II
As many philosophers have noted, in the German language, the word Schein bears three distinct meanings:
(i) shining, radiance, luminosity
(ii) manifesting, phenomenal appearing, showing itself, coming to light
(iii) illusion, deception, semblance, "mere" appearance
In the Greek language of Plato's thought, the first two meanings were bound together by their etymology. But Plato's metaphysics, drawing a line of irreconcilable separation between the reality of a higher realm of pure Ideas and the illusoriness of a lower realm consisting of sensuous appearances, exhibits a logic that he saw connecting inextricably all three of these seemingly unconnected meanings.
In The Republic (475), Glaucon asks who the true philosophers are. And Socrates replies that true philosophers are lovers of the vision of truth.[4] Unlike ordinary people, the philosopher keeps his eye ever directed toward things fixed and immutable[5] (500). But what is this "eye"? For Plato, it is not the physical eye, but the eye of the soul, the eye of reason and intellect. In order for the soul or intellect to "see" the truth, it must in fact renounce and abandon the use of sight and the other senses[6] (537). Even so, Plato maintains that the soul is like the eye: "when resting upon that on which truth and beauty shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned toward the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about . . . "[7] (508). In order to see the truth—or see the essential beauty of truth, the vision of mortals must turn away from objects of earthly beauty; it must become a "science" of ideal forms[8] (532, 537). It must, as it were, look away from the things here on earth, gazing upwards, ascending an ontological hierarchy to behold the nonsensuous, supersensible truth, the Ideas that, being unchanging and eternal, forever stand above, and are thus "higher" than, the sensuous appearances.
In the Symposium ,[9] Socrates describes the dialectical moments of this process, calling it love. Love is the vehicle whereby the initial attraction to sensuous beauty, the initial seduction, is transformed into a purely intellectual vision and knowledge of the essence of beauty as such. Although it is a sensuous love that sets this dialectic in motion, the beauty that seduces this love and draws it into its spell awakens a higher love in the "recollection" of the infinitely more truthful beauty of the Idea. In the Phaedrus , a dialogue that is also concerned with love, Socrates explains at length how, through "recollection," this transformation or sublimation takes place: the attraction to sensuous beauty becomes the occasion for an awakening of the soul's longing for a lost vision of beauty; and this awakening brings about a recollection of the "true beauty" it saw and knew, once upon a time, before being entombed in a material body[10] (249–50).
For Plato, there is beauty in that which shines: radiance is beautiful; and the beautiful always shines, always scintillates. But what is most beautiful, for him, is the truth. Thus, the beauty of truth lies in its shining: shining in a dazzling radiance is how truth in its beauty appears. But if truth cannot be seen by the physical eye, then neither can the beauty of its shining. The beauty of its shining must be a purely intellectual beauty, a beauty visible, visible as intelligible, only to the soul; it must be absolutely separated from the realm of the sensuous. For Plato, the visible beauty of that which shines in the realm of the sensuous can only be a
deceptive beauty and an illusory truth. There is nothing on earth that can compare with the incomparable beauty, the most radiant appearing,
