The Allegory of the Cave, Socrates to Glaucon

[Kyriakos]

The Allegory of the Cave is in the seventh book of The Republic, a work mostly dealing with how to organise an ideal city. And while the very end of the allegory again ties back to how the so-termed Philosopher-rulers of the ideal city must behave towards the less philosophically-englightened citizens (ie by not distancing themselves from them, but instead trying to engage in dialogue about philosophy), the allegory itself is not dependent on any political message.





The story of the prisoners in the cave is used so as to cause a more pronounced interest on the ideas of human chains which bound to false objects, so-called phenomena (which literally means 'appearances', juxtaposed to realities). The prisoners in the bottom of the cave are bound in their feet, but also their necks (so as to be unable to move their head and see even the fellow prisoners). They can thus only observe the wall in front of them, and that is filled with moving shadows, due to people carrying idols of objects moving behind the wall a bit above the prisoners, and the fire even further up turning those objects and people into a shadow on the low wall.

Socrates goes on to note that if a prisoner would happen to be freed (it is not mentioned just how this would happen), he would then immediately notice a myriad different points of view even in the first environment he is in, the bottom of the cave. That is due to him now being able to see the wall and the shadows as not something fixed, but as a show of shadows on a plane which can be examined from different positions. This becomes even more prominent when he turns towards the other part of the cave, with the wall and those carrying the objects, and notices the difference being those objects (idols of men and animals or material) and the corresponding shadows on the wall the prisoners only see.

In the end the freed prisoner goes out of the cave, after the fire, and into the world under the powerful light of the sun. At first he cannot see clearly due to the massively more light around, and he also has to just observe the objects (and the sun) as reflections on the surface of the water. The Sun, above, can never be actually examined, but he can know that it is there, which is the final knowledge in the allegory.

* Socrates explains what the allegory meant

Socrates tells Glauco that the prisoners are humans in their state, as those around them. They only bother with phenomena, and try to examine the phenomena, in varying degrees and acuteness, but they are not aware that those are very far removed from an actual 'reality'. The cave generally stands for occupation with the objects available by the senses. The outside (with the Sun above), is the world of mental notions, ideas, archetypes (origin of forms), and finally the over-archetype of the Agathon (it means 'Benevolent'), which is symbolised by the Sun.

*

I thought of starting this thread as a means to discuss this allegory. I decided to use it as the centerpiece in the library seminars for me to more easily (and with a clear central image) compare the views of Plato/Socrates to those of the presocratics, cause the Allegory of the Cave provides a very clear difference between Socrates and the Milesians, Eleans, Abderans, Heraklitan and Pythagorian thought, which was the object of the previous part of this program...

You can discuss the allegory of the cave, its balances, the split between senses and ideas, the thesis that actual knowledge of the truth can happen with humans cause some arche above this system (The Sun/Agathon) enables it, and so on

On the other hand i want to note how much i liked the information found in Diogenes Laertios, a writer of the chronicles of ancient philosophy, according to which some person once noted to another that "I know of what you tell me even less than i know about Plato's Agathon!", to signify just how obscure the latter was as well

 

[brennan]

The allegory of the shadows in the cave is frequently misrepresented, omitting the evolution of the awareness of the prisoners as they come out into the sunlight, this results in the allegory being used to claim that we are inherently ignorant, rather missing Socrates' point that we can learn so much more if we try to overcome our limitations.

 

[Kyriakos]

^And Socrates also claims in other dialogues that in his view a human already has the mental means to identify all knowledge, so he claims that knowledge is not created in the mind of a human but it is recalled.

I tend to agree, insofar as the schematics of a knowledge could not take form for a learner if he did not inherently have the ability to grasp them. But my view also is that each person grasps mental items (and also material ones as ideas) in his own way, different from other people's.

 

[Kyriakos]

On another note...my main interest in this allegory is that Socrates argues that knowledge (gnosis) is possible, due to (ultimately) the towering archetype above all (in the allegory the Sun, and in the explanation the idea of belevolence, or something in one with that idea).

This is close to the Eleatic view, that humans can only be close to the truth if they are near the 'Oneness' which in the poem by Parmenides of Elea (and also the writing of Xenophanes of Kolophon) is a spherical deity/cosmos, while the human views are false beliefs or claims, which can be pretty intricate/complex (as also happens in the allegory of the cave with the views on the shadows) but never lead to the truth. Zeno presents the cancelling of using senses as a source of knowledge, by showing in his paradoxa how the sensory world is not in line with the mental world (eg in the mental world we can divide Achille's moves eternally, and infinitely, while in the senses we would just see Achilles running past the tortoise).
Should also be noted that for Parmenides the realm of false ideas/views is not in the same environment as the truth, while in the allegory of the cave the Sun already is entering the cave, and also we have an idol of the Sun (the fire), which was made in likeness of its glow and warmth. So Socrates presents less of a schism between false beliefs/views and reality than the Eleans did.

In the seminar i am to present such differences and likenesses. All in all, though, Socrates is less refined than the previous philosophers, even those who also were depressed (Heraklitos) or from a poor family (Protagoras)..

 

[Borachio]

How do we escape our chains?

 

[Kyriakos]

^That is not explained in the allegory. The prisoner gets set free, but we aren't told how this happened. "If one of those prisoners was to be set free of his chains" etc.

Which is likely the only economical way to present that allegory anyway, cause it would need a massive added part to account for how one gets freed in that abyss

 

[Borachio]

Yet Socrates must know - or is it Plato? - or else how does he know that everyone is in chains?

How did Socrates free himself?

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not sure if he mentions how he did get to start examining stuff just at the moment of being freed (after which he would now have the ability to move his neck, without the chain, and thus observe the myriad different points of view for the shadows, and then other things). There is the comedic comment about marrying since if one gets a good wife he will be happy, and if not, well, he will become a philosopher.

Socrates was heavily in the business of examining if the knowledge other claim they have, is actual knowledge and not resting on false premises. But in the end (as in this allegory) he claims that one can have actual knowledge, if he is nearing the high rises and edge of the mental realm, where the archetypes are, and above them the Sun/Benevolent.

Which is not really a good idea, in my view, cause it is now a mix of Eleatic purer idealism, and Heraklitan purer (more hermetically closed) view about knowledge being on a shadow only.

 

[Borachio]

Seems to me, if ever there was someone who was a prisoner of his own ideas, it was Socrates.

 

[Kyriakos]

At least he wasn't walking around the streets masturbating, like Diogenes..

Socrates (and by extension i assume Plato, but who knows) was less refined than the presocratics, but he did focus more clearly on the question of whether knowledge is possible. But maybe his concurrent Protagoras did so in a far more refined manner (but his work is lost, apart from a few bits like the 'man is the meter of all things' phrase).