Plato’s Allegory to Life Today
Yammie254
Lecture1C-Plato.pptxPlato’s republic
A Socratic Dialog
Plato
First, you will need to download this powerpoint to see all the features.
Now that you have actually read Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” we will, in this lecture 1.) first very briefly remind ourselves of the context we built up, then 2.) we’ll explore the text itself and lastly 3.) see what Plato might have been suggesting to us and how it might relate to our lives today.
So, first, just briefly re-calling aspects of our context: Athens / Athena, godess of wisdom / The Academy / Raphael’s Renaissance painting / religious Middle Ages vs. secular humanism of Renaissance / Plato’s gesture upward - his student Aristotles’ gesture downward / The Republic – divided into 10 books / Book VII – contains a few allegories before the Allegory of the Cave.
And now one more piece of the context and on to analyzing the text…
Note: If you would like to have the pleasure of having Plato’s whole book The Republic read to you, click on the link under your Plato allegory text on the homepage. Or just listen to the allegories that come before the one you read – they’re also very interesting!
So we’re you wondering what sorts of teaching methods were used at the Academy?
methods of teaching based primarily on dialogue, but also lecture and seminars.
Plato’s teacher, if you remember, was Socrates. And his work The Republic is considered to be a Socratic dialog. You’ve probably heard of the “Socratic method” of teaching, one rooted not in catechismic lessons, (I speak you learn what I say) but rather in elenchus, or cross-examination, a back and forth dialog (dialectic) in response to a given question. This dialog between master and student, Socrates theorized, would produce insight and revealing truth. There were not classrooms in the Academy as we know them, but if you remember, it was originally an olive grove, where scholars and students could be seen walking in pairs having just such probing dialogs.
Plato wrote about 30 such dialogs, most of them are depicted as conversations with Socrates as in The Republic (380 BC). These dialogs are about, for example, justice, happiness, immortality of the soul, the nature of different governing regimes, ideas and forms, the role of philosophers in society, etc…
Which of the above topics connect most directly to the allegory you read?
p.s. By the way, these conversations concluded that a hypothetical city-state ruled by a philosopher-king would be the best and most just form of government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-q3s79w8SQ
If you have downloaded this powerpoint as I suggested, you can click on the link below and see a cartoon representation of the “Socratic Method”.
It is obviously extremely anachronistic and taken to extremes, maybe even slightly making fun of this means of education (still employed in law schools today!). But at least you’ll see how the thought process inherent in this method was more or less supposed to work to expose, or at least bring those in the dialog closer, to the truth.
The Socratic Method – the joy of reasoning intellectually, almost a game…
Ok, here comes Book VII of Plato’s Republic…
The Republic -- Book VII
Well, a footnote, here – why don’t we call the 10 books in The Republic chapters, since that’s what they really are?
There were of course no books in Plato’s day, only scrolls. The Ancients would also put several scrolls in a bundle or bag to make a book.
What is an allegory and how does it differ from a metaphor?
So, looking at your text of the allegory…
How exactly does Plato introduce us to his cave?
In a fictional dialog.
A dialog between whom?
Between Socrates and Glaucon (Plato’s older brother)?
Who is narrating this analogy?
Plato has Socrates tell the story.
What does Socrates say he is going to show us?
Socrates: “And now, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.” (p.1)
So is in this cave? And these humans have their necks and legs chained. Why? How long have they been there?
Since childhood - they “can only see before them” (p.1)
Is anyone else in the cave?
“Men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall.” … Some of them are talking, others silent.” (p.1)
“Behold! Human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light.” (p.1)
“Above them and behind them a fire is burning in the distance. And between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way. And you will see a raised wall built along the way.” (p.1)
“you have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. Like ourselves, I replied, and they see only their own shadows.”
“and if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?” (p.2)
“To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”
The puppeteers, in hoods hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.
“Plato's Allegory of the Cave” by Jan Saenredam, 1604, Albertina Museum, Vienna
I saw this wonderful etching in Vienna two summers ago at the Albertina Museum. But at that time I hadn’t reread the Allegory in a while. I wish I could see it again now!
Socrates then asks Glaucon to ponder a series of questions, among them he askes Glaucon to consider :
What if a prisoner were “released from their bonds and cured of their ignorance?” What then?
And what if that same prisoner were to return to the cave, how would the other prisoners react towards him? “Would not the remaining prisoners be skeptical of his claims of knowledge that resulted from his trip upward?”
What answers does Plato give to these questions in the text?
What does he say about the experience of passing from ignorance to knowledge or regressing from understanding back toward ignorance?
Release from the Cave
This illustration may help you to understand this cognitive situation better.
