Plato (429-347)
Is the Allegory of the Cave still valid today and why? This question is so sugary in its sound, that I want to object! But how relevant is this allegory of Plato today?
I Similarity
Rhetorically, you can see a lot in common between the myth of the Cave with our world. As if a group of people were sitting in an apartment on the couch and watching TV for days on end. To chain them to the sofa, they were given “sugar” in the form of Cola, popcorn, pizza and TV programs with minimal intellectual content.
Correlation, causation and couch potatoes [online] At: https://hanlonblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/08/correlation-causation-and-couch-potatoes.html (Accessed on 28.10.19)
First, the fetters in the allegory are television programs created by smart people to keep the attention of a person who is deprived of the opportunity to think independently and see the meaning of existence only in relaxation and satisfaction of primitive needs. Such consumer products: telecasts with a minimal context, a comfortable sofa, Cola, pizza and more, this is the so-called “sugar” for the formation of a homogeneous indifferent mass of the brain and body. According to this model, companies or governments of states interested in profits, control this “sugar” among the population - distributing it and popularizing it. This leads to a decrease in the level of society, its education and needs, and as history has shown, the stupider the people, the easier it is to manipulate. Accordingly, one group can dominate the other.
Secondly, the shadows of objects from allegory are just like pseudo truthful news, television shows, films or social media. But, as in the allegory of Plato, in our time it is difficult for such people, but rather impossible to believe that another truth exists, because they do not even want to think about anything other than “sugar”. To call into question the truth of the subject is already an advanced level of the thought process. And if such a person is given a chance to go outside (from his apartment and reach the library), of course, he will deny everything, not believe his eyes and even physically, at first, will not be able to see some things (hereinafter referring to the text of Plato’s allegory of the Cave: "…he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities … Last of he will be able to see the sun" (after his eyes are adapted to the light)). But in allegory, if such a person returns to the cave, then he probably will no longer have the ability to compete ("...they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves..." (Plato)) that is to say to be like everyone else, to belong to a group, but here, in our example, should be no problems with returning to the sofa, no pain no stress of adaptation.
X Factor Emma Chawner's 83st family's too fat to work and too busy watching TV to diet [online] At: https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article383386.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/the-chawners-pic-phil-spencer-dm-155946323.jpg (Accessed on 28.10.19)
Thirdly, involvement in one group and propaganda of their interests is, again, something that was at Plato and in our society. For example, look at modern China. To be involved in a group and to be Chinese means to support the idea of the party and to promote the values dictated by the party. And, what is most interesting, propaganda reaches such a level when a person sincerely begins to believe that the “shadows” coming down from above, i.e. rules of conduct, norms, values, this is independently developed by each of the people. But as soon as someone from this group, most likely, after being educated in Germany, England or America, admits the possibility of other values or ideas, and after returning to their Chinese homeland begins to spread about this, then "let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death" (Plato).
Fourthly, it is interesting to notice the difference that occurred over 2400 years in the desires of the individual. If in the Plato era, a slave (in principle a thing) or a prisoner of war could most likely be chained, they did not give their consent to deprive them of the ability to move and restrict freedom in any manifestation of it. That, now it turns out that the individual, being free to choose what to do, independently decides to sit on the couch and consume huge amounts of “sugar” for the body and brain.
II Experience
The text does not say what the child was doing until it was chained in a cave, it can be imagined that it had a childhood and some experience. Plato writes "…here they have been from their childhood." Through the prism of even minimal experience, a person, if he has a desire, can come to the truth of things. What, in fact, humanity is doing step by step. “The innocent eye is a myth.” (Gombrich, 1984, p. 239)
We cannot make judgments without our previous experience. Therefore, this allegory cannot be considered by man, in the same way as 2400 years ago, without taking into account the discoveries and achievements that have occurred during this time. And after in 4400 years, our descendants will also consider this allegory with a different outlook.
