Project Muse 878516

The Metaphysics of Appearance in Republic X (596a5–598d7)
Lee Franklin
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 61, Number 1, January

2023, pp. 1-24 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.0000
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/878516
[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)

The Metaphysics of Appearance
in Republic X (596a5–598d7)
LEE FRANKLIN*
abstract Plato’s Republic X attack on imitative poetry is based in the metaphysics

of appearance, since appearances are the objects and products of imitation. I offer
a new reading, showing that Plato’s account coherently introduces appearances as a
new type of item, distinct from Forms and sensible particulars, and applies beyond
imitation to a broad range of appearances. Focusing on the importance of perspec-
tive to Plato’s reasoning, I argue that an appearance is a relation that comes about
between a material particular and an apprehending subject. Ordinarily, appearances
are transparent: they confer determinate awareness on the subject, but are not the
objects of our awareness insofar as we are appeared to. This reading resolves long-
standing obscurities, grounds an improved account of imitation, and shows that Plato
here presents the cornerstone of a general theory of appearance.
keywords Plato, appearance, metaphysics, imitation
introduction
plato’s republic x attack on imitative poetry is based in the metaphysics of
appearance. In the first stage of the argument (596a5–598d7), Socrates sets out
from a restatement of the Theory of Forms to give a general account on which
imitation has appearances (phantasmata) or images (eidola) as both its objects and
products—what it seeks to imitate and what it makes.1 Imitation is “far removed
from truth” because appearances are themselves three removes from reality and
truth (598b6, 597e3–4, 602c1–2).2 Though scholars take Plato’s ban on imitative
poetry seriously, they often regard the metaphysics on which it is based as a
[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)
theoretical kludge—a set of ideas jerry-rigged for the attack on imitative poetry, but
1
Citations from the Republic are from the Slings Oxford Classical Texts edition of Platonis Re-
spublica and will provide Stephanus pages only. Citations from other Platonic dialogues are from
the Burnet Oxford Classical Texts edition of Platonis Opera and will include the dialogue’s name and
Stephanus pages.
2
Unless otherwise noted, I rely on Reeve’s translation of Plato’s Republic. Counting is inclusive in
ancient Greek. Appearances are two steps removed from Forms and one step removed from sensible
particulars.
* Lee Franklin is an associate professor of philosophy at Franklin & Marshall College.
Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 61, no. 1 (2023) 1–24
[1]
2 journal of the history of philosophy 61:1 january 2023
which are incoherent or cannot sustain systematic application. Scholars are leery
of the notion that Plato here introduces appearance as a new type of item in his
ontology, distinct from Forms and sensible particulars, or that his characterization
applies to appearings that occur outside the context of imitation.3
Some wariness stems from the impression that Plato’s approach in this passage
is anomalous. Socrates’s presentation of the Theory of Forms seems to diverge
from its standard formulation, leading some to doubt that the argument reflects
Plato’s settled view.4 Less explicitly, scholars seem to regard a metaphysical
account of appearance with apprehension, since the topic is typically considered
epistemologically. On this more common approach, appearance—phantasia—is
a distinct type of cognitive state between sense-perception and reasoned belief
that may include hallucinations, illusions, dreams, hedonic and affective states,
and perhaps a range of propositional apprehensions lacking full rational assent.
Questions germane to this intermediate position concern how appearance differs
from sense perception, whether it involves conceptualization, whether the content
of appearances can be propositional, and whether appearances constitute doxa
(beliefs). Focusing on these questions, interpreters of Plato’s theory neglect the
opening stage of the book X argument, looking instead to the so-called “cognitive
partitioning argument” (602c4–603b5), to the book VII discussion of summoners
(523a1–524d5), or to later dialogues.5 Metaphysics, it seems, has little to teach
us about appearance.
In any case, readers of the book X argument are primarily concerned with the
aesthetic, ethical, and psychological dimensions of Plato’s attack on imitation, and
with the challenge of integrating this argument with other passages. Constrained by
assumptions about the objects and products of imitation, these interpreters often
tolerate obscurity in Socrates’s presentation. For instance, there is an unexplained
equivocation in Socrates’s characterization of the product of imitation. Socrates
sometimes speaks of the imitator’s creations, and imitators themselves, in ordinary
terms, for instance, as a couch (596e10) or a carpenter (598b9), respectively. By
this direct characterization, he seems to designate the items that appear in imitative
works—such as the characters in a play—and which are thought and spoken of
directly as instances of their kinds. At other times, Socrates says that the imitator
3
A note on terminology. There are at least three different kinds of phenomena that might be
referred to by the English term ‘appearance,’ translating a number of Greek terms derived from the
verb phainesthai. The first is the image or look of a thing, what we take to be reproduced in a picture.
I take Plato’s use of phantasma and eidolon equivalently to designate an entity of this sort. Since the
goal of this paper is to articulate Plato’s account of this item, whatever it is, I shall use ‘appearance’
exclusively in this first sense. The second is the mental state that we are in insofar as we receive or
apprehend content of this sort, or more generally the faculty for being in such states, as in Sophist
260c–d and 264a4–b4 and Aristotle’s De Anima III.3 examination of phantasia. To avoid confusion, I
shall not use ‘appearance’ for mental states, and instead refer, inelegantly, to the awareness we have
insofar as we are appeared to. The third are events in which a subject comes to be in this mental state,
which I will refer to as ‘appearings.’
4
See Annas, “Introduction to Plato’s Republic,” 227–32, 333–38; Cherniss, “On Plato’s Republic X
597b,” passim; Halliwell, Republic Book 10, 110; Janaway, Images of Excellence, 111–13, 111n19; and
Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 257.
5
Plato’s account of appearance has not received a great deal of attention in its own right. See
Barney, “Appearances and Impressions”; Lorenz, Brute Within, part 2; Lycos, “Aristotle and Plato on
Appearing”; Silverman, “Plato on Phantasia”; Storey, “Appearance, Perception, and Non-Rational
Belief ”; and Watson, Phantasia in Classical Thought, chap. 1.
the metaphysics of appearance in republic 3 x
makes an appearance or image (phantasmatos [598b3]; eidolon [598b8]), terms
that designate something distinct from the item of which it is the appearance, and
insubstantial (smikron ti [598b7]) compared to it.6 The mere image of a couch,
after all, is not a couch. But if the imitator has only one product, as most assume,
these characterizations must refer to the same thing. Consequently, Plato seems
to conflate distinct conceptions of the imitator’s product and, by extension,
appearance itself.7
Despite this obscurity, there is a standard view of what appearance is in this
argument. This view starts from a conception of imitation as likeness-making.
The work of the imitator is to produce a material particular artwork, such as a
painting, which bears some resemblance to the item being imitated, which is also
a material particular. Appearance is the crucial link in this process, the feature
copied from the object being imitated and conferred on the item created by the
imitator. Thus, interpreters arrive at what I will call the feature reading, on which an
appearance is an intrinsic feature—a property or part—of a material particular.8
Such an account, however, does not clearly apply to forms of imitation that do
not involve likeness-making,9 or to any type of appearing that depends on the
perspective of the subject appeared to. Several appearings of this kind are invoked
prominently in connection with appearance in the Republic: illusions (382a1–e11,
602c10–d4), subject-relative hedonic experiences (583b–584a, esp. 584a7–10),
and affective states such as grief (603e–604c). In this way, the feature reading implies
that Plato’s book X account of appearance is not intended for application beyond
imitative contexts. More problematically, the role of perspective is central to the
argument by which Plato introduces appearances, as such, to the discussion.
Besides offering an account that fits only a narrow range of appearings, a feature
reading does not accommodate Plato’s reasons for distinguishing appearances as
items in their own right.
On the view presented here, considerations of perspective are key to
understanding why Plato gives a metaphysical account of appearance. Perspectival
appearing shows that we cannot explain how things appear just in terms of sensible
particulars and their features, or souls and their states. We need to examine how
these elements interact. Appearance is a relation that typically comes about between
a material particular and an apprehending subject.10 This relation is content
bearing, conferring determinate awareness of some kind of thing or other.11 In
this way, as we shall see, Plato’s account builds on his established metaphysics. An
appearance is not a sensible particular, nor a part or feature of one, nor a state of
6
Plato uses these terms interchangeably. Socrates twice moves from one to the other with no
evidence of a change in meaning; see 516a6–b6 and 598b2–8.
7
See Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 262–63; and Janaway, Images of Excellence, 118.
8
See Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 263. Other adherents of the feature reading
include Belfiore, “Theory of Imitation,” 123–26; Janaway, Images of Excellence, chap. 5, esp. 108–12;
and Marušič, “Poets and Mimesis in the Republic,” 222–27, 229–31. Others suggest a feature account
more ambiguously; see Burnyeat, “Culture and Society,” 295–305; Ferrari, “Plato and Poetry,” 125–28;
and Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,” 417–22.
9
Cf. Sophist 235d1–236c8.
10
Hallucinations may have nonmaterial, divine sources; see 382a–b.
11
I use ‘awareness’ throughout to describe a representational mental state irrespective of accuracy
or truth.
the soul, nor a Form. Nevertheless, an account of what an appearance is invokes
them all.
Besides providing an account suitable to a broad range of appearings, this
reading also illuminates Socrates’s dual characterization of the products of
imitation. Ordinarily, appearances are transparent—they are the conduits, not the
objects, of our awareness insofar as we are appeared to. Anyone subject to the
appearance of a couch experiences the awareness of, or as of, a couch present in
their environment. Accordingly, we must distinguish what appears, or comes to be
represented in the subject’s awareness, from appearance itself, the relation by which
that awareness has come about. Socrates’s two characterizations of the imitator’s
products correspond to these distinct elements and are clearly distinguished by
their place in the investigation. The appearing things created by the imitator—
fictional items that appear in a work of imitation—are products of imitation as we
experience them ordinarily. Appearances, by contrast, are content-bearing relations
generated by the imitator, and through which we come to apprehend the items
that appear in the imitative work. But we come to recognize appearances as such
only through philosophical inquiry.
This interpretation will emerge from a close reading of Socrates’s general
account of imitation developed in the first part of the argument banning imitative
poetry (596a5–598d7). Along the way, we will confront assumptions that have
constrained prior interpreters and consider the ramifications of Plato’s account
of imitation. Though the paper’s attention will be narrowly focused on these
interpretive matters, I hope that my reading will support reconsideration of Plato’s
aims with respect to appearance. At issue, ultimately, is the place of appearance
in the synoptic philosophical vision of Plato’s Republic. Interpretations on which
Plato’s theory of appearance is incoherent or ad hoc prohibit consideration of a
role for appearance beyond the attack on imitative poetry. In contrast, the reading
offered here is motivated by the view that appearance plays a systematic role in
Plato’s account of prerational beliefs and affective states, experiences that Plato
regards as forms of representational awareness that form spontaneously, passively,
and without active reasoning on the part of the subject. Nevertheless, for Plato,
the way that the world strikes us in these experiences is thoroughly subject-relative,
shaped by the interaction between our perspective and the world. An account of
these fundamental forms of awareness must therefore begin with a metaphysics
of appearance as a relation.
1. the imitator’s creations (596a5–596e11)

