Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Phaedo

380-360 B.C.

"I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my senses I might blind my soul altogether."

Well, after this, said Socrates, when I was worn out with my physical investigations, it occurred to me that I must guard against the same sort of risk which people run when they watch and study an eclipse of the sun; they really do sometimes injure their eyes, unless they study its reflection in water or some other medium. I conceived of something like this happening to myself, and I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my senses I might blind my soul altogether. So that I decided I must have recourse to theories, and use them in trying to discover the truth about things. Perhaps my illustration is not quite apt, because I do not admit that an inquiry by means of theory employs 'images' any more than one which confines itself to facts. But however that may be, I started off in this way, and in every case I first lay down the theory which I judge to be the soundest, and then whatever seems to agree with it--with regard either to causes or to anything else--I assume to be true, and whatever does not I assume not to be true. But I should express my meaning more clearly, because at present I don't think that you understand.
(99d-100a, p. 81)

Body::Eye::Blindness

Reading. Also cited in Alwin Thaler's Reading "In My Mind's Eye, Horatio." Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol. 7, No. 4 (Autumn, 1965): 353.

Hamilton, E. and Cairns, H., Eds. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Mind's Eye

06/20/2003

03/20/2009