Plato’s Cave, Republic, Book VII
===================================
Wolran Kim
October 2013
The theme of this article appeared in the first sentence, “How far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.” There were people who were born in an underground den and could not look back because their arms, legs, and heads were chained. They faced the wall with nothing but a big bonfire behind them. They could only see shadows of themselves and of free people who were passing between the fire and them. They believed the moving shadows were reality and the truth.
But one prisoner loosened the chains and saw the reality of the shadows and the fire when he looked back. He escaped out of the cave and saw the sun which made shadows. He realized the truth about shadows. He went back into the cave to teach the truth to the other ignorant fellows but they only persecuted him because they could not understand him at all. (As if what happened to Socrates.)
The man, who saw the outside world once he escaped, was not envious of the prisoners’ trivial wisdom because there were no points in their arguments. He would rather feel pain in adapting his eyesight going in and out of the cave than honor the greedy false position in the cave. Plato’s point is that knowledge is much more valuable than comfortable ignorance, which is shown from the man suffering from the disadvantage of having to adapt his eyes in the real world.
The prisoners who were tied in the cave are human, and the shadows on the wall reflected their prejudices, stereotypes, and speculations. Today’s world is known as the new slavery era in the 21st century because of the gaps between the rich and the poor, and the importance of social status. I think that wealth and social position, which people pursue their whole lives, might be the shadows in the dark cave because people live 100 years at most. Another thing is the power which creates public opinion for political and social advantages, throwing the ignorant citizens in a dark cave for their own welfare.
I think this is all about epistemology (What is knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge? How much can we rely on what we think we know? What are the most reliable ways to get knowledge?). Knowledge is a clear recognition and understanding from learning or experience. If I say I know, that means I do not know anything about what I don’t know. The most obvious way to obtain knowledge is education, because we have petty affairs with obvious limitations of time and space to get to know by direct experience in this world.
The cave’s prisoners were forced by recognition from the real world, and they only believed the shadows. Their ignorance came from their environment. If they were free, they would have naturally seen the fire and the sun. People seem to only know the present while the importance of education is passing in every case.
Where ignorance is bliss, this is applicable to the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, because ignorance of the truth is more convenient for them. Knowing and not knowing is the same difference as black and white. People know as much as they can see. We would not know even if we see if we don’t have any information. Knowledge is divided into levels of knowledge and gossip to me. Knowledge brings a much bigger profit in the level of intelligence in terms of material or human relations. Consequently, it is better to be doing not knowing in a gossip dimension because usually gossip creates trouble.
Intellectual knowledge is a way to improve the quality of life as “Knowing is power.” Most of the time I want to know in the level of knowledge and see that those things are useful for visible results or are absolute tools of better information. Also, interest and joy bring excitement to the desire to know. On the contrary, I don’t want to know if there would be no visible result or interest.
Aristotle said that the best goodness which the human pursues is happiness. Complex meanings of happiness often are depicted through the various proverbs and sayings; a Japanese proverb is ‘People’s happiness and sadness may not be known until they are covered up in the coffin.’ And a Korean proverb is ‘The irony of fate.’ — Inscrutable are the ways of Heaven or an evil that may sometimes turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
The meaning of freedom is sometimes used as opposed to forced and sometimes as opposed to the inevitable. Aristotle was distinct that the human acts to intentional and unintentional acts. Thomas Aquinas’ concept of freedom dominated the medieval feudal society. Aquinas asserts that all human thinking and behavior is expected and in accordance with the will of God, but freedom is granted to humans because God will also be free. Rousseau said that freedom only belongs to individuals because it is an attribute in the natural state of humans. According to Marxism, the freedom considered depends on an objective necessity in nature and society—in relation to human relations about objective legitimacy.
We do not realize what ordinary freedom means to us until it is taken by force. We would be really nervous and uncomfortable if we had to follow someone else’s command suddenly in our daily lives with tasks such as eating and sleeping. In the common sense, happiness is in the freedom and unhappiness is outside of freedom. But the pursuit of happiness may be possible without limit depending on the mindset. Happiness is possible to adjust in accordance with the complex and ever-changing minds of humans. For this reason, there is optimism and pessimism.