Or maybe you prefer it narrated…
Here is a TED Talk for you:
(again, you’ll need to have downloaded this PPT)
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/plato-s-allegory-of-the-cave-alex-gendler
In this allegory the objects that are seen are not really real according to Plato, but only mimicing real Forms.
The objects that are seen, according to Plato are not real, but literally mimic the real Forms. In this allegory, the things that are ordinarily perceived in the world are characterized as mere shadows of the real things, which are not perceived directly. That which the observer understands when he views the world mimics the archetypes or the universal ideas , perfect essences of those objects. Seeing an actual urn, reminds us of the the category of urn and the properties that make urns urns.
Our world is modeled after the patterns of Forms. The function of humans in our world is therefore to imitate the ideal world as much as possible which, importantly, includes imitating the good, i.e. acting morally. Just as shadows exist only because of the light of a fire, our world exists as, "the offspring of the good". You can no doubt see Plato’s idealism here and his connection to later Christianity, right?
Plato’s Theory of Forms
Ok, so this part of Plato is rather challenging to grasp.
If we were in a classroom I would narrate a drawing of it for you.
So, at this point you need to STOP, minimize this powerpoint
and click on “Drawing the Cave” under Lectures, where you will hear and/or see
a scholar from Belgium explain some things about it.
I’ll see you back here when you’re done...
I’m betting you have a much better grasp of Plato’s allegory now, right?
Plato believed that long before our bodies ever existed, our souls existed and inhabited heaven, where they became directly acquainted with the forms themselves. Real knowledge, to him, was knowledge of “the forms,” ideals or essences of things. But knowledge of the forms cannot be gained through sensory experience because the forms are not in the physical world. Therefore, our real knowledge of the forms behind the visible world is rooted in the memory of our initial acquaintance with the forms in heaven. Therefore, what we seem to be learning is in fact just remembering from our earlier experiences in heaven.
So, Plato tells us that our sensory perception of objects (our notion of reality), what we are seeing, is only a “shadow” of the real, the real forms, true reality is rooted in true forms behind our “reality.”
Where else have we encountered this notion that our sense of what reality is flawed?
That we cannot trust our sensory perceptions of things?
Idealism
Idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Idealists know our understanding of reality is flawed and express a skepticism that we can ever really know any mind-independent thing, only at best the idea behind it.
This is why Raphael portrayed Plato as pointing upwards, in reference to his belief in higher Forms, while Aristotle disagrees and points downwards to the here-and-now, with the belief that all we can know is what we “see” – (more about this later..).
Plato believes in reality, just not the one we see, the one based on sensory perception. So, in some senses we can call him a realist, I suppose.
Humans struggle to understand forms (real reality) much like men in the cave are left guessing at shadows in firelight.
Philosopher-kings make it out of the cave.
Plato defined a philosopher firstly as: "wisdom-lover." He then distinguishes between one who loves true knowledge (as opposed to mere experience or education) by saying that the philosopher is the only person who has access to forms and the ideas of things – those archetypal entities that exist behind all representations of any particular instance of that thing (such as Beauty itself as opposed to any one particular instance of beauty).
The goal of education is to drag every man as far out of the cave as possible. Education should not aim at putting knowledge into the souls “like putting sight into blind eyes” but at turning the soul toward right desires. (This much later becomes the debate about the value of lecturing vs. discussing in class. Where do you stand on this?
As the ones escaping the cave, Plato believes that philosopher-kings will also make the best rulers. Can you find reference to this in your text?
Ok, so who actually makes it out of the cave then?
Reality vs. Non-Reality
Plato believed that our senses are deceptive and what we experience in our daily lives is not reality but the shadow of reality. This is one of the main messages in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, but there are countless references to this notion in our modern world – as in, for example, many well-known contemporary films, like The Truman Show or this one…
Let’s step back at this point…
Ok, at this point, let’s step back a bit.
here is where you need to STOP, eat dinner and consider watching this film, which in case you couldn’t identify it, it is The Matrix and is available for you back in the content area. Only now you will watch it with deeper understanding of its message and of its connection way back to Ancient Greece. (it is not required, just enlightening fun)…
Fun Self-Quiz
1. Put the 3 famous Greek philosophers in order of who came when.
2. Who was Plato’s first critic of the three?
3. Describe idealism.
4. Name two movies or books that are similar to the “Allegory of the Cave”.
5. Why is Plato’s allegory important?
Fun Self-Quiz (con’t…)
6. Name one element or aspect that you remember from the Allegory.
7. What was Plato’s school called?
8. True or false: Plato hated art (you don’t know, but what would you think?)
9. What else can you relate the allegory to? politics? education? psychology? Something in your field? ….
Anselm Feuerbach. Das Gastmahl des Platon (Plato’s symposium), 1869
How do the other rulers come across in this painting?
Do you see Socrates and probably Plato in Socratic dialog with other “philosopher-kings” below?
