Extracts from Plato's Republic - The Myth of the Cave

 For talk in Athens - Thursday 23rd March - 2023

 

Extracts of Plato’s Cave:

(Plato’s Book Republic – 514a to 517a)

Translated by:  Waterfield, Robin. Republic (Oxford World's Classics) OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

The Prisoner Ascends from the Cave   (Plato’s Republic – 514a to 517a)

514a ‘Next,’ I said, ‘here’s a situation which you can use as an analogy for the human condition—for our education or lack of it. Imagine people living in a cavernous cell down under the ground; at the far end of the cave, a long way off, there’s an entrance open to the outside world. They’ve been there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up in a way which keeps them in one place and allows them to look only straight ahead, but not to turn their heads. There’s firelight burning a long way further up the cave behind them, and up the slope between the fire and the prisoners there’s a road, beside which you should imagine a low wall has been built—like the partition which conjurors place between themselves and their audience and above which they show their tricks.’ B

‘All right,’ he said.

‘Imagine also that there are people on the other side of this wall who are carrying all sorts of artefacts. These artefacts, human statuettes, and animal models carved in stone and wood and all kinds of materials stick out over the wall; and as you’d expect, some of the people talk as they carry these objects along, while others are silent.’ c

515a

‘This is a strange picture you’re painting,’ he said, ‘with strange prisoners.’

‘They’re no different from us,’ I said. ‘I mean, in the first place, do you think they’d see anything of themselves and one another except the shadows cast by the fire on to the cave wall directly opposite them?’

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘They’re forced to spend their lives without moving their heads.’ ‘And what about the objects which were being carried along? Won’t they only see their shadows as well?’ b

‘Naturally.’ ‘Now, suppose they were able to talk to one another: don’t you think they’d assume that their words applied to what they saw passing by in front of them?

‘They couldn’t think otherwise.’

“And what if sound echoed off the prison wall opposite them? When any of the passers-by spoke, don’t you think they’d be bound to assume that the sound came from a passing shadow?’

‘I’m absolutely certain of it,’ he said.

‘All in all, then,’ I said, ‘the shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality people in this situation would recognize.’ c

‘That’s absolutely inevitable,’ he agreed. d

‘What do you think would happen, then,’ I asked, ‘if they were set free from their bonds and cured of their inanity? What would it be like if they found that happening to them? Imagine that one of them has been set free and is suddenly made to stand up, to turn his head and walk, and to look towards the firelight. It hurts him to do all this and he’s too dazzled to be capable of making out the objects whose shadows he’d formerly been looking at. And suppose someone tells him that what he’s been seeing all this time has no substance, and that he’s now closer to reality and is seeing more accurately, because of the greater reality of the things in front of his eyes—what do you imagine his reaction would be? And what do you think he’d say if he were shown any of the passing objects and had to respond to being asked what it was? Don’t you think he’d be bewildered and would think that there was more reality in what he’d been seeing before than in what he was being shown now?’

‘Far more,’ he said.

‘And if he were forced to look at the actual firelight, don’t you think it would hurt his eyes? Don’t you think he’d turn away and run back to the things he could make out, and would take the truth of the matter to be that these things are clearer than what he was being shown?’ e

‘Yes,’ he agreed.

‘And imagine him being dragged forcibly away from there up the rough, steep slope,’ I went on, ‘without being released until he’s been pulled out into the sunlight. Wouldn’t this treatment cause him pain and distress? And once he’s reached the sunlight, he wouldn’t be able to see a single one of the things which are currently taken to be real, would he, because his eyes would be overwhelmed by the sun’s beams?’

516a

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ he answered, ‘not straight away.’

‘He wouldn’t be able to see things up on the surface of the earth, I suppose, until he’d got used to his situation. At first, it would be shadows that he could most easily make out, then he’d move on to the reflections of people and so on in water, and later he’d be able to see the actual things themselves. Next, he’d feast his eyes on the heavenly bodies and the heavens themselves, which would be easier at night: he’d look at the light of the stars and the moon, rather than at the sun and sunlight during the daytime.’ b

‘Of course.’

‘And at last, I imagine, he’d be able to discern and feast his eyes on the sun—not the displaced image of the sun in water or elsewhere, but the sun on its own, in its proper place.’