In general, freedom means a natural status without any domination or binding from the outside or inside, and that one can do what they want to. But it is difficult to build a conclusion philosophically. Most people manage their everyday lives freely except in a communist society, but the strict regulations always exist and laws are governed as members of society. Sartre said that freedom is just punishment and only engagement and union are real freedom. Since Freud, science does not recognize human beings as having free will.
There is no man who lives and dies freely. Therefore, strictly nobody is free but the freedom during their life must bear the punishment of responsibility and choice. Generally freedom and happiness are directly proportional. Free people are happier than prisoners by any common sense. The fish is free in the fish bowl. The fish bowl is the expectation of God and the freedom of the fish is the free will of humans. Happiness is like air. It is everywhere but people may not realize it until they are losing it, just like freedom.
Almost every word in Plato’s Cave is trope; cave, the prisoners in the cave, chains, the walls of the cave, shadows, people outside of the cave and their vessels, statues, the first man who gets out of the cave, the entrance to the cave, a rising hill, dazzling sight, visual disability, the restoration of sight, nature, blue sky, the moon, the stars, the sun, and the visible world. I chose “shadows” among these allegories.
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice? (Plato, p.6)
The “shadow” is an intermediation of illusion, which is blocking the enlightened from the unenlightened. Law is made from the people who are representative of power, and often it is not a legitimate origin of justice. The people who were trapped in the cave seem to be the people of the modern Internet world. The virtual world of the Internet is the first visible truth to the people who are sitting in front of their computers. This truth is the same as the allegory of the shadows.
Shadow is a representative analogy of the cave. The dictionary meaning of shadow is an area where direct light from a light source cannot reach due to obstruction by an object. It also includes reflections of mirror or water, silhouettes, images, traces and clues, and is represented by the metaphorical synonyms such as darkness, sorrow, and misery.
The shadow is negative if light is positive such is the relationship between untruth and the truth. The people in the cave trust the shadow as the truth and live with satisfaction without any objection, because they have never seen anything other than the shadow. However, people outside the cave know the shadow is an illusion because they live under the sunlight. They also see the people who created the false illusions holding the reality between the light and the shadows.
The shadow’s errors simply appear by the angle of the sun. The evening shadow of a short person under the setting sun is much longer than the shadow of a tall person at noon. The whole shape of the object does not appear perfectly if obstacles under the sun block it. People in the cave are accustomed to accepting all awareness through the shadows if they do not try to struggle against the chains of fate. All our knowledge and news could be little more than a shadow in reality.
However, reality does not have the conditions to leave to find the truth such as the chains in the cave. People of the cave do not trust the truth which is brought by people who came back from the outside of the cave. A comment of a large number of people seems more stable and right to the people who are sitting in front of the shadows. The truth is often distorted and persecuted by the people who never want to go out of the cave for the reason that it is dazzling to the eye. Loosening the chains and leaving the cave into the world of Idea could be by justice, love, or hope.
The prisoners who are tied in the cave are humans, and the shadows on the wall reflected the prejudices, stereotypes, and the perception of speculation. What can we do if all values in reality are nothing but just the distorted shadow? It is terrible, but we could just blink our eyes and follow the shadows because of the chain. Reality is not an invisible truth but visible shadows filling up all my sight. Cutting off the chain is the first encouragement to get out of the shadows.
Plato’s set, the “Good” Idea figured by the sun (part of nature which ultimately creates shadows) is interesting. The invisible nature of things is outside of the cave. However, people are sitting in front of the shadow of Idea in their own caves. Tangible and intangible caves are scattered all over the place, and it is required to be free from the caves (the sensory and ideological world). All caves have shadows. Plato says that leading people out of the cave and showing them the sunlight is the responsibility of the philosophers. The analogy of shadows provides solid ground in The Allegory of the Cave through basic sources and a variety of metaphors.
There are two different visions: physical vision and soul vision. From physical vision, people know as much as what they see. From soul vision, people see as much as they know. According to Plato, human souls already have vision, but the importance lies in which direction we look at. People can see in any direction and develop their knowledge and conceptions without chains. Education is the way of cutting the chain, and this process requires time, pain, doubt, refusal, and avoidance as is the same as the process of suffering during the adaptation of vision in front of light. Politics, media, and the social system could also just be reflections or shadows of the truth.
