Writing Day 17 - My Attempt (be sure also to read the section from the Republic, linked separately)

Plato, Republic Bk. 7 (Socrates speaks to Glaucon) (Question: Do you find the allegory here troubling or inspirational? Why? Does it apply to your own life here and now?)

The opening scene is one which I have to say I find pretty depressing: prisoners with chained necks, and the rest, in lifelong bondage. I think the most depressing part of this scene is the fact that somewhere on the planet, right now, people are still more or less being held in these or similar circumstances, and about two and a half millennia have elapsed since Plato first dreamed up this nightmare. The second component of the scene which frightens and appalls me is the idea that the real world can be reduced to a “puppet show” -- not only because this is such a partial truth from the point of view of the oppressed viewers, but also because it is never fair (think of Kant’s Categorical Imperative) to think of the real world, and real people, as a “show” for anyone else’s benefit or entertainment.

After this, Plato engages in a long speculation about illusion. The one fully “real” thing that the prisoners get is sound, or voice - they only see two of the three dimension of objects and people which pass behind them [1], and they certainly can’t feel them, but they can hear as well as the people behind them, and presumably can speak also just as well (given their constraints and their limited experience) as the non-chained people.

Since the prisoners are certain that the whole world consists of two-dimensional shadows and sound, they begin to formulate an understanding of the universe, as best they can, and to the extent that they can agree upon through their conversation (for all of their suffering, one fact about their life might be appealing to some people -- the fact that ALL they have is conversation, all day long!). The fact that the prisoners have an unfettered use of logic to me is very inspiring -- it summarizes all the attempts in intellectual history in which humans have exhausted all their logical energy to come to grips with a world for which their data was limited, and in which theories were relatively primitive as compared to later evolutions.

Some of you may have read about Descartes and the “evil genius” who tries to deceive the philosophical subject - so that Descartes might have to be skeptical about anything he sees (it may all be an illusion generated by an evil deceiver), except for one thing - he doubts, and this proves that there is a “he” to do the doubting. I think, therefore I am (cogito, ergo sum). Here in Plato’s cave, there is no particular evil power that wants to play havoc with the minds of the prisoners -- it is circumstance (their crimes, political or ethnic hatred, slavery, or bad luck) which has them in prison. If anything, the entire political order that keeps them in the cave is playing the role of Descartes’ evil deceiver.

Anyone who has limitations imposed upon them - either by nature, injury, or political injustice - can sympathize with the plight of the prisoners. But something else arises…something insidious, and this time among the prisoners themselves. After many years of speculating about the “world” - about the interpenetrating, sound-making shadows that they take as their only reality, they are certain that the world is one way and not another. They become judgmental and hostile when their theories (their reality) is challenged. The challenge comes in two stages: the liberated man in the cave, and the liberated man beyond the cave.

The liberated man in the cave is allowed to turn around and see the three-dimensional images through a better lens: by himself, and just by observation, he comes to a better understanding of “physics” (bodies in motion) and he understands the play of shadow better than those still enchained. But they cannot understand him and think he is mad. Thus far, however, he is in the cave, and he is still judging things by the same “light” (the fire) as the others.

But the liberated man who actually escapes the cave (is freed from the company of his companions) and looks at the upper world, and at the sun, both gains and loses - he gains an understanding of the world far more compelling than that of his brethren - but he loses the ability to “see in the dark” (he no longer understands the world in terms that he once did, and that his compatriots still do). He will “lose himself” in contemplation - he will no longer be able to interact with those still in the cave, and he will be absorbed in wanting to spend the rest of his time ‘correcting’ the illusions which formerly had oppressed him. He will become ‘dysfunctional’ as a cave-dweller, but he will realize that he is better off: Socrates here quotes the ghost of Achilles in Odyssey 11:

“Glorious Odysseus: don’t try to reconcile me to my dying. I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead. Give me news of my son, instead.

In some sense - as in fact always in Plato - Socrates is a kind of reincarnation of Achilles. But unlike Achilles, who while living excelled all others in pretty much every category of human skill, Socrates and the liberated cave-dweller are seen as deficient members of society. The death of Socrates is foreshadowed by the hatred that the cave-dwellers have of anyone who attempts to rise above the station of the ordinary man.

[1] This reminds me of a story which Luc Ferry (in “A Brief History of Thought”, p 234) told about the great philosopher Edmund Husserl. As it goes, Husserl would try to show his students the limits of their perception by holding up a cube, and asking them how many sides they can see at once: no matter how you turn it, you can only see three sides, at most. Try it! The certainty that you have that this cube consists of SIX sides rests in something outside of your visual perception - handling it personally, etc.