Plato begins a conversation with his older brother, Glaucon with these words:
“And now, Glaucon, let us examine our nature regarding our education and the lack of it and let us do so by imagining this: people living in a place, very similar to a cave beneath the surface of the earth. Its entrance is pointed towards the light and it stretches the full length of the cave. These people have been there since childhood, chained at the neck and around the wrists in such a manner that they are forced to seat in this one single position unable to turn their heads in any direction, able only to look straight ahead.” (Bacchicstage, The Allegory of the Cave).
This conversation takes them to a parable – it seems that teachers love parables! – the parable of a cave. Physically, the cave is almost identical to the old type of cinemas, ie, people sitting down facing a screen where shadows appear, thanks to a projector behind them and to the light which throws these shadows and the sound these shadows make, onto the screen. During the days of my infancy, few years only after WWII but still during a savage civil war, my younger sister and I could walk into any one of those cinemas, in Thessaloniki and watch people coming in and staying there all day. The cinema would screen two or three movies, the one after the other, repeatedly, most probably all day and perhaps all night. One only had to buy one ticket and s/he could sit there all day, if they so wished. Often, the couples would talk to one another, explaining which of these shadows was who and why it did what it did to the other shadows. In the main, these films were American (you can surmise what geopolitical views you like from this) and “Westerns.” (Here, too, you are free to surmise what you like).
Our cinema people are not forcefully tied to their chairs nor are unable to look elsewhere. The outside world has nothing to offer them, so we may, validly, say that they too, are “forced” if not chained, to go to these caves and stay there until the darkness comes to the outside world also. They can move around, come and go into and from the cinema but they don’t. There they will sit, morning and night watching the shadows in front of them. Plato, in fact, with his cave parable, predicted this later-day cave, this watching of shadows and of thinking of them as being parts of reality, of real life. Reality, after all, was not very attractive, nor very engaging during that time in Greece. Better stick to the shadows. This, as I see it would be a very valid reason for having a greater interest in the shadows than they had in the existence of something else, something which others called “reality.” Plato, however, goes on from here to turn this parable into a fairly sophisticated philosophical exercise. He has one of these men in the cave, unchained and taken up to where reality, THE truth, goes through its steps. When arriving on the surface of the Earth, our unchained man, begins with hurting, yet to be adjusting eyes, to look around him. Then after a time of painful orientation he is eventually lead to look up at the sun and understand the cause of the shadows. This leads him to something which must have astonished him:
There, on the surface of the Earth, one sees the real, the actual thing, whereas down there, below the surface, in the cave where he came from, one sees only its shadow! He immediately thinks of his friends back in the cave and feels that he is obliged to inform them about this, what must have seemed to him, a most astonishing discovery; about where reality is, what it looks like and how it behaves. About what is real and what is an illusion of the real – its shadow, in other words, so he rushes back to the dark cave where his friends are still there, still chained to their seats, still unable to move about, still kept away from the truth, from the reality, still talking about these shadows on the wall in front of them, attributing all sorts of qualities and abilities to them, which, of course, these shadows, did not possess. With a great deal of gusto – the sort that anyone who has just discovered something feels, he announces to his friends the truth of what they are seeing and that now he can show them what the reality, the truth that these shadows hide.
In other words this man tries to give his cave-dwelling friends something that they didn’t yet have: information that can be relied upon. But how did his friends receive this information? They mocked him and they did so with anger, thinking that he was trying to persuade them to believe in something which they could not accept! Obviously, they thought, his “discovery” had a sinister purpose and obviously, the people up where he went, have, by some evil way corrupted his mind and now he is trying to corrupt their minds also. They threatened him.
The truth has been suppressed by ignorance. Ignorance that has been secured, chained and unable to be converted to knowledge and wisdom.
The truth has been made to be fearful.
I remember when the smart phone first popped into my hand and I started using it. I wondered then what Plato would have said, what he would have made of his cave metaphor if this communication marvel was around during his time. How would he present his cave scenario?
