darkness outside - would Plato’s cave really work ?
the threefold city and threefold soul
would operate beneath a starless mirk
calculate time and go on patrol
regardless - if the external order
were sensed only by draughts down the cave
and maybe a palpable border -
then we’d go back and tell the other slaves
turning the pit into a hospital
or cinema without hope of escape -
we’d have to make do with the little
light we have to build a cityscape
underground - where the blind touch on justice
by threes and twos - even in Tartarus
Oxford
8 December 2018
In ” The Republic”, Plato proposes a threefold soul and threefold polity corresponding to it, of reason, thymos and desire - thymos referring to what Machiavelli called virtu, the ability to assert our will. “Spiritedness” is a frequent English paraphrase, but ” guts” would do.