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When Plato first appeals to the Forms (or Theory of Forms)  at the end of Book 5 of the Republic, he assumes that the reader is already familiar with the concept, perhaps from earlier works such as the Phaedo and Phaedrus.

But now, in discussing the education of the guardians, Plato introduces the elusive Form of the Good [hē toû agathoû idea]. It is by attaining the Form of the Good that the philosopher-king is made fit to rule.

As the Form of the Good is impossible to describe, and difficult to imagine, Socrates tries to convey its essence through three connected metaphors: the sun, line, and cave.

1. The Metaphor of the Sun

  • Just as it is by the light of the sun that the visible is made apparent to the eye, so it is by the light of truth and being – in contrast to the twilight of becoming and perishing – that the nature of reality is made apprehensible to the soul.
  • Just as light and sight may be said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so science and truth may be said to be like the Good, and yet not to be the Good; it is by the sun that there is light and sight, and it is by the Good that there is science and truth.
  • Just as the sun is the author of nourishment and generation, so the Good is the author of being and essence. Thus, the Good is beyond being, and the cause of all existence.

2. The Metaphor of the Line

A line is cut into two unequal parts, and each of them is divided again in the same proportion. The two main divisions correspond to the intelligible world and to the visible world. One section in the visible division consists of images, that is,
shadows and reflections, and is accessed through imagination. The other, higher section in the visible division consists of sensible particulars and is accessed through belief. One section in the intelligible division consists of Forms and is accessed through thought, but via sensible particulars and hypotheses, as when geometers use a picture of a triangle to help reason about triangularity, or make appeal to axioms to prove theorems. The other, higher section in the intelligible division also consists of Forms but is accessed by understanding, a purely abstract science which requires neither sensible particulars nor hypotheses, but only an unhypothetical first principle, namely, the Form of the Good. The purpose of education is to move the philosopher through the various sections of the line until he reaches the Form of the Good.

3. The Metaphor or Allegory of the Cave

Human beings have spent all their lives in an underground cave or den which has a mouth open towards the light. They have their legs and their necks chained so that they cannot move, and can see only in front of them, towards the back of the cave. Above and behind them a fire is blazing, and between them and the fire there is a raised way along which there is a low wall. Men pass along the wall carrying all sorts of statues, and the fire throws the shadows of these statues onto the back of the cave. All the prisoners ever see are the shadows, and so they suppose that the shadows are the objects themselves.

Plato's cave meaning
Picture © Neel Burton

If a prisoner is unshackled and turned towards the light, he suffers sharp pains, but in time he begins to see the statues and moves from the cognitive stage of imagination to that of belief. The prisoner is then dragged out of the cave, where the light is so bright that he can only look at the shadows, and then at the reflections, and then finally at the objects themselves: not statues this time, but real objects. In time, he looks up at the sun, and understands that the sun is the cause of everything that he sees around him, of light, of vision, and of the objects of vision. In so doing, he passes from the cognitive stage of thought to that of understanding.

The purpose of education is to drag the prisoner as far out of the cave as possible; not to instil knowledge into his soul, but to turn his whole soul towards the sun, which is the Form of the Good. Once out of the cave, the prisoner is reluctant to descend back into the cave and get involved in human affairs. When he does, his vision is no longer accustomed to the dark, and he appears ridiculous to his fellow men. However, he must be made to descend back into the cave and partake of human labours and honours, whether they are worth having or not. This is because the State aims not at the happiness of a single person or single class, but at the happiness of all its citizens. In any case, the prisoner has a duty to give service to the State, since it is by the State that he was educated to see the light of the sun.

The State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst… You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life… And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other?

The Form of the Good seems to be the source of all existence and knowledge, and yet to lie beyond them. Looking beyond the West, it seems to me that the Form of the Good is very similar to the Hindu concept of Brahman.

Now read my related article: Plato’s Theory of the Forms Explained

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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The premise of Plato’s Symposium [Banquet] is that each of the guests at the banquet is to deliver a speech in praise of love. Aristophanes, however, chooses to deliver his speech in the form of a myth about the origins of love. This is the famous Myth of Aristophanes, which appears to lean upon elements of the cosmogony of the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles. The significance of the Myth of Aristophanes is that it contributed to the development of the modern, romantic notion of love as existential and redeeming.

The Myth

In the beginning, there were three kinds of people: male, descended from the sun; female, descended from the earth; and hermaphrodite, with both male and female parts, descended from the moon.

These early people were completely round, each with four arms and four legs, two identical faces on opposite sides of a head with four ears, and all else to match. They walked both forward and backward and ran by turning cartwheels on their eight limbs, moving in circles like their parents the planets.

Because they were wild and unruly and threatening to scale the heavens, Zeus, the father of the gods, cut each one down the middle ‘like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling’—and even threatened to do the same again so that they might hop on one leg.