If the cave person who was dragged out of the dark cave was mocked and attacked because he had now a certain amount of reality and fact (“data” is the new term) we can try and imagine just how much more belligerent those cave men would have been if they were suddenly handed a smart phone, so smart that in that little instrument (device” is the new noun for it) were facts, truth, data, of a million modern-day libraries! Let us now jump some 21 centuries in our direction and look for a man who had to deal with the same sort of truth against a similar “shadows” scenario. In the 16th century we find the polymath but also a studious student of the σύμπαν, (sympan, the total cosmos), of the stars and of all those shining things that filled the full and endless sky. That man was Galileo Galilei, an inventor of what we now call “science.” Oh, and we mustn’t forget, Galileo also played the lute excellently. A polymath, indeed!
Galileo Galilei and Plato would be very good friends, if they ever met. Both had an inquiring mind and both looked for the truth. Galileo, then did something very similar in the 16th century with his telescope – also a very new invention – and his Vatican dwellers (Vatican also a platonic “cave” of a religious lot of echoes and shadows). Galileo asked the hierarchy to look through his telescope and believe with their eyes rather than what Aristotle, (Plato’s student) who had said that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Arguing against this view was sacrilege in the eyes of the Catholic church. Galileo proved them wrong but accepting the error of this theory would have put the rest of the Christian theories (and therefore many dogmas) in jeopardy. “We can’t have that,” the hierarchy said. The whole Christian theology would be in jeopardy. So, these men were overtaken by fear and by a hatred to anything new and anything that suggests that the world was not as their bible and religious books had it. This brought Galileo to the closest proximity of crucifixion. In the end, instead of crucifixion (the punishment they gave Giordano Bruno, not too many years earlier) he was condemned to house arrest and so – by stealth – we now have his writings.
So! The man who was dragged out of that cave was shown the real world and – let us call him “the first smart phone” was followed by another man who was also trying to educate his fellow cave dwellers, namely the Vatican dwellers and here we are now, in the 21 century AD with the actual “smart phone!”
What would Plato do with that little black device? Would he devise a new scenario or would that cave scenario suffice?
The current smart phone has a million (I’m supposing) vast libraries of information within its clicks and scrolls, whereas the unchained man only had his brain and his five senses; what then could a single man gather if he was simply left alone to learn about the universe? His information was far less than that available from the “searches” one can conduct with the aid of our smart phone. But the reality and the accuracy would – if no malady challenged them – which he disseminated would be more reliable… would it not?
What are, in the final analysis, flaws and what are meticulous truths?
And another consideration: Can, the human brain compete, in the final analysis with a “device” run by algorithms?
Dear reader, we need your support
Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.
One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.
With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.
Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
Plato’s Cave, the concept that saved Western philosophy from mediocrity.
In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell devotes a mere 3/4 of a page to the Allegory of the Cave. He gives a brief description that comes nowhere near that provided by George here above. He provided no commentary or analysis.
There is a reason for that.
George understands the allegory.
Russell did not.
It went straight over his head. He disparaged it by referring to it as a simile.
It is far more than a simile.
Russell gives the impression that he included it in his great work because too many questions would be asked if he did not.
It is possibly the most important passage in the entire canon of Western philosophy.
If it seems too obscure to understand, and therefore not worth the trouble, print this article, and re-read it from time to time.
You’ll be glad you did.
Better still, get a copy of Plato’s Republic. The allegory is found at the beginning of Book VII
But remember this. There is one weakness in the allegory.
The journey to truth in the allegory is an outward journey.
The journey to ultimate truth is an inward journey.
Steve Davies, you’re a marvel!
You indeed understand the allegory!
And I thank you heartily for your kind words. I would be risking making the great moral fall to arrogance if i said any more than what you did about Russell’s treatment but whilst I don’t think he trully understood the value of that allegory, he is not the only one and it is probably something cultural, something that emerges out of the English moral view, or the view of morals, at his time. Australian Unis were also guilty of having that diminutive perspective of Greek moral philosophy.
In my estimation, I believe, as obviously you do, that the allegory of the cave is the womb, or the seed of moral philosophy and cannt be dismissed with a few passing references. It stayed with me since the university days when I studied it and it pops up so regularly, one would think that I have studied nothing else!
Thanks muchly once again, Steve.
Ouch!
Michael, my comment (response to Steve) has disappeared! Can’t seem to be able to bring it back. Can you?
Steve, I thank you enormously for your great comment about my and about Russell’s treatment of this quintessential allegory by Plato. It is, indeed, the seed of what moral views appeared after it and even today’s philosophers owe much to this very allegory. Thanks again!