Socrates develops a general account of imitation by resolving a puzzle about the
imitator: how can an imitator be the creator of every sort of thing? To pose this
puzzle, Socrates frames the imitator’s products univocally as things that appear in
imitative works, fictional items that we speak and think about as we do the objects
of ordinary experience. Though some find the notion of a mere appearance in
this introduction, Socrates comes to speak of appearances and images as such only
later, in the theoretical account that solves the puzzle of the imitator.12
12
For instance, see Cain, “Plato on Mimesis and Mirrors,” 190; Halliwell, Republic Book 10, 112;
and Reeve’s translation in Plato, Republic, 299.
Socrates first investigates what sort of craftsperson the imitator is, focusing this
question on what an imitator makes. After a brief, controversial restatement of the
Theory of Forms (596a5–b2),13 Socrates describes how an ordinary craftsperson
makes many instances of an artifact by referring to the Form (596b4–8). He then
introduces another craftsperson who can make “everything [panta . . . hapanta . . .
hapanta]” (596c5–9; cf. 596d4), likening this amazing (thaumaston [596c3, d1])
creative ability to the way one holding a mirror could “quickly make the sun and
the things in the sky . . . the earth, [oneself] and the other animals, manufactured
items, plants, and everything else” (596b10–e3). Glaucon suggests that the mirror-
holder makes these things appear, but not be in truth (phainomena, ou mentoi onta
ge pou alêtheia [596e4; cf. e11]). Praising Glaucon, Socrates adds that a painter—
henceforth his model imitator—creates the same sort of items (tôn toioutôn gar . . .
dêmiourgon kai ho zôgraphos estin [596e5–6]).
How should we understand these creations? Prior to the mirror illustration,
Socrates emphasizes two points. First, the remarkable craftsman is a creator.
Socrates deploys a flurry of terms for craft producers (dêmiourgon [596b12, d3],
cheirotechnôn [596c2, c5], poiêtês [596d4]) and production (poiei [596c2, c5, c6, d5,
e1], ergazetai [596c7, c9]). Pace Stephen Halliwell, I see insistence, not irony, in this
repetition: the amazing craftsperson brings something new into being.14 Second,
Socrates stresses that the items created by the imitator are, in some sense or other,
akin to those created by ordinary craftspeople. The amazing craftsperson “makes
everything, all of the things each individual handicraftsman makes [hos panta poiei,
hosaper heis hekastos tôn cheirotechnôn]” (596c2).15 In the mirror illustration, Socrates
refers to the items created in the same terms used to speak of ordinary items: “You
will quickly make the sun and the things in the sky . . . the earth, yourself and
the other animals, manufactured items, plants, and everything else” (596e1–3).
The amazing craftsperson creates a set of items spoken of directly and without
qualification as instances of their kinds.16
This characterization is readily explained by reference to a familiar facet of our
engagement with imitation. Looking at a painting, we often speak directly about
the things that we see in it, saying, for instance, “That’s a couch.” Likewise, in
engaging with literature or drama, we say many things directly about the fictional
characters depicted. In both cases, we assign additional features that can belong
[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)
to these items only as instances of their designated kinds. So, we might say what
a couch in a painting is made of, where the same description cannot hold of the
painting itself. That we engage with imitations in this way is vital to Plato’s critique:
Socrates later describes our response to events in tragedy as “enjoyment of other
13
For a summary of the controversies, see Annas, Introduction to Plato’s Republic, 227–32; Burn-
yeat, “Culture and Society,” 246–49; Cherniss, “On Plato’s Republic X 597b”; Griswold, “Ideas and the
Criticism of Poetry”; and Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 272–73n31.
14
Halliwell, Aesthetics of Mimesis, 134–36; Halliwell, Republic Book 10, 111; Janaway, Images of Excel-
lence, 111–14. I follow Notomi, “Image Making,” 317–21, who argues that parallels between this passage
and Sophist 234a–d support a nonironic reading. See also Marcos de Pinotti, “La critica platonica,” 18.
15
Translation adapted from Reeve to capture the emphasis in Socrates’s use of both panta and
hosaper.
16
Burnyeat, “Culture and Society,” 266.
people’s suffering” (606b5–8; cf. 393a8–b2).17 Anticipating this, Socrates frames
the imitator’s products initially as fictional items that we speak and think about
directly, just as we do ordinary items.
This explains the controversial emphasis on language in Socrates’s earlier
remarks, which seem to assert that there is a Form corresponding to every
meaningful general term: “We usually posit some one particular Form in connection
with each set of many things to which we apply the same name [eidos gar pou ti
hen hekaston eiôthamen tithesthai peri hekasta ta polla hois tauton onoma epipheromen]”
(596a7).18 This is problematic, though, if each Form represents a real kind, a single
property genuinely shared by many instances, since not every common general
term signifies a real kind. But Socrates presents this as a posit appropriate to the
beginning of an investigation (arxômetha episkopountes . . . tithesthai [596a5–7]).
At the start of inquiry, we have no better guide to identifying real kinds than our
ordinary linguistic terms. Each general term provisionally names a kind appropriate
for further inquiry, though our investigations may discover that some terms do not
designate real kinds.19 Thus, we need not take Socrates’s formulation to say that
there is a Form for every general term. Rather, Socrates’s emphasis on language
serves a different purpose: it prepares us to think of the imitator’s creations as items
that we speak and think about in the way that we do ordinary objects. Specifically,
we predicate properties directly of these items, regarding them as instances or
bearers of the properties named by our general terms.
Some commentators derive a conception of the imitator’s products as mere
appearances or images from the expressions that bracket the mirror illustration.20
Introducing the illustration, Socrates says that the mirror-holder comes to be
the creator of items in the mirror “in one way, but not in another way [tini tropôi
genesthai an toutôn hapantôn poiêtês, tini do ouk an]” (596d3–4). Afterwards, Glaucon
explicates this idea by saying that the mirror-holder makes these items “appear
but not be in truth” (596e4). On a common reading, Glaucon here specifies that
the mirror-holder produces the mere appearance of things, but not the things
themselves.21 It is implausible, however, to take Glaucon to invoke a distinction
17
See Burnyeat, “Culture and Society,” 263–66; and Ferrari, “Plato and Poetry,” 134–38.
18
This is only one of several issues raised. Others are (1) the inclusion of Forms or artifacts; (2)
the suggestion that ordinary craftspeople “look to” the Forms in their work; and (3) the claim that
the Forms are created by “the god.” For general discussion, see Annas, Introduction to Plato’s Republic,
227–32; Cherniss, “On Plato’s Republic X 597b”; Griswold, “Ideas and Criticism of Poetry”; Halliwell,
Republic Book 10, 109; Janaway, Images of Excellence, 111–12; and Nehamas “Imitation and Poetry in
Republic X,” 272–73n31. On (1) and (3), I follow Burnyeat, “Culture and Society,” 246–49. On (2),
I do not think that Socrates asserts that a craftsperson is aware that he is engaging with a Form, as
such. All that is required is that the craftsperson have a unified general conception of his product that
systematically informs his understanding of his work. This does not require the craftsperson to be a
philosopher. Cf. Gorgias 465a–b, 500e–501c.
19
See Franklin, “Origins of Dialectic,” 89–94.
20
Some take the mirror illustration to convey Plato’s view of imitation as an activity restricted to
uncreative copying. See Adam, Republic of Plato, 393; Annas, Introduction to Plato’s Republic, 336; and
Delgado, “Apariencia e imagen,” 135. Against this, see Ferrari, “Plato and Poetry,” 127; Halliwell, The
Aesthetics of Mimesis, 58–59 and chap. 4; and Janaway, Images of Excellence, 119–20.
21
This interpretation is too often asserted by translation. See Cain, “Plato on Mimesis and Mirrors,”
190; Delgado, “Apariencia e imagen,” 135; Halliwell, Republic Book 10, 112; and Reeve’s translation
in Plato, Republic, 299. For readings that exhibit more caution, see Burnyeat, “Culture and Society,”
297; and Janaway, Images of Excellence, 113.
the metaphysics of appearance in republic x 7
of this kind, using this language, at this point in the discussion. For, whatever an
appearance is, it is not an instance of the kind of item whose appearance it is.22
Accordingly, to the extent that we recognize an appearance as an item in its own
right, distinct from a particular instance of a kind, we will not speak about it as
such an instance. For example, we will not say of the mere image of a couch that
it is upholstered in leather, or that three people are sitting on it, though we would
say that about a couch depicted in a painting. Thus, taking Glaucon to say that
the mirror-holder makes the mere appearance of things requires him to break
from Socrates’s characterization of the imitator’s creations. Glaucon’s terminology
does not support this. He uses the neutral plural participle phainomena (appearing
things), the antecedent of which is panta hosa nundê elegeto (596e3), a phrase that
refers to the list of items created by the mirror-holder (596c4–9). Read literally,
then, Glaucon says that the mirror-holder makes those things appear, but not
be. A moment later, as if for emphasis, Glaucon use the same language to say
that a painter makes an appearing couch (klinên . . . phainomenên [596e9–11]).
It is farfetched to suppose that simply by this language Glaucon introduces a
substantially different conception of the imitator’s products as mere appearances
or images, where these are a distinct category of items. More plausibly, Glaucon is
working within the parameters of Socrates’s initial characterization and grouping
to signal the difference between the imitator’s products and the material instances
that we encounter ordinarily. Yes, the mirror holder makes animals, plants, and
artifacts, but they are only appearing animals, plants, and artifacts. But it is not yet
clear what that means.
It may seem that I am pressing a false dichotomy in insisting that one can speak
of the imitator’s creations as instances of their kinds or as mere appearances,
but not both at the same time. Perhaps Glaucon’s insight is that the creation of
a fictional appearing thing involves nothing more than the generation of a mere
appearance, as heat is analyzed as the mean kinetic energy of molecules. Plato’s view
will turn out to be something along these lines. The problem is that a reduction of
this kind depends on a theory analyzing the entity construed pretheoretically into
the theoretical entities that underlie it. So far, though, Glaucon and Socrates have
not even mentioned appearances as such, much less explained how the things
that appear in imitative works depend on or consist in them. In short, we must
distinguish the characterization involved in presenting the philosophical problem
from the one that grounds the solution. Socrates will eventually come to speak of
appearances and images as such. In so doing, he will take himself to explain the
imitator’s creative abilities: “The reason that imitation produces everything . . . is
that it touches only something small of each thing, and that is an image [dia touto
panta apergazetai, hoti smikron ti hekastou ephaptetai, kai touto eidolon]” (598b7–8). But,
as we will see, isolating appearances as entities in their own right is a theoretical
achievement, the result of investigation into the problem Socrates is now posing.
For this purpose, he frames the products of imitation univocally as appearing
22
Interpreters are rarely clear on what exactly an appearance is. Consider Janaway’s formulation:
“The painter makes something which is not a bed, but which is a likeness of it” (Images of Excellence,
111). See also Belfiore “Theory of Imitation,” 124–25 and 130–31; Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,”
419–21, 419n9; and Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 262–63.
things, items depicted in imitation that we speak and think about just as we do the
objects of ordinary experience. Before we can say what it means to be something
that appears but is not in truth, we must first determine what an appearance is.
2. the object of imitation (597a1–598a1)

