Jennifer asked:

I was considering the contradictions with regards to Socrates' Divided Line (specifically that the
highest form of knowledge cannot use images to help represent its explanations) and his actual
approach to attaining knowledge (that is, through using images, such as the sun which represents the
form of the Good as explained in Book VI of the Republic).

My question is this: What was Socrates intent in creating this obvious contradiction within his
teachings?

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But this is not a contradiction. When one is attaining knowledge, one does not have it, at least in its
final or "highest" form, right? Otherwise, why be in the process of attaining it? So then, one's
knowledge, while in the state of attaining to the highest form of knowledge, can be in the form of
images, even though after one has reached Nirvana or whatever and attained a state of highest
knowledge, one's knowledge will not be in images... which, as representations of real or ideal objects,
must be imperfect. According to Socrates, as I understand him (Plato, actually), it is only the ultimate
objects, the ideal Forms, which are perfect, and those cannot be representations. So one's
knowledge, at that point, must not be of reality, one's knowledge must in some sense be reality. Don't
ask me how that was actually supposed to work, I have no idea. But that was Plato's take on it.

Steven Ravett Brown