George T. This prompted me to revisit old days and readings, so I found a good translation of the Cave Allegory on a Harvard Uni. site, a newer translation by Shawn Eyer, and have gome back to old days memories, looking at works by prof Hamlyn, B Russell, Will Durant, Pocket book library series, etc. Undoubtedly, the initial spark of Socrates infused me, over sixty years ago and thus some readings and interests onwards, But, I may find little new, or, who knows, some refreshed outlook. Now…
Phil Pryor, there’s a stunning translation here: https://bacchicstage.wordpress.com/plato/the-cave/
Better than all the others, I dare say!
Check it out!
Found it, George. It’s now in its rightful place.
I’ve read some of Socrates and Plato and the ‘Cave’ theatre allegory. Now, that story rings true, as most myths do. But, does anyone need a smart phone to traverse the allegory? History proves not.
If ‘shadow’ is ego-dreaming, then ‘sunlight’ is the cognition that ego is a cultivated, seemingly-real, wind-up toy chatterbox, perpetually most pleased in rambling mode. That’s it in a nutshell, no need smart phone.
Like every other comment on the net, this post will get channelled into an every-expanding data centre in the Arizona desert or similar. Programmers will write algos for AI, to order the data into some recognizable patterns, forever and day, or until the grid goes down.
4th-6th LAWS of AI?
#4 All myths are conspiracy theories
#5 The DELETE button is your friend
#6 Only Elon’s brain chip can help you achieve your ultimate potential
Some say wisdom can be found anywhere, anytime. I heard someone found it on a bus ride, another was struck by lightning, another while walking out of a shop, etc.
What are the chances, one day, someone will be walking along a footpath, day-dreaming as they scroll a smart phone and fall into a water fountain, and BINGO – enlightenment? And the Arizona Computer Banks will go whirrrrrrrrr, oblivious to another no-one exiting ‘the cave’.
Breezy, like a breath of fresh air, gusting, whoosh… through the cobwebs of the mind… cleansing. Well said, sir.
Looking for wisdom? Try extinguishing the ego, for starters. Start with the 7 Deadlies, observe, acknowledge, starve & annihilate.
Exactly Canga, it’s all about the ego.
But keep in mind, the allegory provides direction at or for the material level, through awareness at the intellectual level, and the metaphysical level.
It’s interesting that the discussion with Glaucon goes further, raising the question or the possibility that those who see Reality might choose to remain, to not return to the Cave. That’s where the allegory merges, in my view, with Advaita, Zen, Taoism etc.
A fascinating subject.
I was hoping, folks that some of you would have noticed a couple of things which I did not make obvious in the telling of the allegory:
the first “device” was a man, a human, alone. He was helped to get out of the deeply dark and shadowy place to be brought up, above the cave’s roof, where shadows did not rule but the source of those shades was made clear, the Sun, which also reveal the fact that the shadows are not facts, not the truth and not the reality. This excited our man very much and he wanted to “enlighten” his mates, back in the cave. His mates though were very comfortable with their corrupted (by the shadows) views about things and not only mocked our angel (messenger) of truth but almost killed for trying to change their mind.
So, the first challenger was a man. The second was a device, the telescope, which the Vatican also mocked and almost killed its inventor and the third was the “smart phone” about which Plato knew nothing.
Man (no device, only his eyes, ears and other senses; Then the telescope which made vision clearer and thus more truthful but equally needing a change of a belief that was developed in a cave and finally a device which knows nothing about truth, reality or shadows but carries inforation which mn can seek at will and whim. The smart phone is oblivious to facts, truths, moral judgements, lies or anything beyond what others have fed it.
So the journey from the cave to the smart phone has gone pst the truth examiner (telescope and microscope and xray and scans are built with the one function in mind, the revelation of the truth, which if a dispute is to be made it also has to be made by a device or devices better than the previous.)
I was hoping that someone would open up that conversation. It would inexorably deliver us to moral truths -moral evils and moral virtues.
Perhaps another time for that. Thank you all for your contributions. I know the article was a bit too wordy but, believe me, I tried to make it less so.
Canguro, “Try extinguishing the ego, for starters” is the way to go. I heard the next step is to give up the search. That’s the tricky bit, changing a habit?
George, I’ve been in the same room with a number of enlightened teachers who used smart phones during breaks. Phones are useful for trading info quickly.
What would Plato do with a smart phone? I don’t know, probably the same?