A preliminary discussion is needed. Socrates comes to speak of appearance in its
own right through reflection on the object of imitation. In fact, Socrates speaks
of what we might call the object of imitation in two distinct senses. The first refers
to the familiar item that imitators take as their subject matter: a couch, a vase
of flowers, a carpenter. I leave it open, for the moment, whether this item is an
already existing particular or a generic representative of a kind; one can draw a
chair without drawing an existing chair. I will call the object of imitation in this
sense the item being imitated. The object of imitation may be spoken of more narrowly
as that element in or of the item being imitated that the imitator specifically seeks
to imitate (epicheirein mimeisthai [598a3; cf. 598b1–3]). I will call this narrower
object the focus of imitation. Socrates says that the imitator seeks to imitate only
the appearance and not the being of the item being imitated, illustrating this by
reference to the way a couch appears differently from different perspectives. Thus,
appearance is delineated in its own right specifically as the focus of imitation. But
since the focus of imitation is itself an element in or of the item being imitated, we
must first get clear on what that is. Most readers assume that the item being imitated
is an already existing material particular and, consequently, that appearance must
be a feature of a material particular. I will argue here that the item being imitated is
not a particular, but a kind.
There is an important shift in Socrates’s presentation of the imitator after
the mirror illustration. Socrates proceeds to set out a hierarchy of three “sorts
of couches.” These are the Form of Couch, a material particular couch, and an
appearing couch. Each is paired with its own maker: god, carpenter, and painter,
respectively (596e–597b). This leads to a surprising new description of the
imitator’s work. For now, in contrast to the prior characterization of the imitator as
a creator, Glaucon emphatically denies that the painter makes what the carpenter
produces (oudamôs [597d10–12]). Socrates asks, “What would you say he is of a
couch [Alla ti auton klinês phêseis einai]?” (597d13), and Glaucon answers that he
is the imitator. Now, whatever item is referred to by the term ‘couch’ (klinê ) here,
it must be distinct from the one that the painter was previously said to create.
Additionally, that item, which the painter imitates, must be the same as the item
that the carpenter makes, and the item whose nature is created by the god. Thus,
Socrates has redescribed the three makers of different couches as engaging in
different kinds of work with respect to the same entity. With respect to that item,
the god is the nature-maker (phutourgon [597d4]), the carpenter is the crafter or
producer (dêmiourgon kai poiêtên [597a8]), and the painter is an imitator.
To identify this shared object, consider that Socrates will soon go on to ask
whether the painter strives to imitate “each thing itself . . . in its nature . . . or
the products of the craftspeople” (598a1–3).23 Socrates’s question is whether the
On whether imitating the nature or Form is a coherent notion, see Janaway, Images of Excellence,
23
114–15; and Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 261–62.