Picture © Neel Burton

Apollo, the god of light and enlightenment, then turned their heads to make them face towards their wound, pulled their skin around to cover up the wound, and tied it together at the navel like a purse. He made sure to leave a few wrinkles on what became known as the abdomen so that they might be reminded of their punishment.

After that, people searched all over for their other half. When they finally found it, they wrapped themselves around it so tightly and unremittingly that they began to die from hunger and neglect. Taking pity on them, Zeus moved their genitals to the front so that those who were previously androgynous could procreate, and those who were previously male could obtain satisfaction and move on to higher things.

This is the origin of our desire for others: those of us who desire members of the opposite sex used to be hermaphrodites, whereas men who desire men used to be male, and women who desire women used to be female.

When we find our other half, we are ‘lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy’ that cannot be accounted for by mere lust, but by the need to be whole again, to be restored to our original nature. Our greatest wish, if we could only have it, would then be for Hephæstus, the god of fire, to melt us into one another so that our souls could be at one and share in a common fate.

Now read my related article: Plato’s Theory of the Forms Explained

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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In Book 3 of the Republic, having discussed the class of producers and the class of guardians, Socrates goes on to discuss the third and last class of citizen in his ideal State, the class of rulers.

Rulers should be chosen from amongst the guardians after close observation and rigorous testing of their loyalty to the State.

Guardians who are chosen as rulers should receive further education; guardians who are not chosen as rulers should no longer be known as ‘guardians’ but as ‘auxiliaries,’ whose role it is to implement the will of the rulers.

Socrates says that all the citizens should be told a useful or noble lie [gennaion pseudos] so as to promote allegiance to the State and enforce its three-tiered social order.

According to this myth of the metals, every citizen is born out of the earth of the State and every other citizen is his brother or sister. Yet God has framed them differently, mixing different metals into their soul: gold for the rulers, silver for the auxiliaries, and brass or iron for the husbandmen and craftsmen.

Children are usually made of the same metal as their parents, but if this is not the case the child must either descend or ascend in the social order. If ever a child made of brass or iron was to become a guardian, the State would be destroyed.

As guardians are made of divine gold and silver, they should have nothing to do with the earthly sorts which have been ‘the source of many unholy deeds’.

Guardians should not have any private property; they should live together in housing provided by the state, and receive from the citizens no more than their daily sustenance.

Guardians may be the happiest of men in spite, or because, of their deprivations, for the arts and crafts are equally liable to degenerate under the influence of wealth as they are under the influence of poverty: ‘the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent’.

In summary: All citizens should be told a useful lie to promote loyalty to the state and enforce its three-tiered social order. According to this ‘myth of the metals’, every citizen is born out of the earth of the state, and every other citizen is his brother or sister. But God has mixed different metals into their souls: gold for rulers, silver for auxiliaries, and iron for producers. Children are usually made of the same stuff as their parents; if not, the child should either ascend or descend in the social order. Should the wrong metal ever come to power, the state will be ruined.

Now read my related article: Plato’s Theory of the Forms Explained

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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Sadomasochism can be defined as the taking of pleasure, often sexual in nature, from the inflicting or suffering of pain, hardship, or humiliation. It can feature as an enhancement to sexual intercourse, or, less commonly, as a substitute or sine qua non.

The infliction of pain incites pleasure, while the simulation of violence can serve to express and deepen attachment. Indeed, sadomasochistic activities are often instigated at the behest, and for the benefit, of the masochist, who orchestrates the activities through subtle cues.

Consensual sadomasochism should not be confused with acts of aggression. While sadomasochists seek out pain in the context of love and sex, they do not do so in other situations, and abhor uninvited aggression or abuse as much as the next person.

Sadomasochistic practices are very diverse, although one study identified four distinct patterns or clusters: hypermasculinity, infliction and reception of pain, physical restriction, and psychological humiliation. Interestingly, the study found that homosexual males tended more to hypermasculinity, whereas heterosexual males tended more to humiliation.

Origins

‘Sadomasochism’ is a portmanteau of ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’, terms coined, both of them, by the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a compendium of sexual case histories and sex-crimes, Krafft-Ebing spoke of basic tendencies to sadism in men, and to masochism in women. Modern surveys suggest that sadistic fantasies are just as prevalent in women, although it remains that men with sadistic urges tend to develop them at an earlier age.

Krafft-Ebing named ‘sadism’ after the Marquis de Sade, author of Justine, or The Misfortune of Virtue (1791) and other erotic novels; and ‘masochism’ he named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs (1870):

Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman’s entire but decisive advantage. Through man’s passions, nature has given man into woman’s hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise. —Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs

The terms ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’ may be of the nineteenth century, but the activities they denote are as old as the rocks. In his Confessions (1782), the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau admits to the pleasure that he derived from childhood beatings, adding that ‘after having ventured to say so much, I can shrink from nothing’. And shrink he did not: ‘To fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments…’

The Kama Sutra, which probably dates back to the second century, contains an entire chapter devoted to ‘blows and cries’. ‘Sexual relations’ according to this Hindu sacred text, ‘can be conceived as a kind of combat… For successful intercourse, a show of cruelty is essential.’