I did hear one enlightened person say that he used to travel overseas carrying a camera so it looked like he was a tourist. That’s practical.
Canguro, do you think that the fact that smart phones (as we know them now) would make him rethink his allegory? Or would he use it as a part of the story? But what I wanted to do with this article is to exhibit the three types of information transmission and that the question of discerning truth and lie is a difficult one and that it plays a prominent role in the search for Justice. Justice is all about whether a person is guilty or innocent in the context of a court. Remember, Plato saw his teacher, Socrates, a man he admired a great deal who was condemned to death by a jury that consisted of 501 men. The vote was close but still, without going in too much detail, Socrates was condemned to death.
Truth, lie, virtue, evil, fact, idea (he has a construct of “forms and ideas” which he explains later on) play a vital role in this search of what he called “Kalipolis” (viruous -or good- polis, city or State).
The cave allegory is a part of this collection of thoughts.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
A quote which I haven’t seen as such but it could be true. Some blog called “Ancient Facts” posted it as ameme on my FB account.
Incidentally, in my previous post, my word “virtuous” ended up as “viruous”. Sorry!
George, maybe the truth is that the highest part of an individual is not the thinker but rather a witnessing to the process; and the lie is: each individual thinking s/he is the thinker / controller, until they wake up / woke up laughingly?
Socrates held the right to free speech above life itself.
These days such a person would be charged with spreading misinfo.
Anyone see where shutting down free speech leads?
It leads to the end of freedom, and that’s what your govt/msm wants for you.
They want you to have a dead mind, a robotic mind. Smart phones must help.
“Anyone see where shutting down free speech leads?
It leads to the end of freedom, and that’s what your govt/msm wants for you.”
Exactly Breezy.
It’s already bad here in Oz, but worse in Europe, incl the UK.
The Romanian election was cancelled because the “wrong” candidate looked like winning. He has now been barred from contesting.
Breezy, I have a slight difficulty understanding your view as you’ve expressed it in your first paragraph. I’m struggling with your concept of “higher” and (though you don’t use the word) the lower is the “lie” (misbelief?) that the thinker is also the ruler. I’ll have to think about that a bit more before I attempt to respond to it.
As for the “right” (in this case, of free speech), There was nothing formally written to defend this view or to discard it. There were no “rights” outside those stipulated by the laws and I’d suggest that if human rights were of some concern, Solon, the philosopher-lawyer, (for one) would have mentioned them. He didn’t; nor did Socrates mention such right. s in his Apology (response to the accusations).
Rights, I would suggest were things that were mentioned (or intimated) in the discussions regarding Justice which is the heart of his thesis in Plato’s Republic.
He was not accused -could not therefore be accused- of something that had to do with the freedom of speech. Rather, he was accused of corrupting the youth (by his teachings) and of introducing gods, goddesses, and therefore religion, foreign to Athens. I won’t go on discussing the extent of his guilt or innocence, his “crimes,” here but you are quite right to turn our eye to the results of a nation prohibiting people from speaking “freely.” We see it every day in today’s political ways. Prohibiting speech leads to a corruption of Democracy and to the introduction of dictatorship, a subject for another article perhaps.
Let us also not forget that the votes of the jury (501 strong,) were very close 280, versus 221. My maths defies me but if I were to dare to do the calculation, i think that, if 30more out of those 501, voted in his favour, he’d be found innocent.
Your conclusion, of course that “They want you to have a dead mind, a robotic mind,” is indubitably correct.
However, your view that the “smart phone” is “a must,” is somewhat precarious, considering that societies that existed before the introduction of this device had no more and no fewer problems that societies after its introduction had or have. The smart phone, as I said in this article is merely a portable library clogged with facts, pieces written by various authors who, one would hope, know what they’re talking about and are not simply writing to fulfil their ideological agendas.
Thanks for entering the conversation.
George, Breezy’s “highest part” is in line with Platonic Idealism, although I get the impression that he’s expressing it in Advaita terms.
Many thanks, Steve.
Steve is correct. Advaita and Non-duality is a source of inspiration. I tried to read Plato decades ago but it was beyond me then. Now, I’m out of time.
George, my bad to put ‘right to’ in the same sentence with Socrates . . free speech.
‘Rights’ given by law-makers are more like privileges. Who needs rights, privileges or permissions to say what they think?