imitator seeks to imitate the product of the god or the craftspeople, the Form
or material particulars. This question would be redundant if it had already been
specified whether the painter imitates material particular couches or the Form.
So, in his earlier statement, Glaucon cannot be saying either that the painter is the
imitator of some existing particular couch, or that he is the imitator of the Form.
Rather, in asking what the painter is with respect to “a couch,” Socrates refers to
the kind Couch without differentiating the Form from its particular instances.24
To be the imitator of the kind Couch is to engage in a different sort of work from
either the god or the ordinary craftsperson. The god makes the nature of the kind,
that is, the Form. The carpenter crafts the kind—he is a Couchmaker—insofar as
he produces many material instances of that kind (cf. 596b4–8). And the painter
imitates the kind by producing potentially many appearing instances of it.
Identifying the item being imitated as a kind does not require that we introduce
a new entity to Plato’s metaphysics. By ‘kind’ I mean nothing more committal
than our ordinary conception of a category or class, whatever we take ourselves
to be speaking of when we characterize a type of item generically: “A couch is a
cushioned seat for two or more people.” Plato centers the discussion on kinds to
capture the imitator’s orientation toward his or her object. Since imitators are
not philosophers, their construal of a thing being imitated will be metaphysically
innocent. In this way, Plato captures the fact that imitators primarily seek to
depict an item of some type, not necessarily an already existing particular. It is
consistent with this that an imitator sometimes seeks to depict specific fictional
characters, such as Chryses,25 or already existing individuals, such as Socrates in
Aristophanes’s The Clouds. For, even in these cases, the imitator is not interested
in every feature of the person imitated or in representing the person under any
description whatsoever. Rather, the aim is to depict that individual in a specific
light, where this may involve a collection of properties. The imitator’s goal is for
the items depicted to be apprehended by the audience as items of some intended
kind or kinds.
If the painter imitates the kind, how should we understand Socrates’s remark
that the imitator seeks to imitate “the works of the craftsmen” (598a3)? This phrase
seems unambiguously to designate existing material particulars. The key point is
this: kinds and material particulars are not mutually exclusive candidates for the
[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)
item being imitated. When the imitator attends to existing material particulars, he
regards them as models of a kind. This is shown by Socrates’s repeated use of the
term hekaston. Socrates asks, “Do you think it is what each thing itself is in its nature
that he is trying to imitate, or the products of the craftsmen [potera ekeino auto
to en tê phusei hekaston dokei soi epicheirein mimeisthai]?” (598a2–3). On a common
reading, Socrates’s use of hekaston, “each thing,” ranges over the individuals a
painter selects, such that the imitator imitates a single existing material particular
on each occasion.26 This reading is undermined, though, by Socrates’s use of the
24
Contra Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 257n32, I see no evidence that Socrates
says that the imitator imitates both the Form and the material particular. Cf. Notomi, “Image Making,”
317n88.
25
Cf. 393a1–5.
26
See Janaway, Images of Excellence, 119; Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,” 418–19; and Ne-
hamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 263.
plural in speaking of the “works of the craftsmen [ta tôn dêmiourgôn erga]” (598a3).27
There is no reason why a painter would look to the works of multiple carpenters to
imitate a single existing couch.28 Rather, Socrates is asking whether, for any kind
that the painter seeks to imitate, he attends directly to the nature of that kind,
the Form, or to several instances of it that have been produced by craftspeople,
regarding them as models of the kind to be imitated.29
Accordingly, when Socrates next asks whether the painter imitates the works of
the craftspeople “as they are or as they appear” (598a5),30 the object of imitation
has not shifted from kind to particulars. Rather, Socrates here advances a distinction
between the shared being of instances of the same kind, and their shared appearing
as instances. Does the painter seek to imitate particular couches with respect to
how they are couches, or with respect to how they appear as couches? To explain
this, Socrates points to the way a couch looks different as we move about it. We will
consider this couch illustration in detail in the next section. For now, it is sufficient to
note that Socrates employs the same use of hekaston immediately afterwards, asking
again, “At what does painting aim in each case [hekaston]? To imitate what is as it
is [to on, hôs echei], or what appears as it appears [to phainomenon, hôs phainetai]?”
(598b1–3). Since hekaston ranges over the kinds that the painter seeks to imitate,
Socrates’s use of to on and to phainomenon in this question are incomplete and need
to be filled in by the specific kind at issue on any occasion. Does painting strive,
in each case, to imitate what it is to be F, or what it is to appear F?
This account illuminates why Plato reminds us of both Forms and their
material particular participants at the start of the argument. Appearing, for Plato,
is determinate representation; all appearing is appearing as some kind of thing
or other. The imitator’s products are characterized in every case as some specific
kind of thing or other. Thus, every appearing must be classifiable by reference to
some definite kind or category.31 Forms are the essences or natures defining these
determinate kinds. But the appearance of a kind does not directly involve the
Form. When a kind appears ordinarily—as in our recognition of a couch across
the room—it appears to us in its material particular instances. That is, the kind F
appears to us when we recognize material instances as Fs. Accordingly, an account
of appearing must include reference to material particulars as participants in
27
Ferrari, “Plato and Poetry,” 127.
28
Additionally, this requires Socrates to assign a nature to a material particular. It is unlikely that
he would agree that one Form deserves privileged status as the nature of a complex particular.
29
So read, this line indicates Plato’s awareness that mimetic representation goes beyond copying,
allowing for more creativity in imitation.
30
The antecedent for the plural subjects (hoia estin ê hoia phainetai) is ta tôn dêmiourgôn erga, the
works of the craftsmen.
31
For this reason, in my view, an account of the content of appearances in purely sensory terms
is mistaken. At minimum, one’s state of awareness insofar as one is appeared to is a conceptualized
representation. For a similar account, see Silverman, “Plato on Phantasia.” For sensory accounts, see
Cain, “Plato on Mimesis and Mirrors”; Lorenz, Brute Within, chaps. 6–7; and Storey, “Appearance,
Perception, and Nonrational Belief.” Payne, Teleology of Action, chap. 8, applies Plato’s theory of vision
to the Sun-Line-Cave analogies of books 6 and 7. Throughout, Payne refers to appearance and im-
age as the product of vision. However, because his account focuses on the material and physiological
processes that contribute to vision as a reception of purely sensory information, he is not attentive to
the concerns relevant to conceptualized recognition.
the metaphysics of appearance in republic11 x
Forms, since they are the typical mediators of appearing. Imitators come to their
work intending to imitate a specific kind of thing, the broad object of imitation.
In considering this object, they ask, In virtue of what do instances of this kind
come to appear as instances? The answer to this question is the focus of imitation:
the appearance of F.
3. appearance as a relation (598a1–b8)