===================================
Wolran Kim
October 2013
The theme of this article appeared in the first sentence, “How far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.” There were people who were born in an underground den and could not look back because their arms, legs, and heads were chained. They faced the wall with nothing but a big bonfire behind them. They could only see shadows of themselves and of free people who were passing between the fire and them. They believed the moving shadows were reality and the truth.
But one prisoner loosened the chains and saw the reality of the shadows and the fire when he looked back. He escaped out of the cave and saw the sun which made shadows. He realized the truth about shadows. He went back into the cave to teach the truth to the other ignorant fellows but they only persecuted him because they could not understand him at all. (As if what happened to Socrates.)
The man, who saw the outside world once he escaped, was not envious of the prisoners’ trivial wisdom because there were no points in their arguments. He would rather feel pain in adapting his eyesight going in and out of the cave than honor the greedy false position in the cave. Plato’s point is that knowledge is much more valuable than comfortable ignorance, which is shown from the man suffering from the disadvantage of having to adapt his eyes in the real world.
The prisoners who were tied in the cave are human, and the shadows on the wall reflected their prejudices, stereotypes, and speculations. Today’s world is known as the new slavery era in the 21st century because of the gaps between the rich and the poor, and the importance of social status. I think that wealth and social position, which people pursue their whole lives, might be the shadows in the dark cave because people live 100 years at most. Another thing is the power which creates public opinion for political and social advantages, throwing the ignorant citizens in a dark cave for their own welfare.
I think this is all about epistemology (What is knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge? How much can we rely on what we think we know? What are the most reliable ways to get knowledge?). Knowledge is a clear recognition and understanding from learning or experience. If I say I know, that means I do not know anything about what I don’t know. The most obvious way to obtain knowledge is education, because we have petty affairs with obvious limitations of time and space to get to know by direct experience in this world.
The cave’s prisoners were forced by recognition from the real world, and they only believed the shadows. Their ignorance came from their environment. If they were free, they would have naturally seen the fire and the sun. People seem to only know the present while the importance of education is passing in every case.
Where ignorance is bliss, this is applicable to the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, because ignorance of the truth is more convenient for them. Knowing and not knowing is the same difference as black and white. People know as much as they can see. We would not know even if we see if we don’t have any information. Knowledge is divided into levels of knowledge and gossip to me. Knowledge brings a much bigger profit in the level of intelligence in terms of material or human relations. Consequently, it is better to be doing not knowing in a gossip dimension because usually gossip creates trouble.
Intellectual knowledge is a way to improve the quality of life as “Knowing is power.” Most of the time I want to know in the level of knowledge and see that those things are useful for visible results or are absolute tools of better information. Also, interest and joy bring excitement to the desire to know. On the contrary, I don’t want to know if there would be no visible result or interest.
Aristotle said that the best goodness which the human pursues is happiness. Complex meanings of happiness often are depicted through the various proverbs and sayings; a Japanese proverb is ‘People’s happiness and sadness may not be known until they are covered up in the coffin.’ And a Korean proverb is ‘The irony of fate.’ — Inscrutable are the ways of Heaven or an evil that may sometimes turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
The meaning of freedom is sometimes used as opposed to forced and sometimes as opposed to the inevitable. Aristotle was distinct that the human acts to intentional and unintentional acts. Thomas Aquinas’ concept of freedom dominated the medieval feudal society. Aquinas asserts that all human thinking and behavior is expected and in accordance with the will of God, but freedom is granted to humans because God will also be free. Rousseau said that freedom only belongs to individuals because it is an attribute in the natural state of humans. According to Marxism, the freedom considered depends on an objective necessity in nature and society—in relation to human relations about objective legitimacy.
We do not realize what ordinary freedom means to us until it is taken by force. We would be really nervous and uncomfortable if we had to follow someone else’s command suddenly in our daily lives with tasks such as eating and sleeping. In the common sense, happiness is in the freedom and unhappiness is outside of freedom. But the pursuit of happiness may be possible without limit depending on the mindset. Happiness is possible to adjust in accordance with the complex and ever-changing minds of humans. For this reason, there is optimism and pessimism.
