1.2.

          Science

          As has been said before at paragraph 2.1 of this chapter Eros is the creative force by means of which 'creative writers' procreate their insights, both in the case of the writing of artistic products and in the case of the writing of scientific work. The 'most beautiful insights' are the product of this 'scientific writing' and are concerned about the social structures like wisdom and justice. Hereby the legendary 'wise men' Lycurgus and Solon are being mentioned, whose offspring consists of famous and just laws (209d). The Phaedrus dialogue judges the works of Eros using a synoptic scheme. Its synoptic survey covers both the creative work of writers (like the several speeches in the Phaedrus dialogue about the 'lovers') (244a). The synoptic distinction of Eros attributes the creative writing a dualistic and 'tricky' character. When writers are primarily controlled by the desires of their rational and reasonable faculty, their focus will be centred on transcendent realities like truth and wisdom, which will be expressed in the insights they will put on paper (278d). However the synoptic scheme indicates the 'pitfall' that can be present in any intellectual process. Because when our sentient, emotional and instinctive faculty succeed in their desire for controlling our conduct this entails that our rational and reasonable insights are not directed at the transcendent realities, but will be instrumental at serving the desires related with the sensory perception of phenomena in the 'finite material reality'. It had to said that the irrational 'leading principle' of the soul is in this respect not specifically mentioned to solely represent the emotional desires they incorporate, but also refers to their potential for sensory perception of the phenomena in the finite material reality.
          For the sake of clarity and to get a better understanding of Eros' dualistic 'tricky' qualities of scientific creative writing the 'line metaphor' of the Politeia will be produced (VI 509d-511e). This 'line metaphor' is the knowledgeable part of the philosophical education (paideia) that has been further expanded in the cave metaphor (VII 514a-517a). The bipartition both these metaphors reveal is that between the 'domain of the visible and sentient' and the 'domain of the invisible and mental', which in this respect agrees with the synoptic scheme of the Phaedrus dialogue. That means that the soul according to its inner constitution is oriented or towards sensory perception, or towards the transcendent realities of the 'forms'. This is reflected in the line metaphor that represents the two general ontological spheres of knowledge, and splits them further in four types of knowledge. The line metaphor symbolizes four different and consecutive levels of knowledge by splitting a line in four proportional parts, with one extremity related the to our mental reflections and abstraction of the material world (localized in the cave metaphor in the shadows on the wall), and the other opposite extremity related with the transcendent Forms. These four types of knowledge are called conjecture, belief, reason and intellect (insight), of which the first two are connected with the material reality, while the other two are connected with the transcendent forms (Politeia 511d-e). The consecutive progress on the line coincides with the scientific rise of the soul in the cave where knowledge has a questionable status and its exit out of the cave and arrival in it the true transcendent dimension, which provides true knowledge.
          The metaphoric turning around of the chained prisoners, who first faced the shadows on the wall, and their rotation towards the path leading to the transcendent dimension outside the cave, has to be conducted with the soul as a whole (VII 518c). Plato's philosophical education (paideia) aims at harmonizing both the emotional and the reasonable faculties in the soul in agreement with the transcendent truth. In fact both of these irrational "leading principles" and the rational "leading principle" that will have to guide and control them have to become friends with each other as far as possible (IX 590d). The emotional and instinctive aspects of the soul are with regard to the metaphor of the soul in the Phaedrus dialogue to be interpreted as the vital and dynamic powers necessary for the rational desire for a gradual rise and development in order to obtain insights in the realm of the transcendent metaphorically localized on the outside of the cave.
 
 

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