In Books VIII and IX, Plato explores different constitutions or types of government and how they correspond to different types of soul, or psychological tendencies, including how one government tends to decline into another, more chaotic kind of government over time. In the process he makes clear his contempt for democracy and its attempt to share power with the rabble. As always, he favors a top-down government employing the best and brightest to ensure order and efficiency for the welfare of the state, never mind if things turn out badly for some of its citizens.
In Book X Plato returns to his theme of prototypes and copies. Glaucon asks, what exactly is imitation (mimēsis)? Socrates appeals to his own (that is: Plato’s) usual method (methodos) of positing (tithesthai) a single Form (eidos) for each plurality of things that are called by the same name. For instance, there are many beds and tables, but only two types, that of bed and that of table. A craftsman (dēmiourgos) looks to (blepein) the appropriate Form (idea) to create a piece of furniture; he does not, however, create the Form itself, but only the copy.[46] What if a clever craftsman could make everything there is, plants, animals, and so on? That would be amazing. Socrates then points out that by holding up a mirror to nature, anyone could do that. But, as he goes on to point out, the mirror would produce only an imitation of an imitation.
On the one hand we are reminded of the Divided Line, in which we distinguish between 1) Forms as exemplars, 2) mathematical objects (including geometrical shapes), 3) physical objects, and 4) their shadows and images. The mirror produces only an image (level 4) of a physical object (level 3), which is itself a copy of an ideal Form (level 1), and perhaps of a geometrical archetype (level 2). On the other hand, Plato seems to prefigure the Demiurge, the Divine Craftsman or Engineer of his later dialogue Timaeus, who looks to a divine model to craft the earth, the heavens, and objects in the cosmos in a remarkable creation story.
For now, however, Plato identifies three kinds of bed. First, there is the original prototype, the Bed Itself, the Form of Bed (level 1), which inspires all other beds. As the prototype, it can have no equal. Then there is the bed that the carpenter or joiner makes by consulting the Form (level 3). There are many beds made by many craftsmen with many different features, but they all are somehow copies of the Bed Itself. Furthermore, a painter can make pictures of beds, which will be imitations of a copy (level 4). The picture of a bed is now at two removes from the original.
One observation here: up to this point, Plato has rarely invoked Forms of artifacts; he commonly cites virtues, such as Justice and Goodness, ideals such as Beauty, and mathematical concepts such as Equality.[47] But here he shows no reservations in appealing to prototypes of artifacts. Indeed, the whole notion of an art of making objects allows us to see construction as the physical translation of an ideal Form into a realized product. Later in the Timaeus, the whole of nature will be presented as the creation of a divine craftsman, in which the Forms of animal and plant species will be seen as the models for making individual specimens to order. Thus Nature will imitate Art before Art imitates Nature.
Socrates goes on to observe that some people attribute craft knowledge to poets such as Homer, who describe physical objects. The sophists, too, claim to have crafts of public administration and the like.[48] Indeed, we see Socrates interviewing such people in Socratic dialogues.[49] But the model Socrates builds here suggests that they know only the appearance of physical objects and technical activities. They are not themselves craftsmen, but only imitators of imitators. In fact, there is a craft of making an instrument, such as a tool, a craft of using that tool, and a craft of imitating it in pictorial form or in words.[50]
Narrative poetry can, in fact, imitate human behavior, but it does not imitate anything else effectively. In fact, it nourishes the irrational part of the soul at the expense of the rational part. We should, then, exclude poets from the ideal state, except for those who compose hymns and eulogies of good persons to inspire their audiences to good deeds and virtuous behavior.[51]
[46] Plato Republic X, 595c-596b.
[47] In Cratylus 389b-c, Plato suggests the need of a form (eidos, 389b3) of the weaver’s shuttle to guide in the replacement of a broken artifact, and generalizes to other arts from there. But he does not specifically invoke transcendent Forms until much later, 439c-440a, where he contrasts the everlasting Form with the ephemeral copy. (Plato clearly refers to his Forms, though the word idea itself appears only offhandedly at 439e5.)
[48] Plato Republic X, 600a-e.
[49] E.g., Plato Lesser Hippias 368b-d.
[50] Plato Republic X, 601d.
[51] Plato Republic X, 603c-607a.