Let us now consider directly what an appearance is. Glaucon does not immediately
understand the distinction between how things appear F and how they are F. To
explain, Socrates offers what I will call the couch illustration: “If you look at a couch
from the side or the front or from anywhere else, does it differ in any way from
itself? Or, while not differing in any way, does it appear in different ways?” (598a7–9,
translation adapted from Reeve). As a result of this illustration, Socrates concludes
that the focus of imitation is an appearance (phantasmatos [598b3]), speaking of
appearance in its own right for the first time in the argument. To emphasize this
new terminology, Plato has Glaucon immediately repeat the term, and a moment
later Socrates introduces an equivalent, eidolon, or image (598b5–8). Drawing on
affinities between this example and a passage in the Theaetetus, I will argue that
appearance is not an intrinsic feature in a material particular, as a feature reading
proposes, but is instead a relation that comes about in between a particular and
an observer.
In broad strokes, the reasoning of the couch illustration entails that there is a
difference between what a couch is (i.e. its being) and how a couch appears.32 Since
the former remains unchanged while the latter changes, they must be distinct. If
this were the entirety of Socrates’s reasoning, the appearance of the couch might
be construed as a part or property of the particular distinct from the property that
constitutes it as a couch. But Socrates’s illustration also specifies that the couch
appears differently as the observer moves about it, even though the couch does
not change “in relation to itself [mê ti diapherei autê heautês]” (598a8; cf. 598a10).
To see the significance of this detail, consider a similar distinction from the
Theaetetus. There, Socrates asserts that the Protagorean measure doctrine entails
that “there is nothing which in itself is just one thing,” but instead, all things “are
in process of coming to be” as a result of their interaction (Theaetetus 152d2–8).33
To explain this, Socrates explicates the difference between what something is in its
own right (auto kath’ auto [Theaetetus 152d3]) and what it comes to be in relation
to something else. He provides two illustrations, the first involving color (Theaetetus
153e–154a) and the second involving the relative size of groups of dice (Theaetetus
154c–155c). In each case, a subject comes to be different in some respect despite
no change in itself (auto ge mêden metaballon [Theaetetus 154b3]; cf. auto kath’
auto [Theaetetus 152d3, 153e4–5, 157a8]), but merely through “movement and
change and blending with one another [phoras to kai kinêseôs kai kraseôs pros allêla]”
(Theaetetus 152d7–8; cf. 154b1–6). Consequently, the respect in which the item
32
See Marušič, “Poets and Mimêsis in the Republic,” 229–30; and Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,”
418–19.
33
Translation from Levett in Cooper, ed., Plato: Complete Works.
is altered does not belong to the item by itself (Theaetetus 154b1–6). In this way,
Socrates forwards a distinction between what holds of an item in its own right,
or intrinsically, and what consists in the item’s relationship to something else.34
The couch illustration displays the same reasoning. Since the couch comes
to appear differently without any change in itself, the ways that it appears, or its
appearances, do not belong to it intrinsically, itself by itself. To see that a feature
reading does not accommodate this line of reasoning, consider the most fully
articulated account of this kind. According to Jera Marušič, the appearance of F
is a property G distinct from and non-essential to being F, but associated with F in
such a way that items possessing G are “constituted as representations or figures
of F.”35 For instance, the property of moving one’s arms and torso in a certain way
is not essential to rowing, but is associated with rowing such that one moving in
that way may represent or depict rowing to viewers. On Marušič’s view, this motion
just is the appearance of rowing, a feature held in common by actual rowers and
those who impersonate them. A person can have this feature, however, without
actually appearing to anyone as rowing. Imagine a person moving her body in this
way consistently over a period of time, say, in a game of charades. The guesser
sees other activities in the presenter’s motion—“You are doing sit-ups! No, you
are covering yourself with a blanket!”—before eventually guessing correctly. On
a feature reading, since the presenter moves in the same way the entire time, she
has the appearance of rowing the entire time. This motion is one of the respects
in which the presenter does not change. By contrast, according to the reasoning
of the couch illustration, this motion cannot be the appearance, since the motion
persists while the presenter appears differently to the guesser.
If this is right, the couch’s appearance cannot be identified with any feature
that persists in the couch while it comes to appear in different ways. Thus, it
cannot be identified with the surface of the couch, or stable superficial features,
nor with the complex disposition to look thus to one viewer and so to another.
Indeed, it is misleading to construe the couch as having a single appearance,
different parts of which manifest themselves to viewers at different positions.36
Socrates uses the plural, alloia, indicating that multiple appearances come about
and pass away as one moves around the couch, a different appearance for each
of the viewer’s perspectives (598a9).37 According to the reasoning of the couch
illustration, appearance comes about between the couch and the viewer, through
34
This distinction does not depend on two claims that are relevant to Socrates’s purposes in the
Theaetetus. The first is that all appearances are correct, such that however an item appears is in fact how
it is. The second is that all of an item’s features are susceptible to perspectival change. The result of
adding these to Socrates’s reasoning is that nothing holds intrinsically of any subject, but that all facts
are relational. Plato rejects both of these points in the Republic. See also Burnyeat, Plato’s Theaetetus,
14–15; Gill, Philosophos: Plato’s Missing Dialogue, 81–83; and Sedley, Midwife of Platonism, 44–45.
35
Marušič, “Poets and Mimesis in the Republic,” 223, 229–30.
36
For the view that the appearance is, or is in, the surface of the object, see Cain, “Plato on Mimesis
and Mirrors,” 192; and Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 263. For language suggesting
that the couch has a single appearance, different parts of which manifest themselves, see Moss, “What
Is Imitative Poetry?,” 420.
37
In the Theaetetus, Socrates emphasizes the privacy of what appears and is for each of us (metaxu
ti hekastô idion gegonos [154a2–3]). Plato’s account of appearance in Republic X need not claim that
appearances, or what appears through them, are private in this way. See below.
the metaphysics of appearance in 13
republic x
their interaction. Appearance is not an intrinsic feature of a material particular,
but relational.
How does a relational account of appearance as the focus of imitation fit with
Socrates’s construal of the item being imitated as a kind? Plato’s thinking, I take
it, is as follows: a particular couch will not appear as a couch from every angle, or
to every viewer. Most clearly, no item will appear as a couch to one who lacks the
concept. But even for those who know what a couch is, there are spatial perspectives
from which a couch will not be readily recognized as such. In stressing the different
angles from which a particular couch can be viewed, Socrates emphasizes that one
who intends to imitate the kind Couch must attend carefully to which perspectives
of particular couches provoke recognition.38 In fact, the imitator cannot consider
this question without also considering to whom this display is to occur. That is, in
asking how an item appears as an instance of a kind, the imitator must examine the
interaction between selected features and aspects of the model and the epistemic
dispositions of the viewer. This point is somewhat obscured by the example of a
couch, which will appear as a couch from most angles, and in largely the same
circumstances to all. It is brought into greater relief by the shift in Socrates’s
examples from artifacts to producers (598b8–c1). Which features most readily
provoke recognition of a doctor (599c1–3), for example, depend on who is doing
the recognizing.39 The same point holds all the more when the kind at issue is
ethical. What provokes one to recognize a person as virtuous or happy depends on
one’s ingrained tendencies for discerning these properties. That an item appears
as an item of a specific kind is born out of the interaction between that item and
the viewer’s perspective, where this includes not just the viewer’s spatial vantage
point, but a range of epistemic dispositions.40
This is why Socrates consistently includes reference to the intended audience
in his description of imitative appearances: the painter will “make what seems to
be a shoemaker to those who know . . . little about shoemaking [tois mê epaiousin]”
38
This provides another reason why the item to be imitated is not a material particular, except
as a model of a kind. If the painter sought only to imitate a particular that happens to be a couch, ir-
respective of kind, then any perspective would suffice, since any perspective presumably captures one
of the ways that it appears. By contrast, if it is as a couch that the painter seeks to imitate the particular,
[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)
then not every spatial perspective will do, and some will do much better than others. In the next stretch
of argument, Socrates will seek to show that Homer and tragic poets are imitators on the grounds
that they do not have knowledge of the things that they imitate (598d8–601a2). Socrates does not
argue that Homer failed to have knowledge of every topic whatsoever, but only specific forms of craft
knowledge, and in particular the craft of ruling (599c6–d1). But this shows that Homer is imitating
only if his poetic depictions are to be evaluated specifically as depictions of rulers.
39
See Halliwell, Aesthetics of Mimesis, 127; and Laws, 656–57.
40
A full account of these dispositions is beyond the scope of this paper. Plato outlines the processes
by which they are formed in the account of the guardians’ education in books 2 and 3. Cf. 401d–403c.
The book VII account of summoning (523a–525a) articulates the epistemic processes by which we
apprehend states of affairs and form propositional beliefs, perceptually. Like Storey, “Appearance,
Perception, and Non-Rational Belief,” I think that Plato makes no distinction between perception
(aisthêsis) and appearance in the Republic. Unlike Storey, I think that this is because perception in the
Republic involves predication or conceptualization. It is only in the Theaetetus and Timaeus that Plato
demarcates sense perception as a preconceptual stage of cognition. On this topic, see Cooper, “Plato
on Sense-Perception and Knowledge”; Frede, “Observations on Perception”; Lorenz, Brute Within,
chaps. 6–7; and Silverman, “Plato on Perception and ‘Commons.’”
(600e7–601a2; cf. 601a6–7, 602b1–3).41 Indeed, the fact that appearances are
relational is central to the power of imitative poetry to corrupt. Imitative poetry
seeks to depict fictional characters in an evaluative light, as individuals of specific
types, performing actions of ethically significant kinds, and experiencing pleasure
or pain, happiness or misery as a result (603c2–7; cf. 600e4–5).42 On Plato’s view,
the characters and events depicted will not appear as intended unless we, or some
parts of us, are disposed to apprehend them in the intended light. Imitative poetry
recruits our collaboration in the production of its depictions. Accordingly, Socrates
describes the work of imitation in copulative terms, saying that imitation consorts
with (prosomilei, suggignomenê) a part of us “to produce inferior offspring [genna]”
