between
them. They are products of quite different states of mind. It makes no more sense to pit
them against one another than it makes sense to ask which is correct or true: modern
psychology's account of human emotions or the last movement of Beethoven's “Ninth
Symphony.” The scientist who thus rejects Genesis is not being scientific. He or she is
simply being naïve about human expression. On the other hand, the advocate of "creation
science” is inadvertently imposing scientific (epistemic) expectations on a mythic
(eikasia, eikones) piece of expression.
For Native Americans past and present who have run up against powerful people
(politicians, educators, bureaucrats, and missionaries) who are confused about these
things, the results can be devastating.
One common mistake is to equate the "imaginative" with the "imaginary." C.G.
Jung and others have taught us something our ancestors often knew: Symbols are not
mere symbols. Real symbols draw us down into the deep mysteries of life and existence.
They are not substitutes for ideas dressed up for consumption by the silly and childlike
amongst us. In fact our symbol life establishes the substratum upon which everything
else builds. If that level is impoverished, the rest of our life is likely to be impoverished
also.
Let's keep this in mind as we approach the symbolic forms in which the religious
traditions express themselves. Cultural and religious traditions embody, preserve and
express themselves primarily in symbolic forms, what we will shortly refer to as
ceremonies. Understanding a cultural or religious system requires appreciating the
symbols in which the tradition experience lives.
Each state of mind (episteme and doxa) has its own contribution to make. No one
substitutes for any other. Symbols are not a substitute for science or the result of the
absence of science. Symbols are not explanations: e.g., origin myths are not
explanations. Myths are not false because they fail to be scientific. They are distinctive
modes of knowing that require experience to interpret and understand. Cultures, too, can
be understood in terms of their involvement in these states of mind. Some sense of these
is a critical part of the study of religious traditions generally.
But let's get more concrete. What does eikasia, as a mental activity, produce?
Eikones, icons, says Plato. All art forms fit under this heading: pictures, music,
architecture, poetry, stories, songs, dances, gestures, ritual calendars. John Ruskin made
this point effectively: Each tradition has its own particular eikones, and if you want to
understand any tradition you have to encounter them. Of course one should study a
tradition's ideas also, ideas like Athenian "democracy" or Medieval European feudalism
or Soviet communism, or American egalitarianism. But these ideas will always sprout
from the iconic soil of the tradition, and even if they are transplanted, they will take on
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the character of the local tradition's iconic foundation. A tradition may think with ideas,
but it lives in its icons.