‘Yes, he’d inevitably come to that,’ he said.

‘After that, he’d start to think about the sun and he’d deduce that it is the source of the seasons and the yearly cycle, that the whole of the visible realm is its domain, and that in a sense everything which he and his peers used to see is its responsibility.’ c

‘Yes, that would obviously be the next point he’d come to,’ he agreed.

‘Now, if he recalled the cell where he’d originally lived and what passed for knowledge there and his former fellow prisoners, don’t you think he’d feel happy about his own altered circumstances, and sorry for them?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Suppose that the prisoners used to assign prestige and credit to one another, in the sense that they rewarded speed at recognizing the shadows as they passed, and the ability to remember which ones normally come earlier and later and at the same time as which other ones, and expertise at using this as a basis for guessing which ones would arrive next. Do you think our former prisoner would covet these honours and would envy the people who had status and power there, or would he much prefer, as Homer describes it, “being a slave labouring for someone else—someone without property”, and would put up with anything at all, in fact, rather than share their beliefs and their life?’ d

‘Yes, I think he’d go through anything rather than live that way,’ he said. e

‘Here’s something else I’d like your opinion about,’ I said. ‘If he went back underground and sat down again in the same spot, wouldn’t the sudden transition from the sunlight mean that his eyes would be overwhelmed by darkness?’

 ‘Certainly,’ he replied.

‘Now, the process of adjustment would be quite long this time, and suppose that before his eyes had settled down and while he wasn’t seeing well, he had once again to compete against those same old prisoners at identifying those shadows. Wouldn’t he make a fool of himself? Wouldn’t they say that he’d come back from his upward journey with his eyes ruined, and that it wasn’t even worth trying to go up there? And wouldn’t they—if they could—grab hold of anyone who tried to set them free and take them up there, and kill him?’

517a

‘They certainly would,’ he said.

The Escaped Prisoner Must Go Down Into The Darkness Again To Help The Others

(Republic-519c/d to 520e):

‘Our job as founders, then,’ I said, ‘is to make sure that the best people come to that fundamental field of study (as we called it earlier): we must have them make the ascent we’ve been talking about and see goodness. And afterwards, once they’ve been up there and had a good look, we mustn’t let them get away with what they do at the moment.’  e

‘Which is what?’

 ‘Staying there,’ I replied, ‘and refusing to come back down again to those prisoners, to share their work and their rewards, no matter whether those rewards are trivial or significant.’

‘But in that case,’ he protested, ‘we’ll be wronging them: we’ll be making the quality of their lives worse and denying them the better life they could be living, won’t we?’

‘You’re again forgetting, my friend,’ I said, ‘that the point of legislation is not to make one section of a community better off than the rest, but to engineer this for the community as a whole. Legislators should persuade or compel the members of a community to mesh together, should make every individual share with his fellows the benefit which he is capable of contributing to the common welfare, and should ensure that the community does contain people with this capacity; and the purpose of all this is not for legislators to leave people to choose their own directions, but for them to use people to bind the community together.’ e

520a

‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I was forgetting.’ b

 ‘I think you’ll also find, Glaucon,’ I said, ‘that we won’t be wronging any philosophers who arise in our community. Our remarks, as we force them to take care of their fellow citizens and be their guardians, will be perfectly fair. We’ll tell them that it’s reasonable for philosophers who happen to occur in other communities not to share the work of those communities, since their occurrence was spontaneous, rather than planned by the political system of any of the communities in question, and it’s fair for anything which arises spontaneously and doesn’t owe its nurture to anyone or anything to have no interest in repaying anyone for having provided its nourishment. “We’ve bred you, however,” we’ll say, “to act, as it were, as the hive’s leaders and kings, for your own good as well as that of the rest of the community…..

You’ve received a better and more thorough education than those other philosophers, and you’re more capable of playing a part in both spheres. So each of you must, when your time comes, descend to where the rest of the community lives, and get used to looking at things in the dark. The point is that once you become acclimatized, you’ll see infinitely better than the others there; your experience of genuine right, morality, and goodness will enable you to identify every one of the images and recognize what it is an image of.

