“The philosopher, although he perceives something that is more than human, that is divine (theion ti), remains a man, so that the conflict between philosophy and the affairs of men is ultimately a conflict within the philosopher himself. It is this conflict which Plato rationalized and generalized into a conflict between body and soul: whereas the body inhabits the city of men, the divine thing which philosophy perceives is seen by something itself divine — the soul — which somehow is separate from the affairs of men”

The conflict of body and soul grew out of and replaces the earlier conflict of myself and I, wherein one must befriend oneself or become unable to engage oneself in dialogue. Not only this, but body and soul inhabit two different worlds, the body moves in a world of appearance and illusion while the soul moves within a true world of absolute and objective standards. The world of the soul does not appear before each human being differently depending on their standing in it; therefore the world of the soul has no use for democracy. Plato, using the voice of Socrates, likens democracy to a bunch of drunken sailors taking the helm of a great ship from a seasoned captain, operating it at their whim, and making fun of the captain for his incessant star-gazing.

Arendt attributes this change from the earlier works of Plato to the later works of Plato to the experience of Socrates not as a gadfly, buzzing around the great horse Athens and urging its citizens on to more truthful opinions, but to Socrates the electric eel who passes on his shock to those who he encounters. Socrates would frequently enter into a state of shock so deep that nothing could disturb his thoughts, he would “as though seized by a rapture, fall into complete motionlessness, just staring without seeing or hearing anything”. Socrates would endure these moments of speechless wonder, of thaumadzein, for hours at a time, and return to the world of human beings with nothing more than unanswerable questions and an understanding that can only express itself negatively; “I know that I do not know”. However, while enduring the speechless wonder not-knowing becomes more than a dry scientific statement of fact, wondering and not-knowing establishes the philosopher as a question asking being. It is for this reason that both Plato and Aristotle declare thaumadzein to be the beginning of philosophy, philosophy begins with wonder, and it is this wonder that causes the philosopher in Plato’s cave to turn around and begin to inquire into the causes of things, and into the being of Being.

Socrates the electric eel would unwittingly force upon others this state of speechless wonder through his inquiry into their doxa. There is an inherent danger in asking questions about the opinions of others: “The search for the truth in the doxa can lead to the catastrophic result that the doxa is altogether destroyed, or what had appeared is revealed to be an illusion”. Arendt calls our attention to King Oedipus, whose search for the truth left him not only without a point of view upon the world, but also without a world in which to stand, and compares the now blind king to those early dialogues of Plato in which the Socratic dialogue ends inconclusively. Many of Socrates’ interlocutors “must have gone away not with a more truthful opinion, but with no opinion at all … all opinions are destroyed and no truth is given in their stead”. The speechless wonder at everything that is is a double edged sword, it can establish one as a philosopher, one who asks questions, but it can also take a person out of the world of the plurality of human beings.

The willingness to endure this speechless wonder, and the momentary worldlessness that accompanies it, is what separates the philosopher from other humans, that is, from the mere spectators in the cave. Socrates readily endured this wonder, but in speech and action he emphasized dialogue with himself and with others. Plato turns the speechless wonder into the way of life for the philosopher, the bios theoretikos, which forms not only the beginning but also the end of philosophy. This is the difference between the cave of the Delphic Oracle and the cave of Plato’s allegory, in one the philosopher returns to the world of human beings with the new insight, in the other, the philosopher must retreat from the world in a continuous state of wonder. Plato introduces in the later dialogues, as the experience of thaumadzein, the direct contemplation of the Truth in order to give to the philosopher what Socrates freely admitted he did not have, a standing in the world, a point of view, doxa. Plato’s Truth was designed to give the philosopher a place to stand in the world while enduring the speechless wonder that otherwise left one without a standing in the world. The consequence, however, is that the occupation of the philosopher is no longer the inner dialogue that follows a moment of speechless wonder, but to endure that wonder and prolong the speechlessness in oneself and with others. No longer concerned with the affairs of the world, or the inner dialogue that takes place in solitude, the philosopher “destroys the plurality of the human condition within himself.”