Explain Plato’s claim that those “who see the many just, and not absolute justice, and the like, – such persons may be said to have opinion but not knowledge”.
In this quote, Plato makes the distinction between “just” and “justice” in itself by stating that those who are unable to see “absolute justice” “have opinion and not knowledge”. In Plato’s metaphor of the sun, he explains the true difference between something beautiful and beauty itself, stating that only truth-lovers (i.e. those who can transcend into the World of Forms) can see beauty itself because beauty – similar to “absolute justice” – is a Perfect Form. In order for one to not just opine, but know the forms, one must not be a ‘sight-lover’ (i.e. those who do not have the faculty of rationality to transcend doxa into episteme/the intelligible realm): one must follow the metaphor of the sun and let their soul ascend from the visible realm into the intelligible. Just like Plato’s allegory of the cave where the prisoner went from looking at the shadows to the fire to the reflection of the sun in water and to finally looking at the sun itself, in order for someone to have true knowledge of the forms, their soul must transcend the World of Illusions into the World of Beliefs/Empirical Evidence to the World of Ideas and finally the Perfect Form. Truth-lovers know – as they have the ‘power of knowing to the mind’ – while sight-lovers simply opine and don’t understand the perfect, eternal forms of Good. Moreover, with specific reference to the Divided Line, Plato asserts that true knowledge arises from the practice of mathematical reasoning and dialectic as these activities are logical, honing the philosopher’s reasoning skills and enabling them to transcend into the Perfect Form. The ability to opine (but not know) is situated in the visible realm and the other worlds – of illusion and belief. “The many” who see just, and not absolute justice, are not philosopher kings – instead they are producers/farmers/citizens of the lower tiers in Plato’s Republic as they do not pursue true knowledge due to their inability to truly modulate spirit and appetite using reason in their tripartite soul. Conversely, the philosophers can access the World of Forms and truly know the ‘being’ (i.e. things in itself) as the have a love for knowledge and can exert reason to understand the true nature of the Good/Perfect Forms (e.g. forms such as beauty, truth and justice).