 And then the administration of our community—ours as well as yours—will be in the hands of people who are awake, as distinct from the norm nowadays of communities being governed by people who shadow-box and fall out with one another in their dreams over who should rule, as if that were a highly desirable thing to do. No, the truth of the matter is this: the less keen the would-be rulers of a community are to rule, the better and less divided the administration of that community is bound to be, but where the rulers feel the opposite, the administration is bound to be the opposite.”’ c d

Plutarch and the E of Delphi (Part 2)

Plutarch and the E of Delphi (Part 2)

I would like to conclude my look at Plutarch’s essay ‘The E of Delphi’ (pronounced EI) by looking at the final pages of the essay which are given over to his teacher AMMONIUS, the Platonist philosopher. (Remember we are referring to ‘Plutarch of Chaeronea’ (circa 46 to 120 CE), a respected philosopher and writer throughout Greece and Rome, who was a high-ranking priest here in Delphi before the destruction of the Temple of Apollo some 300 years after his death. (Surely he is a good place to look to begin to understand what Delphi was really all about…..)

May I remind Greek members of the group that in my previous post there is a link to Plutarch’s essay on this subject in ‘modern Greek’ for people to read easily. In the meantime, here are a few of the things Ammonius says about the E at Delphi, as recorded by Plutarch.

I will be discussing Plutarch’s other 2 essays about Delphi (‘Why Oracles at Delphi Are No Longer Given in Verse’, and  ‘The Obsolescence of Oracles’) in due course…..probably over a coffee with anyone who is interested, since I feel the material is too sacred for discussion via social media…

[James’ selected Quotes – The E at Delphi - Part 2.  Ammonius the teacher of Plutarch concludes the conversation and gives his own deep opinions on the subject…… ]

 The Speakers:

AMMONIUS, the Platonist philosopher, Plutarch’s teacher.

LAMPRIAS, Plutarch’s brother.

PLUTARCH.

THEON, a literary friend.

EUSTROPHUS, an Athenian.

NICANDER, a priest of the temple.

XVII. Ammonius, as one who himself gave Mathematics no mean place in Philosophy, was pleased at the course the conversation was taking, and said: ‘It is not worth our while to answer our young friends with too absolute accuracy on these points; I will only observe that any one of the numbers will provide not a few points for those who choose to sing its praises. Why speak about the others? Apollo’s holy “Seven” will take up all one day before we have exhausted its powers. Are we then to show the Seven Wise Men at odds with common usage, and “the time which runs”, and to suppose that they ousted the “Seven” from its pre-eminence before the God, and consecrated the “Five” as perhaps more appropriate? ‘My own view is that the letter signifies neither number, nor order, nor conjunction, nor any other omitted part of speech; it is a complete and self-operating mode of addressing the God; the word once spoken brings the speaker into apprehension of his power. The God, as it were, addresses each of us, as he enters, with his “KNOW THYSELF”, which is at least as good as “Hail”. We answer the God back with “EI” (Thou Art), rendering to him the designation which is true and has no lie in it, and alone belongs to him, and to no other, that of BEING.

‘For we have, really, no part in real being; all mortal nature is in a middle state between becoming and perishing, and presents but an appearance, a faint unstable image, of itself.

“It is impossible to go into the same river twice”,

said Heraclitus; no more can you grasp mortal being twice, so as to hold it.

Hence becoming never ends in being, for the process never leaves off, or is stayed. From seed it produces, in its constant changes, an embryo, then an infant, then a child; in due order a boy, a young man; then a man, an elderly man, an old man; it undoes the former becomings and the age which has been, to make those which come after. yet we fear (how absurdly!) a single death, we who have died so many deaths, and yet are dying. For it is not only that, as Heraclitus would say, “death of fire is birth of air”, and “death of air is birth of water”; the thing is much clearer in our own selves. The man in his strength is destroyed when the old man comes into being, the young man was destroyed for the man in his strength to be, so the boy for the young man, the babe for the boy. He of yesterday has died unto him of to-day; he of to-day is dying unto him of to-morrow.

No one abides, no one is; we that come into being are many, while matter is driven around, and then glides away, about some one appearance and a common mould. Else how is it, if we remain the same, that the things in which we find pleasure now are different from those of a former time; that we love, hate, admire, and censure different things; that our words are different and our feelings; that our look, our bodily form, our intellect are not the same now as then?

