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Concept

Analogy of the divided line

Analogy of the divided line
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Overview

The analogy of the divided line (Ancient Greek: γραμμὴ δίχα τετμημένη, romanized: grammē dicha tetmēmenē) is presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in the Republic (509d–511e). It is written as a dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates, in which the latter further elaborates upon the immediately preceding analogy of the Sun at the former's request. Socrates asks Glaucon not only to envision this unequally bisected line but to imagine further bisecting each of the two segments. Socrates explains that the four resulting segments represent four separate 'affections' (παθήματα) of the psyche. The lower two sections are said to represent the visible while the higher two are said to represent the intelligible. These affections are described in succession as corresponding to increasing levels of reality and truth from conjecture (εἰκασία) to belief (πίστις) to thought (διάνοια) and finally to understanding (νόησις). Furthermore, this analogy not only elaborates a theory of the psyche but also presents metaphysical and epistemological views.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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  1. He split the whole of this composition, then, along its entire length into two parts, joining them mutually across like the letter X, afterwards bending them into a circle, and connecting them both with themselves and each other, in such a way that their extremities might meet directly opposite the point of their mutual intersection, externally comprehending them in an uniform motion around the same centre; besides…

    Plato, The works of Plato

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  2. All the particular objects in this sensible world, being formed after the eternal exemplars in that intellectual world, awaken, upon account of their resemblance, insensibly, and by slow degrees, the almost obliterated ideas of these last. The beauty, which is shared in different degrees among terrestrial objects, revives the same idea of that Universal Nature of beauty which exists in the intellectual world…

    Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith

    Close in meaning to Analogy of the divided line; the term itself is not named.

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  3. Aristotle, Theophrastus, and after them almost all the Peripatetics give the same division of philosophy. It is absolutely requisite that the complete person he contemplator of things which have a being, and the practiser of those thing which are decent; and this easily appears by the following instances.

    Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3

    States what Analogy of the divided line is.

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Philosophers who discussed Analogy of the divided line

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Outline of metaphysics.

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