(603b1–5). In his study of the item being imitated, the imitator is considering
not merely the features of that item, but the way that those features interact with
observers’ perspectives to provoke recognition. That interaction, strictly speaking,
is the focus of imitation. In productive work, the imitator’s goal is to bring the
audience and the artwork to interact in much the same way, yielding the same
recognition.
These points shed light on the motivations for Plato’s account of appearance,
and the shortcomings of the feature reading. The ultimate aim of imitation is not to
produce an artwork—a material particular produced or altered by the imitator’s
activity—but instead to produce a specific kind of recognition or awareness in the
audience.43 Plato develops a relational account of appearance because the primary
explanandum of his theory is active appearing. To satisfy this aim, an adequate
account of appearance must identify the element in virtue of which something
is actively apprehended as F by some observer. This is why the appearance of F
cannot be identified with any feature of an item that remains present in a material
particular while it fails to be apprehended as F. If we identify appearance in this
way, there will be an explanatory gap between the presence of (what is taken to
be) appearance and the recognition that we seek to explain. If appearance is to
explain active appearing, it must be construed as a relation that holds between
object and observer.
To be clear, Plato does not need to reject the claims of the feature account entirely.
We do sometimes refer to an intrinsic feature of an item, in virtue of which it
regularly provokes recognition of a kind F, as the appearance of F. So, we might say
that the shape and coloration of a boulder give it, or constitute, the appearance of
an elephant.44 While this manner of speaking is acceptable in ordinary parlance,
it does not suffice as a complete theoretical account for two reasons. First, as we
have seen, the presence of the feature in question is not sufficient on its own
to generate the recognition in an observer necessary for active appearing. This
requires an audience positioned in a certain way, interacting with the object. This
41
Likewise, the painter paints various craftspeople “for us [hêmin]” (598b9). See Burnyeat, “Cul-
ture and Society,” 301–3.
42
On the importance of specifically evaluative appearances, see Belfiore, “Plato’s Greatest Accusa-
tion against Poetry”; and Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,” 428–31.
43
The clearest example of an artwork is a painting or sculpture, but I intend the term to apply
also to dynamic performances in drama.
44
I am grateful to an anonymous reader for raising this concern.
leads to the second point, which is that the features in question are designated as
the appearance of F only derivatively, precisely because they ground a capacity to
generate appearings of this kind for certain audiences. So, to call these features
appearances in themselves is at best a shorthand for a fuller explanation, the
primary element of which is the relation between object and observer.
Proponents of the feature reading are constrained, it seems, by the assumption
that our description of the product of imitation must center on the artwork. So
constrained, they conclude that appearance in the strict sense is an intrinsic feature
in the artwork. But Plato can acknowledge the importance of such features in
generating appearances without identifying them as appearances. Near the end of
the Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger divides the genus of appearance-making into two
species, one that brings about appearances “through the use of tools,” and another
in which “the very maker of the apparition provides himself as the tool [organon
tou poiountos to phantasma]” (Sophist 267a3–4).45 The Stranger’s formulation is
potentially misleading. His distinction is not between a form of imitation that
uses tools and another that does not. The distinction, rather, is between a form of
imitation that employs an object other than the imitator as a tool, such as painting,
and those in which the imitator is the appearance-producing tool, such as acting.
In either case, though, the tool is not the appearance that it serves to produce.
Nor are the features conferred on the tool appearances, except perhaps in the
derivative sense described above, even if those features make the tool a likeness
for the item being imitated.
Socrates’s book III remarks on imitative poetry do stress the likeness of the
imitator to what he imitates: “to make oneself like someone else in voice or
appearance is to imitate the person one makes oneself like, isn’t it?” (393c4–5).
Here three points are important. First, just prior to this description, Socrates has
stated that the goal of the poetic imitator’s likeness-making is “to make us think”
that he is the imitated character himself (393a8–b2). Even here, the fashioning of
a likeness is undertaken for the sake of producing recognition in the audience.46
Second, Socrates’s emphasis on likeness-making in book III is explained by his
narrow concern, in that discussion, with the effects of impersonation on the soul
of the performer, especially children preparing to become Guardians.47 Socrates
emphasizes shared features, then, because impersonation does involve making
oneself a likeness of the impersonated person. Third, it is therefore especially
noteworthy that in book X, Socrates never calls the product of imitation a copy,48
or characterizes the imitator’s product as something that resembles the item
imitated.49 Moreover, despite using painting as a model of imitation, Socrates
45
Translation from Rowe, Theaetetus and Sophist. See also Marcos de Pinotti, “La critica pla-
tonica,” 18–19.
46
See Marcos de Pinotti, “La critica platonica,” 13–14; and Richardson-Lear, “Mimêsis and Psy-
chological Change in Republic III,” 199–200.
47
See Ferrari, “Plato on Poetry,” 113–19; and Richardson-Lear, “Mimêsis and Psychological Change
in Republic III,” 199–205 for contrasting treatments of this passage.
48
Plato uses forms of eikon twenty-two times in the Republic, but never in book X.
49
Pace Janaway, Images of Excellence, 110–11; and Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,” 418. Burnyeat,
“Culture and Society,” 295–300, also emphasizes likeness, but slides from thinking of the artwork as
the relevant likeness to the item depicted in the artwork as the likeness.
does not so much as mention a material particular artwork, or the processes by
which these items are produced, as he does elsewhere (tauta ha plattousin te kai
graphousin [510d]). That is, in giving a general account of imitation (cf. 595c8–9),
Plato studiously avoids a construal of imitation as a process of likeness-making,
centered on the production of an artwork.50 He does so, I contend, because he
does not want to mistake appearances in the strict sense with the intrinsic features
of material particulars through which appearances are sometimes generated.
So far, I have emphasized that likeness-making intrinsic features of an artwork
neither constitute appearances in the strict sense, nor suffice by themselves to
bring them about. In fact, such features are not even necessary for bringing about
appearances. Seeing this is important not only for understanding Plato’s account of
imitation, but also for grasping the broader application of his theory of appearance.
Plato recognizes in the Sophist that some appearance-making proceeds without
making a likeness, as in the case of sculptures whose proportions are distorted to
accommodate the perspective of the audience (Sophist 235c9–236b3). Though
this consideration is not raised explicitly in the book X characterization of the
products of imitation, it is implied in two ways. The first concerns the way that
appearances are generated for an ignorant audience. Plato’s concern, I take it, is
that characters depicted in drama will register as happy, say, on the basis of features
or events incompatible with actual happiness. A drama that elicits the audience’s
celebration of a revenge murder provokes the appearance of success or fulfillment
in the completion of a vicious act. But if happiness requires virtue, then such
depictions do not offer genuine likenesses of happy people or beneficial events;
they merely appear happy or beneficial through interaction with the distorted
perspective of the audience.
The same holds for the nonmimetic experiences that Plato classifies as
appearings in book X and elsewhere in the Republic. These include misperceptions
and illusions of various kinds, including distortions caused by water or distance
(602c7–d1); trompe l’oeil effects in painting (602d2–4; cf. 583b5); and a state
of calm appearing pleasant when it follows pain (583c10–584a10). In each case,
some item comes to appear a certain way not solely in virtue of its own features,
but because of its spatial or temporal context and the way that this interacts with
the perspective of the apprehending subject. And in each case, there is no feature
in the item that appears thus-and-so that is suitably associated with the property
that it appears to have, so as to explain the appearing on its own. To be clear, an
explanation of the appearing will refer to some intrinsic features of the object. But
the features referred to in this way may be incompatible with the properties whose
appearance they generate! The stick in the water appears bent because it is in fact
straight; the coin viewed at an angle looks oval because it is in fact circular. This point
holds more broadly since the spatial perspectives of the couch illustration stand
for a much broader range of epistemic dispositions. Accordingly, the instances
of illusory appearings based in spatial or temporal perspective illustrate a much
50
Socrates’s mirror illustration serves this strategy. Since there is no separate material particular
produced by the mirror holder, the mirror illustration blocks confusion of the things that appear in
the mirror with an artwork, preparing us to focus on what appears in a painting, and to ignore the
material particular painting itself.
the metaphysics of appearance in republic x
17
broader range of subject-relative experiences. This is most easily seen in the case
of pleasure and pain. The illusory pleasure taken in relief from pain exemplifies,
for Plato, a wide range of pleasures taken in physical indulgence or honor seeking
(586a1–d2). The capacity for such pleasures depends on the character of the
agents; these activities are pleasant for certain types of people (Hoi . . . phronêseôs
kai aretês apeiroi [586a1], to philokerdes kai to philonikon [586d4–5]). In this way, the
model of illusory pleasure taken in the relief of pain grounds an explanation of
the phenomenon with which Socrates begins his book IX investigation of pleasure,
namely, the fact that appetitive, spirited, and rational people find their own lives
to be most pleasant (581c9–582a1).51
Appearing occurs when a recognition-provoking relation, or appearance, comes
about typically between an apprehending subject and some external object.
There may be many different ways that such relations come about, allowing for
the systematic delineation of different kinds of appearing. It is beyond the scope
of this paper to detail how the account of appearance is applied in each of these
specific cases. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that Plato sees appearance
at work in a number of common experiences and forms of awareness, including
pleasure, affective states, and the level of cognition designated as eikasia in the
Divided Line.52 For now, it is enough to see that a feature reading, which construes
appearance as something that exists in the world, residing stably in the material
objects that appear to us, cannot accommodate Plato’s reasons for delineating
appearances in their own right. Nor can it accommodate the range of appearings
that Plato invokes in book X and elsewhere in the Republic. This breadth of
application requires metaphysical innovation on Plato’s part, to delineate an
appearance as something that comes about between the mind and the world.
4. the transparency of appearance (598b8–d7)