In general, freedom means a natural status without any domination or binding from the outside or inside, and that one can do what they want to. But it is difficult to build a conclusion philosophically. Most people manage their everyday lives freely except in a communist society, but the strict regulations always exist and laws are governed as members of society. Sartre said that freedom is just punishment and only engagement and union are real freedom. Since Freud, science does not recognize human beings as having free will.
There is no man who lives and dies freely. Therefore, strictly nobody is free but the freedom during their life must bear the punishment of responsibility and choice. Generally freedom and happiness are directly proportional. Free people are happier than prisoners by any common sense. The fish is free in the fish bowl. The fish bowl is the expectation of God and the freedom of the fish is the free will of humans. Happiness is like air. It is everywhere but people may not realize it until they are losing it, just like freedom.
Almost every word in Plato’s Cave is trope; cave, the prisoners in the cave, chains, the walls of the cave, shadows, people outside of the cave and their vessels, statues, the first man who gets out of the cave, the entrance to the cave, a rising hill, dazzling sight, visual disability, the restoration of sight, nature, blue sky, the moon, the stars, the sun, and the visible world. I chose “shadows” among these allegories.
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice? (Plato, p.6)
The “shadow” is an intermediation of illusion, which is blocking the enlightened from the unenlightened. Law is made from the people who are representative of power, and often it is not a legitimate origin of justice. The people who were trapped in the cave seem to be the people of the modern Internet world. The virtual world of the Internet is the first visible truth to the people who are sitting in front of their computers. This truth is the same as the allegory of the shadows.
Shadow is a representative analogy of the cave. The dictionary meaning of shadow is an area where direct light from a light source cannot reach due to obstruction by an object. It also includes reflections of mirror or water, silhouettes, images, traces and clues, and is represented by the metaphorical synonyms such as darkness, sorrow, and misery.
The shadow is negative if light is positive such is the relationship between untruth and the truth. The people in the cave trust the shadow as the truth and live with satisfaction without any objection, because they have never seen anything other than the shadow. However, people outside the cave know the shadow is an illusion because they live under the sunlight. They also see the people who created the false illusions holding the reality between the light and the shadows.
The shadow’s errors simply appear by the angle of the sun. The evening shadow of a short person under the setting sun is much longer than the shadow of a tall person at noon. The whole shape of the object does not appear perfectly if obstacles under the sun block it. People in the cave are accustomed to accepting all awareness through the shadows if they do not try to struggle against the chains of fate. All our knowledge and news could be little more than a shadow in reality.
However, reality does not have the conditions to leave to find the truth such as the chains in the cave. People of the cave do not trust the truth which is brought by people who came back from the outside of the cave. A comment of a large number of people seems more stable and right to the people who are sitting in front of the shadows. The truth is often distorted and persecuted by the people who never want to go out of the cave for the reason that it is dazzling to the eye. Loosening the chains and leaving the cave into the world of Idea could be by justice, love, or hope.
The prisoners who are tied in the cave are humans, and the shadows on the wall reflected the prejudices, stereotypes, and the perception of speculation. What can we do if all values in reality are nothing but just the distorted shadow? It is terrible, but we could just blink our eyes and follow the shadows because of the chain. Reality is not an invisible truth but visible shadows filling up all my sight. Cutting off the chain is the first encouragement to get out of the shadows.
Plato’s set, the “Good” Idea figured by the sun (part of nature which ultimately creates shadows) is interesting. The invisible nature of things is outside of the cave. However, people are sitting in front of the shadow of Idea in their own caves. Tangible and intangible caves are scattered all over the place, and it is required to be free from the caves (the sensory and ideological world). All caves have shadows. Plato says that leading people out of the cave and showing them the sunlight is the responsibility of the philosophers. The analogy of shadows provides solid ground in The Allegory of the Cave through basic sources and a variety of metaphors.
There are two different visions: physical vision and soul vision. From physical vision, people know as much as what they see. From soul vision, people see as much as they know. According to Plato, human souls already have vision, but the importance lies in which direction we look at. People can see in any direction and develop their knowledge and conceptions without chains. Education is the way of cutting the chain, and this process requires time, pain, doubt, refusal, and avoidance as is the same as the process of suffering during the adaptation of vision in front of light. Politics, media, and the social system could also just be reflections or shadows of the truth.
