TRADITION AND THE MODERN AGE
73
of human affairs, does not imply an absolute transcendence in the
sense of other-worldliness; the ideas transcend only the common
world of living-together. (It
is
true that Plato in the concluding myth
of the
Republic,
as in the concluding myths of
Gorgias
and
Phaidon,
established a tangible, physical hereafter; but these myths were meant
as myths, and not as parables or truth; they were given, not as part
of his own political philosophy, which he taught his pupils, but as
the corresponding fairytale for the multitude unable to perceive
truth. These myths, far from being able to explain the cave allegory,
are invented precisely because the cave parable is for the few and
not supposed to convince the many.) Plato's doctrine of ideas is not
political in origin; but once he had discovered them, he hoped to
use them for political purposes as absolute standards, units of measure–
ment by' which one could judge a realm where everything seems to
dissolve into relationships and to be relative by definition. It is per–
fectly true that, in the words of Werner Jaeger, "the idea that there
is a supreme
art
of measurement and that the philosopher's knowl–
edge of values is the ability to measure, runs through all of Plato's
work right down to the end"-true to the extent that his work is
concerned with politics. And it is here that the transcendence of the
ideas has its origin; they are transcendent in terms of the world of
the
polis
and no more so than the yardstick is transcendent in terms
of the matter which it is supposed to measure; the standard neces–
sarily transcends everything to which it is applied. Not the ideas them–
selves, but the non-religious concept of transcendence in philosophy,
is political in origin. In other words, the dichotomy between the
relativity of human affairs
(ta ton anthropon pragmata)
, their fu–
tility, mortality, and ever-changing motion, and absolute truth whose
permanent light illuminates this futility.
What distinguishes the life in the cave from the life under the
sky of ideas is that the former is characterized by activities in which
men are related and communicate with each other, that is
lexis,
speech, and
praxis,
action, while the latter is characterized by
blepein
cis to aUthestaton,
contemplating the truest in solitude and ultimately
in speechlessness
(rhbon gar oudamos estin has alla mathimata,
"it
can never be articulated in words like other things we learn") . In
the parable of the cave, Plato does not even mention speech and
action, but depicts the lives of the inhabitants as though they too
