To be

Oftentimes, in The Republic, I find myself trying to follow an argument about an idea that I don't understand. For example, the argument about Whether justice or injustice was more profitable, was made without first laying down a definition of justice, or injustice - or even by what we mean when we say profitable. As a matter of fact, this caused much confusion in the argument between Socrates because they were both focusing on different aspects of the just and the injust (the seeming and unseeming) and eventually they had to make the distinction between the just and the seemingly just, etc.
Therefore, I was really glad when plato took the time in section 534a to examine the meanings of the ideas that he was talking about. Plato examined the words "Intellection, knowledge, thought, trust, and opinion" and placed them in relation to each other. He said that "opinion has to do with coming into being and intellection with being; and as intellection is to opinion, so is knowledge to trust and thought to imagination." Thus Plato related opinion, trust, and imagination with to coming into being. And he related intellection, knowledge, and thought as being. Which is quite contrary to our society's idea of truth today. Yes, we would agree that knowledge is a way to get closer to the truth of being, but our idea of knowledge is much different than the one that Plato sets forth. Plato's idea of knowledge is knowledge that is free from opinion. Plato relates being with dialectic, or a method of logically "turning around" to see more of the good (truth). According to Plato, to be is to know of the good and to question one's knowledge of what is.

I commented on Brittany's