Socrates’ trial went south when he infuriated the jury by winding up those who had voted to let him escape the death penalty if he left Greece. He stood by his free speech principle. A second vote increased the number of jurors who voted for the death penalty. The jailer, who had eyes to see, offered him an escape from jail and poisoning, Socrates refused.
Each person is borne fully cognisant of freedom, aware of life-not-named, but without a framework of how the rules of the mind-games operate. It takes time to be subsumed by indoctrination, but eventually self-correcting or self-silencing takes over, and the sleeper begins the lone journey, Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’. Some never wake up.
Those who later see clearly the programming for what it is, still live in the matrix. Depending on their nature & level of indoctrination, that creates waves or not. Jesus, Socrates, etc created waves that are still reverberating.
“Smart phones must help”, add ‘those who want to control others’. If people knew what smart phones really are there’d be a rush for dumb phones.
‘Buddha at the Gas Pump’ has some Non-duality (Advaita) interviews.
Yes. Thank you Breezy.
No problem, I haven’t checked BATGAP for years so I don’t know what direction it’s taken, but I can recommend Adyashanti, his teaching has borne the most fruit.
Tho’ I come late to this discussion, I have been greatly stimulated – both by the original article and the subsequent comments.
I can readily sympathise with Breezy, in that a fair while ago I did battle my way through a dense book entitled “Plato’s Theory of Knowledge”, it being a treatise on Platonic epistemology. As you might imagine, the topic was huge, and I did struggle with the content – especially in trying to “join-the-dots” in order to gain some familiarity with the concept. However, and mainly through dumb luck I did come to understand that whatever knowledge was, it was clearly central to everything else.
The main takeaway for me was that Plato’s conception of knowledge (or ultimate reality) was metaphysical and exists the in the realm of “Forms”. Using the “Allegory of the Cave” helps things along by suggesting these are accessible through reason and through the hard work of escaping the ‘cave’ of sensory perception to appreciate the ultimate reality beyond.
Plato’s claim that ultimate reality is metaphysical may well be true, as for example modern cosmology would have neither time nor space as absolutes and Quantum Physics allows matter to consist in potentialities only. Consequently as regards the matter / energy equation – or more correctly perhaps the equilibrium between them – is the contemplation of either (by the observer) sufficient to alter the characteristics of one or the other?
In other words, what has to act upon energy for it to transform, and likewise what could act upon matter for it to change its present characteristic or expression? For example, must there always be an observer (however else such might be described) for “things to happen”; are we in fact inseparable from our observation and hence intimate with our own creation? Does this in fact require a metaphysical explanation, or is the answer a lot simpler than we perhaps thought?
The passing of time allows one now to say, yes, the “Theory of Knowledge” remains important, but it is one source among many that attempt to deal with those fundamental questions that seem destined ever to deny us a resolution; indeed there are so many fascinating theories that can be explored, it would take more than a few lifetimes to “cover the field”.
That of course opens up notions of reincarnation – not so much as a progression of lower to higher life-forms, but rather a process of learning, of gaining wisdom so that actions and behaviours don’t have to be repeated or indulged in endlessly (and fruitlessly); the knowledge or wisdom gained in this process is said to be crucial to the understanding of the Self – the end to which I am told all knowledge is properly directed.
Many years ago at a local Council function I spoke briefly with an elderly woman, a stranger to me. Out of the blue she asked: “What was the question I had that could not be formulated?”
“What was it I wanted to know?”
I was momentarily lost for words.
She continued: “When you know that which looks out upon me from behind your eyes, you will know who you are”.
At the time, that response thoroughly mystified me. Currently I understand that the essential me is not the body, as that entity faces so much limitation in time and space that it’s not funny. I conclude that the essential (or real) me is an animating spirit – soul seems not quite the right word, but yet it might be. In any event I believe that is the one that looks out upon the world from behind my eyes and laughs.
As far as smart phones go, I believe Plato would see it as a mere trifle, an unwanted distraction from what’s really important. That’s why I have dumb phone.
JP, I found your account of the conversation with a stranger fascinating.
Her two questions reminded me of Zen koans.
Her answer, or final statement, was in line with the importance in Advaita of the internal silent witness.
What a remarkable person! What are the chances of an encounter like that?
And it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one to struggle with Plato’s Forms!
Luckily, I found Eastern philosophy to be much more “user friendly”.
Cheers Steve.