Time is a thing which moves and takes the fashion of moving matter, which ever flows or is a sort of leaky vessel which holds destruction and becoming. Of time we use the words “afterwards”, “before”, “shall be”, and “has been”, each on its face an avowal of not being. For, in this question of being, to say of a thing which has not yet come into being, or which has already ceased from being, that “it is”, is silly and absurd.

All things are coming into being, or being destroyed, even while we measure them by time. Hence it is not permissible, even in speaking of that which is, to say that “it was”, or “it shall be”; these all are inclinations, transitions, passages, for of permanent being there is none in Nature. XX. ‘But the God IS, we are bound to assert, he is, with reference to no time but to that age wherein is no movement, or time, or duration; to which nothing is prior or subsequent; no future, no past, no elder, no younger, which by one long “now” has made the “always” perfect. Only with reference tot his that which really is, is; it has not come into being, it is not yet to be, it did not begin, it will not cease. Thus then we ought to hail him in worship, and thus to address him as “Thou Art”, aye, or in the very words of some of the old people, “Ei Hen”, “Thou art one thing”. For the Divine is not many things,…..

Therefore the first of the names of the God, and the second, and the third. “Apollo” (Not-many) denies plurality and excludes multitude. Ἴητος means one and one only; Phoebus, we know, is a word by which the ancients expressed that which is clean and pure,…..

Now The One is transparent and pure, pollution comes by commixture of this with that, just as Homer, you remember, says of ivory dyed red that it is stained, and dyers say of mingled pigments that they are destroyed, and call the process “destruction”.

But now that we see them dreaming of the God in the fairest of nightly visions, let us rise and encourage them to mount yet higher, to contemplate him in a dream of the day, and to see his own being. Let them pay honour also to the image of him and worship the principle of increase which is about it; so far as what is of sense can lead to what is of mind, a moving body to that which abides, it allows presentments and appearances of his kind and blessed self to shine through after a fashion.

To my thinking the word “EI” is confronted with this false view, and testifies to the God that THOU ART, meaning that no shift or change has place in him, but that such things belong to some other God, or rather to some Spirit set over Nature in its perishing and becoming,…..

Anyhow, the phrase “KNOW THYSELF” seems to stand in a sort of antithesis to the letter “E”, and yet, again, to accord with it. The letter is an appeal, a cry raised in awe and worship to the God, as being throughout all eternity; the phrase is a reminder to mortal man of his own nature and of his weakness.’

Source: Plutarch. Delphi Complete Works of Plutarch. (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 13) .

Plutarch and the E of Delphi (Part 1)

 

I would like to continue my comments on Plutarch - ‘Plutarch of Chaeronea’ (circa 46 to 120 CE), who was a respected philosopher and writer throughout Greece and Rome, and was also a high-ranking priest here in Delphi before the destruction of the Temple of Apollo some 300 years after his death.

I remind Greek members of the group that in my previous post there is a link to Plutarch’s essay on this subject in ‘modern Greek’ for people to read easily. In the meantime, here are a few of the things Plutarch writes about the E at Delphi - pronounced EI.

The Speakers:

AMMONIUS, the Platonist philosopher, Plutarch’s teacher.

LAMPRIAS, Plutarch’s brother.

PLUTARCH.

THEON, a literary friend.

EUSTROPHUS, an Athenian.

NICANDER, a priest of the temple.

 

[James’ selected Quotes - Part 1]

‘Well, then, our kind Apollo, in the oracles which he gives his consultants, seems to solve the problems of life and to find a remedy, while problems of the intellect he actually suggests and propounds to the born love of wisdom in the soul, thus implanting an appetite which leads to truth….

….. We may well guess that it was not by chance, or by lot, that, along among the letters, it received pre-eminence in the God’s house, and took rank as a sacred offering and a show object. No, the officials of the God in early times, when they came to speculate, either saw in it a special and extraordinary virtue, or found it a symbol for something else of serious importance, and so adopted it……

…… That the God is no less philosopher than he is prophet appeared to all to come out directly from the exposition which Ammonius gives us of each of his names. He is ‘Pythian’ (The Inquirer) to those who are beginning to learn and to inquire; ‘Delian’ (The Clear One) and ‘Phanaean’ to those who are already getting something clear and a glimmering of the truth; ‘Ismenian’ (The Knowing) to those who possess the knowledge; ‘Leschenorian’ (God of Discourse) when they are in active enjoyment of dialectical and philosophic intercourse. ‘Now since,’ he continued, ‘Philosophy embraces inquiry, wonder, and doubt, it seems natural that most of the things relating to the God should have been hidden away in riddles, and should require some account of their purpose, and an explanation of the cause. For instance, in the case of the undying fire, why the only woods used here are pine for burning and laurel for fumigation; again, why two Fates are here installed, whereas their number is everywhere else taken as three;…..

