Plato | "The Allegory of the Cave" | The Republic | Philosophers Explained | Stephen Hicks
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- čas přidán 3. 08. 2024
- Philosophers, Explained covers major philosophers and texts, especially the great classics. In each episode, Professor Hicks discusses an important work, doing a close reading that lasts 40 minutes to an hour.
In this episode, Dr. Hicks reads the Allegory of the Cave in Book 7 of Plato's Republic, discussing the allegory itself and the metaphysical, epistemological, social, educational and psychological conclusions it draws.
00:56 The lecture begins
01:39 The thought experiment begins: imagine people living in a cave (514a)
02:44 What they see (514c)
03:50 A short explanation
06:56 The prisoners are released(515c)
10:53 An instructor comes along(515d)
12:12 They are dragged out of the cave(515e)
14:33 Enlightenment(516b)
14:52 He remembers his former home(516c)
15:55 What does he do next?(516e)
17:14 He returns to the cave((517a)
19:13 This allegory shows us the state we are in(517b)
20:30 Human affairs are beneath us(517d)
23:23 Knowledge is within us(518c)
Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian University in Poland.
Other links:
Explaining Postmodernism audiobook: • Explaining Postmoderni...
Website: www.stephenhicks.org/
Facebook: / srchicks
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Instagram: / stephenhicksphilosophy
The 30 in the first series include:
1. Immanuel Kant
2. Plato
3. Galileo Galilei
4. Ayn Rand
5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
6. René Descartes
7. Jean-Paul Sartre
8. Socrates
9. Martin Heidegger
10. Thomas Aquinas
11. Arachne and Athena
12. Aristotle
13. Albert Camus
14. Friedrich Nietzsche
15. John Dewey
16. Sigmund Freud
17. G.W.F. Hegel
18. William James
19. Søren Kierkegaard
20. John Locke
21. Karl Marx
22. John Stuart Mill
23. Thales
24. Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile
25. William Paley
26. C.S. Lewis
27. David Hume
28. John Maynard Keynes
29. Thomas Kuhn
30. George Orwell
Full Series playlist: czcams.com/video/z-kR5Ove3tI/video.html
Holy shit. I'm starting now. Thank you for your work. I've learned so much.
Thanks for that. Much appreciated
In the bloom translation the first sentence is about making an image of education, extending this seems like over-reach to me. It's not a cave, it's a den, this is actually important later on, when the allegory changes (as it always does when he uses them).
The confusion around epistemology here is back to the fact that this is about education.
Illusion is a poor choice of words, it's TRUER, not untrue, a shadow is more true than a fantasy (illusion) and we generally associate the word illusion with a lack of truth (or grounding), which is different from a lower order (dimension) of a true event. I interpreted this as more about limited understanding, not lack of truth. This is related to later claims in this particular book, around classes in the city and their limitations and why those 'upper' classes need to be lowered (even though it doesn't benefit them) for the greater good of the city.
Glad you recognize that this isn't some individualistic seeking for knowledge. Stressing that this is not a happy process is super important.
Around 14:40 or so, I am not so sure education is stressed here, the word in Bloom is wisdom and it's not lacking in the den, it's just different, so it's not about being given a false narrative, just a less rich one. This might be required, say, if someone were unable to take in a more rich narrative, due to cognitive limitations. You could point to extremes easily enough, but no one talks about where the average cognition is and how that impacts this allegory (which I'll argue makes no sense until later on when he's talking about limiting 'higher' classes and 'dragging them down' into the lower parts of the city, in a stunning and necessary reversal of the beginning allegory (a pattern which I believe is repeated in many of the books of the Republic).
Around 17, you are talking about the first part of 516, but by 516 d Socrates actually reverses his own argument and explains why someone would want to go back, to be honored by those who are still trapped. He juxtaposes being 'true' to reality with getting accolades, I think this is an extremely important (and deep) set of points. It's a conflict between two things which are not in direct opposition (not binaries are exclusive or really connected at all) but whose outcomes are in conflict.
I am not sure talking about liberators is appropriate, the interesting thing about this allegory is that the idea that someone could be 'freed' from what they were (in the Bloom translation) born into, is a conjecture. It doesn't happen and the implication is that it cannot happen, one cannot move up (this is actually important later on in the book) from the condition they were born into. This speculation about what would happen is to show the lack of utility in being liberated to some extent but more to make the later point about the necessity of dragging those 'philosopher class' who are 'higher' back down into something resembling the den (but it's the 'lower' part of the city). Without that context, the allegory cannot be properly understood in my opinion, it is simply a non-nonsensical thought experiment (a theme throughout The Republic) that highlights only absurdity.
One problem that I see is that the allegory of the cave is over long before this point, it has already been expanded to the concept of soul here, at least implying a conflict between the physical and the non-physical - this is extremely important, since the den is long gone and we are in this hypothetical to justify the allegory (explicitly at 517d in your text, stated differently in Bloom).
Odd that you mention religion so late, it's in the text much earlier (you skipped over mentions of the gods) and in my text, Plato is explicit, the 'sun' is the 'fire' in the den. I find this quite interesting. To say the sun represents something 'higher' in terms of enlightenment is skipping ahead, long after the den has been abandoned and other images have been brought in, once the non-material aspect is being primarily discussed. I'll argue that the format of the books is generally starting with an image of the purely material and moves away from that to the purely non-material (it's a quest to understand justice, after all, how else could you formulate such an endeavor) changing the imagery all along.
Where is this 'self sacrifice' aspect in the text? Later on, near the end, long after the den has been left behind, the idea that the philosopher class (again, not any individual, we've left that idea behind completely by this point) must be moved downward (Glaucoma, in fact, objects to doing this!) not to the den, but the lower areas of the city. It's not a voluntary act, nor is it pleasant and it is to the detriment of the true philosophers to have this happen to them (although, it's not clear in the Bloom translation, at least) but this isn't necessary 'bad' for them either. I think we use far far too much (what I'll call) Age of Gnosis framing here, combining that post modern idea that we can interpret (when none is really required, Plato seems to address all of the ambiguity quite nicely) this allegory as an individualistic triumph over those who would put us in bondage as seen clearly in so many movies, culminating, I would argue, with The Matrix.
I don't see Plato using enlightenment, this seems distinctly bad interpretation, it's more like 'more true' or more fully true.
We get back to education and its relationship to knowledge here at the end. So the allegory is about education and knowledge and those limitations, not enlightenment as we think about it in more recent times. I believe the implication here is also that education and the perfection of the soul are not the actually related.
I don't know about social values (beyond justice, the topic of the Republic) or human nature (that is always assumed in the books from what I can see) as being part of the allegory, that idea of the den is tossed aside and new ways of relating are introduced throughout book 7, so I think casting the allegory as the whole book, or the whole of book 7 as the allegory is a complete misframing of what is being done. It is easy to compress the whole point of book 7 into the beginning allegory, but this misses the point of the inevitability of the class system, the limitation of education to 'solve' that problem or the need for those above to tend to those below them in class. All of which are paramount to justice, as it does require a sacrifice.
People these days talking about whether we live in _1984_ or _Brave New World_ ... personally I've always felt that it's more like the _Allegory of the cave_ where the shadows are cast by politicians and their bitches in corporate media
Don’t pity me. I see through the veil.
Ok smart guy
nothing new under the sun