Looking up or looking down?

While reading Book 7, I was caught up by sections 529a-b when Socrates was rebuking Glaucon about his praise of astronomy when he says in 529a, "In my opinion it's plain to everyone that astronomy compels the soul to see what's above and leads it there away from the things here." Socrates disagrees and says the opposite: "As it[astronomy] is taken up now by those who lead men up to philosophy, it has quite an effect in causing the soul to look downward." What does Socrates mean by this?

After discussing it in class as well as going back and rereading the passage I have decided what I believe Socrates meant by saying that the soul looks down while the eyes look up. In 529b Socrates says, "Even if a man were to learn something by tilting his head back and looking at decoration on a ceiling, you would probably believe he contemplates with his intellect and not his eyes." I think this is important because it shows that he thinks people who are looking up and studying the stars, are only doing so with their eyes and not using their soul to contemplate things the way they should. Socrates also says that, "I, for my part, am unable to hold that any study makes a soul look upward other than the one that concerns what is and is invisible." In this he is stating that astronomy cannot make the soul look up because it is not the study of what "is."

In 529d Socrates says, concerning the usefulness of studying astronomy, "They[the movements of the stars and planets], of course, must be grasped by argument and thought, not sight." This made me question whether or not Socrates thought that sight, along with the other senses, were worth anything at all because he always seems to be bashing them down like talking about the man looking at a ceiling. Then I remembered the diagram drawn in class about the different levels of thinking. It must first begin with senses such as sight, but it cannot stop there and then progresses into intellect and the soul.

In conclusion, I think that Socrates wasn't saying that astronomy technically makes the soul look down, but that astronomy does not lead to involving the soul. It is a useful study for the philosophers and leaders, but not what they should put all of their effort and time into because it will not answer what is.

-Rachel Tidwell