At the beginning of book seven of Plato’s Republic, Socrates famously invokes an image of human nature with respect to education and the lack of it, likening their situation to that of prisoners in a cave.

The cave

Imagine an underground cave-like dwelling, its entrance entirely out of sight. Inhabiting this cave are human beings whose feet and necks are changed so they can neither get up nor turn their heads.

I.            They can only see straight ahead above, and behind them burns a fire, and between them and the fire, there is a raised path and a low wall like the screen above, in which performers display their puppets.

II.             Behind this wall, men passed to and fro carrying statues and figures of human beings, animals, and other objects in such a manner that the artifacts appeared over the top of the screen, projecting onto the wall opposite the fire.

III.             The prisoners, unable to see neither the objects carried behind them nor one another, behold only the shadows of themselves and the statues cast onto the wall in front of them.

Representation

The prisoners represent the vast majority of the human race. They’re like us, says Socrates:

·         They live in a world where images are mistaken for realities; what is a shadow 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 they have been exposed to nothing but distortions of the truth throughout their lives. They are, in other words, unaware of their ignorance.

Representation

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.

·        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.

o    So, what are our authoritative opinions? What kinds of beliefs, attitudes, values, perspectives, prejudices, and principles characterize us and our particular way of life? Can you think of examples of powerful opinions inherited from our parents, teachers, professors, politicians, and the media? Opinions to which we are deeply and perhaps even uncritically attached.

Representation

The men carrying the statues are the lawgivers, the founders of religions, artists, activists, and intellectuals who establish or contribute to the cultural values and cosmic worldview that characterize and define any given society.

·       In his excellent commentary on Plato’s Republic, professor Alan 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 just how powerful are the various horizons constituted by law or convention. These authoritative opinions are not accurate reflections of nature but rather a curious amalgam of nature and convention or human custom.”

o    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”.

Definitions

This precisely is the business of philosophy which literally means the love of wisdom, coming from the ancient Greek words phailin (Philo), 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, 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 reasoning.

Socrates reasoned that if we 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 does not always thoughtfully pursue.

We are all of us, therefore, in need of philosophy but let us continue with The Cave allegory.

The Cave Continued

IV.            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.

V.            Moreover, he would have difficulty believing that the statues are more real than their pale shadows decorating the cave wall, as the ladder are all that the prisoner has ever known since childhood.

VI.             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.

VII.             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.

VIII.            On one side of the cave, the glaring sun would leave him temporarily blinded, unable to see objects in the natural world.

IX.            Gradually, however, he would recover his sight, first making out the shadows of things on the ground, then seeing their reflections and 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 night time. And then finally see the sun itself by itself in its own region.

X.            Having spent his whole life mistaking the soiled fragments of the truth for the truth itself, the philosopher has finally achieved liberation from the cave of ignorance. He has literally become enlightened 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, habits and opinions, honors, customs, and praises.

XI.            Indeed, the very lives of the prisoners languishing in the darkness below can only be seen as pitiful slavish, and crude.

XII.            Upon reentering 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.

XIII.             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.

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; instead, 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. But 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 this 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, 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.”