Divine Epiphany and Political Authority in Plato’s Republic

• In Event: Religious Knowledge, Religious Practice, and Political Authority

Abstract

In Book II of the Republic, when outlining the educational program for the young guardians of the ideal city, Socrates establishes two patters for a proper discourse about the gods to be used by the city’s poets as they compose their stories and fables. The first pattern establishes that god is perfectly good, and as such can only be the cause of good things. The second pattern, in turn, determines that “god is altogether simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself nor deceives others by visions or words or the sending of signs” and that the gods “are neither wizards in shape-shifting nor do they mislead us by falsehoods in words or deed” (R. 382e-383a).

Studies of these passages have tended to focus on the first pattern, and on the claim that god must be perfectly good and cause only good. There are, of course, excellent reasons for such focus. Socrates’ claim that the god must be good fits well with the theological position found in earlier Platonic dialogues—most notably the Euthyphro and Apology. Furthermore, it corresponds to what scholars consider to be Socrates’ most fundamental and radical teaching about the gods and to earlier developments in Greek theology. Perhaps most crucially, the first pattern plays an important role in Plato’s attack against epic poetry in the Republic and his critique and rejection of the work of Homer and Hesiod. These works, so central to Greek theology and understanding of the divine, often depict the gods as violating every imaginable moral norm and as the authors of harm to humans and other gods, and thus must be rejected or at least heavily censored.

Unlike the first pattern, the second pattern has received significantly less scholarly attention, and its meaning remains very much debated. This is due, at least in part, to the ambiguity that is built into the pattern, which includes at least three distinct—although connected—claims: (i) god is perfect and ‘simple,’ and thus would not change to anything inferior; (ii) god will not appear to humans in waking visions or dreams; and (iii) god will not lie or deceive. Why does Plato include these claims in such a crucial moment in the Republic? What is the meaning of Plato’s second pattern, what does it aim to achieve, and what is so important about it that deserves its inclusion among the Republic’s two theological principles?

This paper addresses these questions by offering a novel interpretation of the second theological pattern in Republic II. Following the footsteps of scholars who urge us to take Plato’s religious context seriously, it argues that the primary purpose of Plato’s second pattern is to challenge and call into question one of the central features of Greek theology: divine epiphany. It is hard to overstate the centrality of divine epiphany to the ancient Greek religious context. The ability of gods and goddesses to appear to human beings in the shape of humans or animals was central to the Greeks’ understanding of divinity and divine power, and the occurrence of divine epiphanies are described or documented in epic poetry, historiography, inscriptions, and cult practices.

Reading the second pattern in this context, this paper argues, allows us to see that its primary purpose is to call into question the theological principle of divine epiphany. Specifically, it argues that the second pattern is meant to achieve two goals: first, to undermine the traditional theological model of divine epiphany, which holds that the gods can, in principle, appear to any individual; and second, to prepare the ground for Plato’s alternative model of divine epiphany in Republic VI, where the possibility of such epiphanic experience will be limited to the domain of philosophy. The first goal, I will argue, is meant to address the challenge posed by the standard model of divine epiphany to both political and religious authority. Divine epiphany could be experienced, in principle, by any individual, and such an encounter with the divine has often led to substantial sociopolitical outcomes and conferred significant authority and status on the individual who has experienced it. By calling into question the possibility of such divine epiphany, Plato seeks to limit the possibility that such experience may generate an alternative to the knowledge and authority of the philosophers in the ideal city. The second goal—preparing the ground for Plato’s alternative model of divine epiphany in Republic VI—can be viewed as the other side of the same coin. As I will argue, Plato’s discussion of the nature of philosophical knowledge and the Form of the Good in Book VI explicitly appropriates the theological discourse of divine epiphany in order to limit the possibility of the epiphanic experience—together with the divine knowledge and authority that are associated with it—to the domain of philosophy, which contributes to his attempt to establish the philosopher as the only legitimate political authority.

Author

• Avshalom M Schwartz, Stanford University