PHILOSOPHY REFLECTION PAPER(1000-1500 words)
clayman1
Chapter1TheAllegoryofthecave.docxThe Allegory of the Cave
The prisoners represent the vast majority of the human race: “they’re like us.” They live in a world in which images are mistaken for realities. What is a shadow, after all, but a mere image of something real (in this case a statue, which is itself an image of something even more real, namely a living human being or animal)? Moreover, the prisoners have not the faintest clue that throughout their entire lives they have been exposed to nothing but distortions of the truth—they are, in other words, unaware of their ignorance (just like Euthyphro, the fanatical young priest about whom you will read in the next chapter). The shadows represent the authoritative opinions that govern the hearts and minds of whole communities, and give a transcendent purpose and meaning to our particular existence. [1] These shadows are to be contrasted with the light of truth illuminating the world beyond the cave (but which also makes the shadows visible within it). The people carrying the statues are the lawgivers and poets who establish the cultural values and cosmic worldview that characterize and define a given society. In his excellent commentary on Plato’s Republic, Professor Allan Bloom explains: “We do not see men as they are but as they are represented to us by legislators and poets. A Greek sees things differently from the way a Persian sees them. One need only think of…the significance of cows to Hindus as opposed to other men to realize how powerful are the various horizons constituted by law or convention.” [2] These authoritative opinions are not accurate reflections of nature, but rather a curious amalgam of nature and convention. To quote once again from Professor Bloom: “The first and most difficult of tasks is the separation of what exists by nature from what is merely made by man.” [3]
This, precisely, is the business of philosophy, which literally means “the love of wisdom,” coming from the ancient Greek words philein, meaning “to love,” and sophia, meaning “wisdom.” Philosophy is a rigorous, logical, and systematic activity of the mind that seeks to discover the ultimate nature of reality, including and especially the nature of the human being. For Socrates, the single most important question the philosopher grapples with is: “What is the best way of life for a human being?” Socrates reasoned that if he could provide a correct answer to this question, he would have solved the riddle of human happiness, which is what everyone longs for and actively, if not always thoughtfully, pursues. We are all of us, therefore, in need of philosophy. But let us continue with the cave allegory.
Next, imagine that one of the prisoners is forcibly turned toward the firelight. He would be pained by the sudden brightness in his eyes, and would be unable to make out the statues being carried before the fire. Moreover, he would have difficulty believing that the statues are more real than their pale shadows decorating the cave wall, as these latter are all that the prisoner has ever known since childhood. And if the prisoner were compelled to look at the light, his eyes would hurt and he would avert his gaze, turning instead toward the comfortable and familiar darkness. Lastly, if someone dragged him away by force up the rough, steep path out of the cave and into the daylight, he would be distressed and annoyed at being so dragged. Once out of the cave, the glaring sun would leave him temporarily blinded, unable to see objects in the natural world. Gradually, however, he would recover his sight, first making out the shadows of things on the ground, then seeing their reflections in pools of water, followed by a direct vision of the objects themselves. Lifting his gaze still higher, he would behold the moon and the stars at nighttime, and then finally see “the sun itself by itself in its own region.” The prisoner, having spent his whole life mistaking the soiled fragments of the truth for the truth itself, has finally achieved liberation from the cave of ignorance; he has literally become enlightened.
The sun represents what Socrates refers to at the end of your reading as “the idea of the good,” which is the source of all being and intelligibility. That is, the idea of the good is responsible for all that exists as well as for the fact that whatever exists is capable of being understood by us. It is “the cause of all that is right and fair in everything…—and that man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it.” This idea is the key to the mystery of the good life. Anyone who is to live the best and most satisfying life—a life wherein one is in possession of the comprehensive human good—must be emancipated from the prison house of ignorance, making the ascent to the fundamental principle that informs not only the human condition, but the very cosmos itself. (Exactly how we are to liberate our minds from false opinions and strive for and ultimately apprehend the truth about the ultimate nature of things is a question we will discuss in the next chapter. [4] )
To the one who has been liberated from the tyranny of shadows—and who is therefore genuinely happy because he has seen the light of truth—the habits, opinions, honors, customs, and praises, indeed the very lives, of the prisoners languishing in the darkness below can only be seen as pitiful, slavish, and crude. The philosopher, meditating on the lives of the cave-dwellers, will echo the sentiments of Achilles as he wandered miserably through Hades in Homer’s Odyssey: better it is “‘to be on the soil, serf to another man, to a portionless man,’” and to undergo anything whatsoever rather than to think and live as they do.
Upon re-entering the cave, the philosopher will be unable to see properly because of the darkness, and the other prisoners will ridicule him, thinking that the voyage into the light of day had ruined his sight, thus rendering him incapable of competing with them in forming judgments about the shadows. Finally, if the philosopher attempted to liberate and enlighten the other prisoners, he would be met not with gratitude and an open mind, but with violent hostility; they would kill him. [5] Why is this so?
You will notice from the above that the emancipated prisoner does not exit the cave on his own initiative and by his own unaided efforts: rather, he must be compelled to escape. He must be dragged away by force up the rough, steep path out of the cave and into the light of the sun, after which he will be distressed and annoyed at being so dragged. Why the dogged resistance to enlightenment? One reason why so many people are disinclined to live “the examined life” is that, in addition to requiring a sharp mind, iron self-discipline, and a formidable memory, doing philosophy is extremely hard work. The path out of the cave is not smooth and flat, but arduous and rugged. In a sense, it is much easier and perhaps more superficially pleasant for us to remain smugly contented prisoners in the cave, human beings tending as they do to follow the path of least resistance. It is a lamentable fact of human nature that not everybody is willing to carefully examine his or her most basic assumptions and thereby gain freedom from the uncritical acceptance of the beliefs that we inherit from those who came before us. Do most human beings seem to prefer a comforting illusion to an unsettling truth? If the answer is “yes,” then we have discovered another reason why philosophy is a difficult enterprise: it requires a degree of courage on the part of the truth seeker, namely, the courage to follow the argument wherever it may lead. This in turn forces us to risk abandoning some of our most comforting and emotionally sustaining beliefs once we discover them to be philosophically unsound. For the lover of wisdom, this risk is worth taking. Why? Because by doing philosophy, we achieve true freedom and independence of mind. As Socrates says near the end of the Apology, “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”