It may seem that the relational account cannot accommodate a crucial aspect
of appearances, namely, that they bear content. One subject to an appearance
thereby comes to be in a state of awareness that consists, one might suppose,
in apprehending the appearance. That is, one might think that appearances
or images are the direct objects of our awareness insofar as we are appeared to,
and it is unclear how a relation can occupy this role. In fact, the two main parts of
[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)
this characterization come apart. The conception of appearance as a relation is

consistent with the idea that appearances have determinate content. But to say that
appearances have determinate content does not require that they are the objects of
our awareness insofar as we are appeared to. It is important to Plato’s view, in fact,
that they are transparent—the conduits, not the objects, of our awareness insofar
as we are appeared to. Getting clear on how appearances are content bearing will
yield an improved account of the sense in which an appearance is insubstantial,
smikron ti (598b7).
51
Plato extends a similar analysis to emotional responses, because they contain hedonic elements,
and are similarly subject-relative. See Philebus 47d–48a.
52
See Payne, Teleology of Action, chap. 8, for an argument that eikasia describes a common type of
human cognition.
The coming about of an appearance necessarily results in a determinate
awareness of an item of some kind or other. This leaves open whether our
awareness, insofar as we are appeared to, is assertoric or not. By ‘assertoric,’ I
mean apprehension of an item or state of affairs as occurring, typically in one’s
immediate environment.53 Non-assertoric awareness, by contrast, occurs when we
merely imagine or envision an item or state of affairs. Assertoric awareness of an
F declares, as it were, that an F-thing is present. Non-assertoric awareness makes
no such declaration; one merely entertains the idea of such a thing. Now, this
way of putting things makes it seem like non-assertoric awareness is basic, while
assertoric awareness is achieved by adding something like assertion or assent to
one’s non-assertoric awareness.54 Plato’s view, I shall argue, is the reverse. The basic
awareness brought about by appearance is assertoric; non-assertoric awareness,
when it involves appearance, is achieved by qualifying or contextualizing our
reception of appearance with additional awareness of the context in which one
is appeared to.
To see this, let us revisit the question of how imitation is deceptive. In a
controversial remark just after the introduction of appearance, Socrates states
that “a good painter, by painting a carpenter and displaying him at a distance . . .
might deceive children and foolish adults into thinking that it truly is a carpenter”
(598c1–4). Interpreters are often reluctant to take this remark at face value since
audiences of imitation are not regularly fooled into thinking that what is depicted
is really there. Consequently, some think the deception at issue concerns only
the imitator’s knowledge and not the reality of his or her products.55 Against this,
first, Socrates specifies that the deception in question is uncommon, limited to
children and the foolish, and more likely to occur when they view a painting at
a distance.56 Second, in thinking that only one kind of deception can be at issue,
these interpreters introduce a false choice. Socrates may be ultimately concerned
with the capacity of imitators to deceive audiences regarding their expertise; he is
about to consider Homer’s supposed knowledge of crafts depicted in his works,
53
What I intend by the term ‘assertoric’ is similar to what Storey calls “world-representing” in
“Appearance, Perception, and Non-Rational Belief,” 106–7. A full account of how appearance results
in assertoric awareness is not possible here.
54
See Moss, “Plato’s Appearance-Assent Account of Belief,” 221–27. I am unsure whether I have
accurately characterized Moss’s view here. Moss stresses that one in a state of appearance (phantasia/
eikasia) has an appearance (phantasma) as the object of one’s apprehension. On her reading, it is only
when we engage in reasoning of some sort, resulting in assent, that we achieve pistis and succeed in
thinking about ordinary material objects. But she also states that one yielding uncritically to appear-
ances is not “merely entertaining” the appearance, explaining this by reference to children and animals
(215). But since children and animals are capable of being aware of the objects and events around
them, and certainly do not take themselves to be apprehending a mere appearance or image, it is
not clear what it means, on her view, to have an appearance as the object of one’s awareness. Relatedly,
since on Moss’s view the object of our awareness changes when we engage in reasoning and assent, it
is hard to understand how a mere appearance can stand in contradiction with a reasoned judgment,
as in the cognitive partitioning argument (602e4–603b7).
55
Burnyeat, “Culture and Society,” 302; and Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,” 420–22.
56
Pace Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,” 422–23, I find nothing “implausible” about what Socrates
says here. Likewise, I find Burnyeat’s remarks in “Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic,” 302–3, about
Socrates’s use of homôs to be unpersuasive. The contrast in question holds between the painter’s lack
of knowledge and the fact that he is able to deceive children and the foolish. It need not be a contrast
between what holds of the painter and what some members of his audience come to think.
the metaphysics of appearance in 19
republic x
with emphasis on the craft of ruling. But this is consistent with claiming that
57
imitators sometimes deceive children and the foolish into thinking that their
imitations are real. Indeed, the fact that imitators deceive these audiences may
be part of the way they deceive others regarding their expertise.58
For our purposes, understanding how the first deception occurs is most
important. Why are children, the foolish, and those who view paintings at a
distance tricked? It is because, in some way or other, they lack understanding of the
circumstances in which they are appeared to. Viewing a painting from a distance
makes it more likely to escape our notice that what we see is just a painting, as with
trompe l’oeil scene painting viewed from the back row of the theater.59 Similarly,
young children may be less likely to realize that they are looking at a painting.
In short, we are not deceived when we are aware of a painting as a painting, and
this is more common the older and more sophisticated we are, or the closer we
are to the painting itself. But this awareness is a second awareness, additional
to the one conferred by the appearance of the carpenter itself. To capture this
duality, Socrates later assigns these different forms of awareness to distinct parts
of the soul (603a1–7).60 The nonrational part of the soul forms beliefs (doxazein
[602e8], doxazon [603a]) on the basis of appearances. The rational part, by
reliance on calculation, formulates opposing beliefs. Crucially, our reason-based
understanding does not eliminate the initial “childlike” apprehension, but only
enables us to contextualize it, qualifying the impression, say, that a carpenter
is present in our physical environment. It is the nonrational part’s persistent
receptivity to appearance that causes us to see a stick in the water as bent even
after we have concluded through measurement that it is straight. Similarly, this
persistent receptivity grounds our emotional responses to poetic imitation, leading
us to feel for dramatic characters as if they were real. In short, the presence of
reasoned judgments contextualizing what appears does not alter how things strike
the nonrational parts of the soul (606a3–b8). The state of awareness one occupies
insofar as one is subject to an appearance is the same in every case: one receiving
an appearance of F comes to be aware of an F-thing as present.
Accordingly, we must distinguish appearance itself from what appears. When
we receive an appearance, the appearance itself is not the object of our awareness.
57
Interpreters frequently emphasize the transitional character of this passage. See Halliwell,
Aesthetics of Mimesis, 120; and Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry?,” 423.
58
See Sophist 234c, which is closely parallel to this passage and which distinguishes these points:
“by showing them spoken copies of everything, so as to make them believe that the words are true and
that the person who’s speaking to them is the wisest person there is” (emphasis added).
59
But see Burnyeat, “Culture and Society,” 303n37. If the deception at issue concerns only the
expertise of the painter, and this deception is encouraged by the painter’s mastery of the details of
the craft, then distance would inhibit deception, not promote it. On Burnyeat’s reading, we must be
far enough away for the trompe l’oeil effects to work, but not too far away. This is too subtle a point to
be conveyed by Socrates’s use of porrôthen. In the parallel passage from the Sophist, distance from the
artwork is analogous to the ignorance of the Sophist’s audience; the further away one stands from the
truth, the more likely one is to be fooled (Sophist 234b5–c7).
60
On the controversy over which part or parts of the soul are receptive to appearance, see Lorenz,
Brute Within, chap. 5; Moss, “Appearances and Calculations”; and Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in
Republic X,” 264–66. See Moss, “Plato’s Appearance-Assent Account of Belief ”; and Storey, “Appear-
ance, Perception, and Non-Rational Belief ” on the sense in which these parts have belief-like states.
This, I take it, is one of the reasons why Plato uses an instance of ordinary appearing,
in the couch illustration, to isolate appearance as an item in its own right. The
aim of Socrates’s reflection on the couch is to examine how material particular
couches appear. The item we come to be aware of in this instance is just the couch,
as a couch. Since, according to Socrates’s reasoning, the couch is distinct from its
appearances—the latter change while the former does not—it follows that we do
not thereby come to be aware of the appearances themselves.61 Rather, in the case
of ordinary appearings, we come to be aware of some material particular through
the appearance. Becoming aware of appearances as such involves philosophical
reasoning of the sort performed by Socrates and Glaucon in the couch illustration;
this is why the antidote to imitation consists in knowledge and argument (595b6–7,
608a3–4). Ordinarily, and in prereflective contexts, appearance is transparent—it
is the conduit of our awareness, not its object.
To capture this, it is tempting to suggest that Plato characterizes appearance
in the Republic as a kind of motion or transmission. In the Theaetetus, Socrates’s
model for the interaction between the appearing thing and apprehending subject
classifies a range of experiences—perceptions, pleasures, pains, desires, and
fears—as motions that pass from the object apprehended into the perceiving
subject (pheretai gar kai en phora . . . hê kinesis pephuken [Theaetetus 156d1–2]).62
This construal enables Socrates to distinguish the motion by which awareness is
conferred from the object of awareness (156b7). In addition, it allows Socrates to
capture the passivity that we experience as subjects of appearance, that is, the fact
that we are struck by what appears to us (156a6–7, 157a4–5). Several details in the
Republic suggest that Plato is entertaining this idea. The first is the use of proteinein
(to extend) to ask whether the gods send misleading appearances (phantasma
proteinôn [382a1–2]). The second is the claim that pleasure is a kind of change
(kinêsis tis [583e9–10]) shortly before classifying certain pleasures as phantasmata
(584a9). A third is the language of becoming applied to appearances in book X
(gennêma [597e3–4], genna [603b5–6]). These hints are not enough, I think, to
conclude that Plato construes appearance in the Republic specifically as a kind of
motion. Appearance is a relation of some kind that obtains between an observer
and an object, the transparent conduit of representational awareness. More work
is needed before Plato can make this characterization more precise.
5. three degrees from reality:

appearance and what appears
We should not mistake lack of specification on this point for a more general lack
of commitment to the metaphysical innovations in this argument.63 These are
trumpeted in the repeated characterizations of the imitator’s object and product
as something insubstantial, removed from reality and truth (597e3–4, 598b5–7,
61
See also Delgado, “Apariencia e imagen,” 135–38. Delgado emphasizes the self-concealing
character of appearances, such that one receiving an appearance may be unaware of the appearance
itself. Her reading emphasizes the verisimilitude of reflections—a point undermined by Socrates’s
remark that the mirror holder can create things under the earth, and therefore not available to viewing.
62
See Burnyeat, Theaetetus of Plato, 16–17.
63
I am grateful to an anonymous reader for raising this point.
599a1, 599d1–2, 602c1–2, 603a11; cf. 597a10–11, 600e4–6, 605a9–10, 608a6–8).
On the basis of the reading developed so far, we are in a position to explicate
these claims in detail and, returning to the imitator’s creations, explain what it
means to be something that appears but is not in truth. Though the imitator’s
creations are distinct from appearances as subjects of thought and talk, they
depend on appearances for their coming to be: they exist just insofar as they
appear. Consequently, they inherit the metaphysical deficiencies of appearances,
specifically their mind-dependence and what I will call their ontological thinness.
The deficiency of appearances consists in two related characteristics. The first
concerns the conditions in which they come about. As relations, appearances
depend on the relata between which they come about. Since one of these is a
soul, appearances are mind-dependent. No appearance occurs unless someone
is appeared to. Moreover, which appearance comes about—what content is
conveyed—is determined by the interaction between the features of some object in
the world and the perspective of the subject. Far from a being that exists stably and
independently, such as an intrinsic feature of a material particular, an appearance
is essentially dependent on the interaction of more substantial entities and is,
for that reason, often fleeting, like an electrical spark. This is why, presaging the
Theaetetus, Socrates uses the language of becoming to characterize appearances
(gennêma [597e3–4], genna [603b5–6]).
The mirror illustration characterizes the imitator’s creations in similar ways.
In listing what one might create with a mirror, Socrates repeatedly uses the word
tachu (quickly) (596d8–9, e1–2), indicating that these items come to be in the
instant that they come to appear. 64 It follows, however, that they cease to exist
when they disappear from the mirror. Any reason that we might give to claim
that they persist after they disappear would be a reason to claim that they exist
before appearing. But if they exist before appearing, then they are not created in
the moment that they come to appear. The objects seen in the mirror are made by
being made to appear.65 The mirror illustration introduces the imitator’s creations
as mind-dependent items that come about and exist just insofar as they appear
to or for someone.
The second aspect of metaphysical deficiency depends on the mind-dependence
of appearances and concerns their content. The coming about of the appearance
[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)
of F coincides necessarily with some subject’s awareness of an F thing. But the