……Look again at those inscriptions, KNOW THYSELF and NOTHING TOO MUCH; how many philosophic inquiries have they provoked! What a multitude of arguments has sprung up out of each, as from a seed! Not one of them I think is more fruitful in this way than the subject of our present inquiry.’….

….. IV. Ammonius gave a quiet smile; he had a suspicion that Lamprias had been giving us a view of his own, making up history and legend at discretion…… [James Note: A good general warning when we listen to some people or read their books….]

V. ‘No, the Delphic Officials’, said Nicander the priest, speaking for them, ‘believe that it is a vehicle, a form assumed by the petition addressed to the God; it has a leading place in the questions of those who consult him, and inquire, If they shall conquer; If they shall marry; If it is advisable to sail; If to farm; If to travel. The God in his wisdom would bow out the dialecticians when they think that nothing practical comes of the “If” part with its clause attached; he admits as practical, in his sense of the word, all questions so attached…..’

…… Just so, when the God puts out ambiguous oracles, he is exalting and establishing Dialectic, as essential to the right understanding of himself. You will grant again, that in Dialectic this conjunctive particle has great force, because it formulates the most logical of all sentences. This is certainly the “conjunctive”, seeing that the other animals know the existence of things, but man alone has been gifted by nature with the power of observing and discerning their sequence. That “it is day” and “it is light” we may take it that wolves and dogs and birds perceive. But “if it is day it is light”, is intelligible only to man; he alone can apprehend antecedent and consequent, the enunciation of each and their connexion, their mutual relation and difference, and it is in these that all demonstration has its first and governing principle. Since then Philosophy is concerned with truth, and the light of truth is demonstration, and the principle of demonstration is the conjunctive proposition, the faculty which includes and produces this was rightly consecrated by the wise men to that God who is above all things a lover of truth……

Also, the God is a prophet, and prophetic art deals with that future which is to come out of things present or things past. Nothing comes into being without a cause, nothing is known beforehand without a reason.

Hence, though it may perhaps seem a petty thing to say, I will not shrink from it; the real tripod of truth is the logical process which assumes the relation of consequent to antecedent, then introduces the fact, and so establishes the conclusion. If the Pythian God really finds pleasure in music, and in the voices of swans, and the tones of the lyre, what wonder is it that as a friend to Dialectic, he should welcome and love that part of speech which he sees philosophers use more, and more often, than any other.

For Aeschylus says: ‘In mingled cries the dithyramb should ring,……. With Dionysus revelling, its King. ‘But Apollo has the Pæan, a set and sober music. Apollo is ever ageless and young; Dionysus has many forms and many shapes as represented in paintings and sculpture, which attribute to Apollo smoothness and order and a gravity with no admixture, to Dionysus a blend of sport and sauciness with seriousness and frenzy:…..’

XVII. Ammonius, as one who himself gave Mathematics no mean place in Philosophy, was pleased at the course the conversation was taking, and said: ‘It is not worth our while to answer our young friends with too absolute accuracy on these points; I will only observe that any one of the numbers will provide not a few points for those who choose to sing its praises. Why speak about the others? Apollo’s holy “Seven” will take up all one day before we have exhausted its powers. Are we then to show the Seven Wise Men at odds with common usage, and “the time which runs”, and to suppose that they ousted the “Seven” from its pre-eminence before the God, and consecrated the “Five” as perhaps more appropriate? ‘My own view is that the letter signifies neither number, nor order, nor conjunction, nor any other omitted part of speech;

----------

I will conclude my comments on this text ‘The E at Delphi’ next time by giving an outline of what Ammonius (the teacher of Plutarchos) thinks is the reason for the E. We should note that Plutarch significantly leaves his teacher’s views and comments to last to conclude his piece.

James.