Early theories

The physician JH Meibom formulated the first theory of masochism in his Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Medicine and Venery (1639). According to Meibom, flogging a man’s back warms the semen in the kidneys, which then flows down into the testicles, leading to sexual arousal. Other early theories of masochism centred upon the warming of the blood, or the benefits of sexual arousal in mitigating physical pain.

Krafft-Ebing never connected sadism and masochism, because he understood them as stemming from different sexual and erotic logics. But in Three Papers on Sexual Theory (1905), Freud observed that sadism and masochism often come together (no pun intended), and, accordingly, combined the terms. Freud understood sadism as a distortion of the aggressive component of the male sexual instinct, and masochism as a form of sadism directed against the self—and a graver ‘aberration’ than simple sadism. He remarked that the tendency to inflict and receive pain during intercourse is ‘the most common and important of all perversions’ and ascribed it (as much else) to arrested or disordered psychosexual development. He paid scant attention to sadomasochism in women, either because he thought of sadism as a problem of men, or because he thought of masochism as the normal and natural inclination of women.

In Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1895), the physician Havelock Ellis argued along similar lines that there is no neat divide between sadism and masochism. By restricting the use of the term ‘sadomasochism’ to the sphere of eroticism, he severed the historical link with abuse and cruelty.

The philosopher Gilles Deleuze pushed back against Freud and Havelock Ellis. In his essay Coldness and Cruelty (1967), he contended that sadomasochism is an artificial term, and that sadism and masochism are in fact separate and distinct phenomena. Deleuze provided fresh accounts of sadism and masochism, which, despite being fluent in French, I struggled to comprehend.

Explanations 

And I could say the same for sadomasochism more generally. Sadomasochism is hard to understand, one of those great mysteries of the human condition. Here, I propose a number of explanations, none of which are mutually exclusive.

Most obviously, the sadist may derive pleasure from feelings of power, authority, and control, and from the ‘suffering’ of the masochist.

The sadist may also harbour a conscious or unconscious desire to punish or desecrate the object of sexual attraction (or a stand-in for the object of sexual attraction, or for an original object of sexual attraction) for having aroused his desire and thereby subjugated him, or for having frustrated his desire or aroused his jealousy.

Sadism can also serve as a defence. By objectifying a partner, the sadist does not need to handle his or her emotional baggage, and is able to discount the sex as next to meaningless: a mere act of lust rather than an intimate and pregnant act of love. The partner becomes a trophy, a mere plaything, and while one can own a toy and knock it about, one cannot fall in love with it or be hurt or betrayed by it. In some cases, sadism might also represent a species of displacement, or scapegoating, in which uncomfortable feelings such as anger, shame, and guilt are discharged onto a third party.

For the masochist this time, taking on a role of subjugation and helplessness can offer a release from stress or the burden of responsibility or guilt. It can also evoke infantile feelings of vulnerability and dependency, which can serve as a proxy for intimacy. Moreover, the masochist may derive gratification from earning the approval of the sadist, fulfilling his fantasies, commanding his undivided attention, and, in that sense, controlling him.

For the couple, sadomasochism can be seen as a means of intensifying normal sexual relations (pain releases endorphins and other hormones), leaving a mark or memory, testing boundaries, rebelling against social norms and expectations, giving form and expression to psychological realities, building trust and intimacy, or simply playing.

Et tu

And what about you, dear reader? It’s easy to think that this sort of stuff only applies to a handful of ‘deviants’, but the truth is that we all harbour sadomasochistic tendencies. Just think, for example, of casual, ‘normal’ behaviours such as love-biting, tickling, or teasing. In the words of the playwright Terence (d. 159 BCE), ‘I am human, and consider nothing human to be alien to me.’

Sadomasochism can also play out on a psychological level. In every relationship or almost, one partner is more attached than the other. Characteristically, the more attached partner is ‘the one who waits’. Thus, the philosopher Roland Barthes (d. 1980): 

Am I in love? —yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn’t wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.

The likely outcome of this asymmetry of desire is that the less attached partner (A) becomes dominant, while the more attached partner (B) becomes submissive in a bid to please and seduce. Sooner or later, A feels stifled and takes distance, but if he or she ventures too far, B may threaten to go cold or give up. This in turn prompts A to flip and, for a time, to become the more enthusiastic of the pair. But the original dynamic soon re-establishes itself, until it is once again upset, and so on ad vitam æternam. 

Domination and submission are elements of every relationship or almost, but that does not mean that they are not tedious, sterile, and, to echo Freud, immature. Instead of playing at cat and mouse, lovers need to be able to rise above that game, and not just by getting married. By learning to trust each other, they can dare to see each other as the fully-fledged human beings that they truly are, ends-in-themselves rather than mere means-to-an-end.

True love is about respecting, nurturing, and enabling, but how many people have the capacity and maturity for this kind of love?

And, of course, it takes two not to tango.

Adapted from For Better For Worse

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