Or "the Myth of the Cavern". A famous passage from the Republic. I quote (and correct a bit) from Reading about the World vol. 1, which establishes an analogy between Plato's cave and contemporary film spectatorship:
Editors' comments:
Plato,
the most creative and influential of Socrates' disciples, wrote
dialogues, in which he frequently used the figure of Socrates to espouse
his own (Plato's) full-fledged philosophy. In "The Republic," Plato
sums up his views in an image of ignorant humanity, trapped in the
depths and not even aware of its own limited perspective.
The rare individual escapes the limitations of that cave and, through a long, tortuous intellectual journey, discovers a higher realm, a true reality, with a final, almost mystical awareness of Goodness as the origin of everything that exists. Such a person is then the best equipped to govern in society, having a knowledge of what is ultimately most worthwhile in life and not just a knowledge of techniques; but that person will frequently be misunderstood by those ordinary folks back in the cave who haven't shared in the intellectual insight. If he were living today, Plato might replace his rather awkward cave metaphor with a movie theater, with the projector replacing the fire, the film replacing the objects which cast shadows, the shadows on the cave wall with the projected movie on the screen, and the echo with the loudspeakers behind the screen. The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it. The importance of the allegory lies in Plato's belief that there are invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp. Used to the world of illusion in the cave, the prisoners at first resist enlightenment, as students resist education. But those who can achieve enlightenment deserve to be the leaders and rulers of all the rest. At the end of the passage, Plato expresses another of his favorite ideas: that education is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that which they already know. This notion that truth is somehow embedded in our minds was also powerfully influential for many centuries.
Judging by this passage, why do you think many people in the democracy of Athens might have been antagonistic to Plato's ideas? Is a resident of the cave (a prisoner, as it were) likely to want to make the ascent to the outer world? Why or why not? What does the sun symbolize in the allegory?
From the Republic, Book VII:
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
Very true.
And
suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other
side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke
that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
That is certain.
And
now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are
released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is
liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and
walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare
will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which
in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one
saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now,
when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards
more real existence, he has a clearer vision,--what will be his reply?
And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the
objects as they pass and requiring him to name them,--will he not be
perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are
truer than the objects which are now shown to him?
Far truer.
And
if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a
pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the
objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in
reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?
True, he said.
And
suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged
ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun
himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches
the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see
anything at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He
will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And
first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and
other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he
will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled
heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the
sun or the light of the sun by day?
Certainly.
Last
of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him
in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in
another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
Certainly.
He
will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the
years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a
certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been
accustomed to behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
And
when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and
his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate
himself on the change, and pity them?
Certainly, he would.
And
if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on
those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark
which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were
together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the
future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or
envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
Better
to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather
than think as they do and live after their manner? (1)
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
Imagine
once more, I said, such a one coming suddenly out of the sun to be
replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes
full of darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And
if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows
with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight
was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time
which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very
considerable), would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up
he went and down he came without his eyes; (2)and that it was better not
even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and
lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they
would put him to death. (3)
No question, he said.
This
entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the
previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of
the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret
the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual
world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have
expressed--whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But whether true or
false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good
appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is
also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and
right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world
(4), and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual;
and that this is the power upon which he would act rationally either in
public or private life must have his eye fixed.
I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
Moreover,
I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific
vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are
ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which
desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
Yes, very natural.
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 to meet the conception of those
who have never yet seen absolute justice?
Anything but surprising, he replied.
Any
one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the
eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out
of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's
eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is
perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask
whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is
unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from
darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the
one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the
other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below
into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh
which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.
That, he said, is a very just distinction.
But
then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when
they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not
there before, like sight into blind eyes.
They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
Whereas
our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in
the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from
darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of
knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the
world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the
sight of being and of the brightest and best of being, or in other
words, of the good.
(1) This refers to a famous passage in Homer's Odyssey in which the ghost of the great hero Achilles, when asked if he is not proud of the fame his deeds has spread throughout the world, answers that he would rather be a slave on a worn-out farm than king over all of the famous dead. Interestingly, Plato quotes the same passage elsewhere as disapprovingly as depicting life after death in such a negative manner that it may undermine the willingness of soldiers to die in war.
(2) The comic playwright Aristophanes had mocked Socrates by portraying Plato's master, Socrates, as a foolish intellectual with his head in the clouds.
(3) Plato undoubtedly has in mind the fact that the Athenians had condemned to death his master Socrates, whom Plato considered supremely enlightened.
(4) Here Plato describes his notion of God in a way that was influence profoundly Christian theologians.
The
dialogue takes place between "Socrates" and Plato's puppet Glaucon. Now
that I mention puppets—note that there is a feedback here between the
notions of reality and representation, one which pertains to the very
notion of representation. (See a Shakespearean analogue here).
The editors see an analogy between Plato's cavern and the film screen,
"had Plato been living today", and indeed the myth may serve as a primal
scene in film theory. Or dramatic theory, or theory of the spectacle, because (note well) the idea for the shadows on the wall already originates, as Socrates' analogy makes clear, in a theatrical spectacle—the cavern wall being like "the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets". One
suspects that Socrates or Plato had been attending one of these
spectacles at night, illuminated by a fire at the back the audience, and
had somehow been more attentive to the shadows projected spontaneously
by the audience, and the shadow play being shown on this proto-cinematic
screen, than to the puppets above the screen. Or perhaps it is the
unexpected and serendipitous conjunction of these two modes of
representation, the theatrical one and the proto-cinematic images on the
screen, and the wobble or fluctuation in reality and attention caused
by their simultaneity and the interaction of several modes of reality
and images of the same, which made the fire of an idea light up in the
cavern of Plato's brain, and intuit the dialectical feedback or
paradoxical Escher-like circulation existing between so-called reality
and its representations.
______
Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a documentary film on the Paleolithic paintings of the Chauvet cave, whose walls contain some of the oldest symbolic objects of mankind, three hundred centuries ago. The play of volumes and fire lights on the paintings creates a certain illusion of movement, "a kind of proto-cinema" according to Herzog, to which is added the dynamic positions of the animals and the multiple lines suggesting the movement of legs or the head in some figures. Paleoanthropologists also suggest that the play of human shadows on the walls of caves must have been one of the earliest forms of theatrical spectacle—the shadowplay, actually a mixture of projection and physical presence, perhaps joined to shamanic rituals in which animals were impersonated. Thus we find at the origins of drama, that powerfully reflexive symbolic ritual, a situation strongly reminiscent of the one described by Plato in his allegory of the cave. The image of the cave seems particularly appropriate, at this inaugural allegory of the birth of philosophy, and resonates with an echo coming from that time of forgotten dreams in which the symbolic world of myths had to be created, long before it might be deconstructed by the philosopher.
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