conditions on a kind’s realization in a subject’s awareness are less stringent than
those on bringing about a mind-independent instance. The appearance of a
kind F does not require the appearance, much less the material instantiation,
64
This is in keeping with Plato’s account of how mirrors work, on which reflections result from
the coalescing (koinonia, sumpagous) of light emitted from both the reflected item and the eye of the
viewer, at a single point on a mirror’s surface. See Timaeus 46a–b; and Payne, Teleology of Action, 157–62;
cf. Adam, Republic of Plato, 388.
65
Accordingly, we can answer worries about whether mirrors create anything by distinguishing
our awareness insofar as we are appeared to from additional awareness of the context. Insofar as we
receive a reflected appearance, we come to be aware of an item of some definite kind: a couch, say.
Once the context is understood, the items apprehended in the mirror can be identified with items
outside of it. A similar account could be provided, perhaps, for imitative works whose characters cor-
respond to living people.
of conditions necessary for a mind-independent instance of the property. Thus,
a determinable kind can appear without any of its proper determinates: it may
appear that there is a tree in the distance, but remain unclear what species of tree
is there.66 More importantly for Plato’s critique of imitative poetry, there is no
requirement that the appearance of F include or supervene on the appearance of
properties necessary for actually being F. Thus, characters in a drama may appear
happy to some audiences despite failing to display any features necessary for actual
human happiness, such as virtue. Indeed, for some audiences the appearance of
happiness may depend on the appearance of traits incompatible with happiness.
As a conduit of awareness, the content of an appearance is limited strictly to
what is conveyed. Thus, the appearance of F may come about separately from the
conditions necessary or constitutive of the being of the kind.
This is the meaning of Socrates’s remark that imitation can make everything
“since it engages with something small of each thing, and this is an image [hoti
smikron ti hekastou ephaptetai, kai touto eidolon]” (598b7–8). This remark, perhaps
more than any other, has encouraged the view that an appearance or image is an
intrinsic part or feature of a material particular.67 But there is no mention of a
material particular here. Socrates’s use of hekaston, following those before it, refers
to the kind being imitated. Moreover, there is no part language. Finally, ephaptetai
does not denote literal touching, since the subject of the verb is mimetikê, the
practice of imitation. The sense in which the appearance of a kind is insubstantial
consists in a comparison of its content to the essence of the kind, the Form of F—
and the necessary features of any mind-independent F. With respect to any kind,
F, the appearance of F itself is ontologically thin, containing virtually nothing of
the being or truth of the kind.
The appearing things created by the imitator inherit the ontological thinness of
the appearances on which they depend. Just as the appearance of F does not require
the co-appearance of other kinds necessary for F, so a fictional item can be made
to appear without specification of features necessary in an actual instantiation.
It is indeterminate whether a couch in a painting has a wood or metal frame.
Glaucon’s qualification that the mirror-holder can make all things appear, but
not be in truth, points to the different requirements on creating mind-dependent
and mind-independent instances of a property. To create an F item in truth is to
bring about all the conditions necessary for its mind-independent existence. An
imitator, by contrast, need not bring about all of these conditions. The imitator
must only bring her intended audience to recognize an item as an item of the
desired kind. This is why the painter can “paint us a cobbler, a carpenter, or any
other craftsman, even though he knows nothing about these crafts” (598b8–c1).
Should we say that appearing things are reducible to appearances, so as to be
eliminated on the best description of what is? I am reluctant to ascribe this view
to Plato, in part because he recognizes the possibility of truth-bearing discourse
about things that appear. The fact that fictional items are mind-dependent,
ontologically thin items does not entail that they are private, such that a different
See Philebus 38c–d.

66
See Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 263–64.

67
the metaphysics of appearance in republic 23x
thing appears to each viewer of an imitative work. Plato’s critique assumes that
a work of imitation can generate the same appearance for a large audience. His
account can explain this by reference to regularities in the interaction between an
audience’s shared perspective and the features of the artwork. These regularities
make it possible for an audience to witness the same characters and the same
events in an imitative work. To be sure, some aspects of imitative work may be
subject to truth-bearing discourse, even as other aspects of these works remain
open to creative interpretation. Acknowledging discourse about what appears is
all the more important to the extent that the account of appearance is applied
beyond mimetic contexts to a broader swath of human experience, as indicated
by references to appearance in the Divided Line and the Cave (509d10–510a3,
516a6–b7).68 An eliminativist position would have Plato say that in such discourse
we are thinking, talking, and having feelings about things that do not exist at all.
It seems better to say, instead, that the imitator’s fictions are distinct, as objects of
thought and talk, from the appearances on which they depend.
In light of its broader significance, the sequence by which Plato develops
the account of imitation is particularly noteworthy. In moving from our initial,
prereflective reception of imitative fictions to the theoretical account of appearance
by which they are explained, Socrates’s progress exemplifies an ascent in which
countenancing entities of progressively greater truth and being, through
philosophical inquiry, illuminates our own prior experience. The result, in this
case, is not to show that the objects of our prior experience are unreal, nor to
deny their existence entirely, but rather to reveal how far from reality and truth
they are, because they come about from our interaction with the world.69
bibliography
Adam, James, trans. The Republic of Plato. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
Annas, Julia. Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Barney, Rachel. “Appearances and Impressions.” Phronesis 37 (1992): 283–313.
Belfiore, Elizabeth. “Plato’s Greatest Accusation against Poetry.” In “New Essays on Plato.” Supplement,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, S9 (1983): 39–62.
———. “A Theory of Imitation in Plato’s Republic.” Transactions of the American Philological Association
114 (1984): 121–46.
Burnyeat, Myles. “Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic.” Tanner Lectures on Human Values 20 (1999):
217–344.
———, rev. trans. The Theaetetus of Plato. Translated by M. J. Levett. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990.
Cain, Rebecca Bensen. “Plato on Mimesis and Mirrors.” Philosophy and Literature 36 (2012): 187–95.
Cherniss, Harold. “On Plato’s Republic X 597b.” American Journal of Philology 53 (1932): 233–42.
Cooper, John. “Plato on Sense-Perception and Knowledge.” Phronesis 15 (1970): 123–46.
Delgado, Carolina. “Apariencia e imagen: Examen a partir de algunos diálogos platónicos.” Estudios
de Filosofía 54 (2016): 131–49.
Ferrari, G. R. F. “Plato and Poetry.” In The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, edited by George
Alexander Kennedy, 92–148. Vol. 1 of Classical Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989.
Franklin, Lee. “Inventing Intermediates: Mathematical Discourse and Its Objects in Republic VII.”
Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2012): 483–506.
68
There is reason to think that Plato applies his theory of appearance to explain mathematical
discourse about immaterial particulars, or intermediates. See Franklin, “Inventing Intermediates.”
69
A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek
Philosophy. I am grateful to discussants there and to Bennett Helm, Nick Kroll, David Merli, and Allan
Silverman for helpful comments and questions.
——— . “The Origins of Dialectic in Ordinary Discourse: Meno 71b9–75a8.” Logical Analysis and History
of Philosophy 19 (2016): 88–104.
Frede, Michael. “Observations on Perception in Plato’s Later Dialogues.” In Essays in Ancient Philosophy,
3–8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Gill, Mary Louise. Philosophos: Plato’s Missing Dialogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Griswold, Charles. “The Ideas and the Criticism of Poetry in Plato’s Republic Book X.” Journal of the
History of Philosophy 19 (1981): 135–50.
Halliwell, Stephen. The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2002.
———. Plato, Republic Book 10: With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988.
Janaway, Peter. Images of Excellence: Plato’s Critique of the Arts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Lorenz, Hendrik. The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009.
Lycos, Kimon. “Aristotle and Plato on Appearing.” Mind 73 (1964): 496–514.
Marcos de Pinotti, Graciela Elena. “La critica platonica a oradores, poetas y sofistas: Hitos en la
conceptualizacíon de la mimesis.” Estudios de la Filosofia 34 (2006): 9–27.
Marušič, Jera. “Poets and Mimesis in the Republic.” In Plato and the Poets, edited by Pierre Destrée and
Fritz-Gregor Hermann, 217–40. Mnemosyne Supplements 328. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Moss, Jessica. “Appearances and Calculations: Plato’s Division of the Soul.” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 34 (2008): 35–68.
——— . “Plato’s Appearance-Assent Account of Belief.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 114 (2014):
213–38.
———. “What Is Imitative Poetry and Why Is It Bad?” In The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic,
edited by G. R. F. Ferrari, 415–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Nehamas, Alexander. “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X.” In Virtues of Authenticity, 251–78. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Notomi, Noburu. “Image Making in Republic X and the Sophist: Plato’s Criticism of the Poet and the
Sophist.” In Plato and the Poets, edited by Pierre Destrée and Fritz-Gregor Hermann, 299–326.
Mnemosyne Supplements 328. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Payne, Andrew. The Teleology of Action in Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.
———. Platonis Opera. Edited by John Burnet. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
———. Platonis Respublica. Edited by S. R. Slings. Oxford: Oxford Classical Texts, 2003.
———. Republic. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004.
———. Theaetetus and Sophist. Translated and edited by Christopher Rowe. Indianapolis: Hackett,
2015.
Richardson-Lear, Gabriel. “Mimêsis and Psychological Change in Republic III.” In Plato and the Poets,
edited by Pierre Destrée and Fritz-Gregor Hermann, 195–216. Mnemosyne Supplements 328.
Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Sedley, David. The Midwife of Platonism: Text and Subtext in Plato’s Theaetetus. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004.
Silverman, Allan, “Plato on Perception and ‘Commons.’” Classical Quarterly 40 (1990): 148–75.
———. “Plato on Phantasia.” Classical Antiquity 10 (1991): 123–47.
Storey, Damien. “Appearance, Perception, and Non-Rational Belief.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
47 (2014): 81–118.
Watson, Gerald. Phantasia in Classical Thought. Galway: Galway University Press, 1988.

Project Muse 878516

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Project Muse 878516

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Metaphysics of Appearance in Republic X (596a5–598d7)

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 61, Number 1, January

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

[152.58.45.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-22 15:42 GMT)

abstract Plato’s Republic X attack on imitative poetry is based in the metaphysics

keywords Plato, appearance, metaphysics, imitation

* Lee Franklin is an associate professor of philosophy at Franklin & Marshall College.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 61, no. 1 (2023) 1–24

1. the imitator’s creations (596a5–596e11)

2. the object of imitation (597a1–598a1)

114–15; and Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 261–62.

3. appearance as a relation (598a1–b8)

4. the transparency of appearance (598b8–d7)

this characterization come apart. The conception of appearance as a relation is

5. three degrees from reality:

of F coincides necessarily with some subject’s awareness of an F thing. But the

See Philebus 38c–d.

See Nehamas, “Imitation and Poetry in Republic X,” 263–64.

You might also like