III Relevance
I was inspired by the approach of Jacques Derrida, who, according to the principle of binary oppositions, did not want to proceed from concepts that are opposed to each other. For example, in our case, it will be the cave and the outside world, or darkness and light, or hidden and visible, a lie and the truth. Now reduce them to one and consider the possibility of lack of opposition. Interpreting this approach in my way and taking into account the foregoing in the previous chapter, I want to propose that this allegory be considered irrelevant today. Such an approach will help me start my reasoning from the opposite - from the outside world. For example, we take as a basis the existing world around us, and the things with which we are surrounded. Let it be a given, from which we begin the countdown. This reality has no opposition. In other words, the cave is part of the world and the world does not exist without it, and it does not exist without Peace, the darkness, in this case, is not opposed to light, and the cave is complete in itself and is part of the World. Darkness replaces the light, and light replaces darkness, a process in which it is difficult to determine where exactly the light ends and the darkness begins and vice versa. The existing world around us and shadows, illusions, even which is unknown is part of this world. Therefore, today, in my opinion, we do not need to interpret the existing world through an allegory written more than two millennia ago, but we must take into account all the achievements and discoveries of natural science and superimpose them on modern philosophical thought. How would you feel about the 1933 King Kong movie today? Outdated effects, right?
IV Correct Question
You can use this tale, parable, for example, to demonstrate the relationship between society and the philosopher - society is sitting in a cave, and the philosopher can look beyond it. But if we begin to understand the concepts of reality or the essence of an object, then these are other issues not related to the allegory. Therefore, Gilles Deleuze advised posing the question correctly. Is Plato’s allegory relevant today, but for example, what is the philosopher’s position in the modern world? Or what is the attitude to reality in this world? Or what is real and what is not?
Here we can continue to use Deleuze's logic and assume that something unreal, unprecedented is much more than real and known because the unknown already includes the concept of the known. It’s like, probably, the Cosmos and the Earth. Where we are confident in the existence of the earth, planet, solar system, and so on until the moment we can explain, describe, but the depth of the cosmos, its shape, the presence and number of galaxies, etc., we cannot evaluate and describe. Plato suggests: "…if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error." But where are the guarantees that new illusions will not appear in this world? That people who left the cave would not think that the sun is flat or that the sun is a shadow, but of a different colour? After all, a person from the jungle, who does not know what the distance is, will perceive a herd of buffaloes in the distance like a flock of midges (1961 Colin Turnbull). So people from the cave with a 100% probability will understand everything differently, as physics or philosophers explain. Thus, according to Deleuze's approach, it means that always the unknown will remain bigger than the known. We can learn to perceive the distance and come up with approaches to explain things, but the process of awareness of the unknown will remain the same.
Consequently, humanity has long come out of the cave, we stand under the sun and look into the darkness of the universe with eyes wide "shut". Thus, the hidden, dark, obscure is high above us or perhaps it is enclosed in us. So, rather, we need to go down to the cave, hide from the interfering (“Sugar”) and work with our knowledge and open the hidden of the Universe and ourselves. Now, having consciously replaced shadows with a computer and shackles replaced with self-discipline and desire, we can do more good than idly stagger under the sun on the beaches of Turkey and Mallorca, satisfying the same dominant group and consumer machine.
V Intelligence and Truth
Raising the question of the relevance of the Cave of Plato, you can still see the question posed by him about the truth. In the view of Plato, a person must get to the truth, get out of the darkness, see the objects themselves, and not their shadows. He reveals the truth through shadows, thus through a supposed object, the original of which we do not see. And as we already know, sometimes “truth consists in the coordination of mind and object” - “veritas consistit in adaequatione intellectus et rei” (Thomas Aquinas). This means that truth needs an important component besides the object - man and his intellect. If Plato writes "they see only their own shadows", then a person who sees his own shadow can logically guess that other shadows have an original body. Even with a minimum of intelligence, a person will understand that sitting on a chain is unnatural (from aching pain in the body from an immobile state) and the self-preservation instinct should lead him to the original thing. Glaucon answers Plato: "rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions" and here again I cannot agree that a person will suffer rather than arrive in the twilight of ignorance. For example, George Orwell in his 1984 book described the possibility of breaking the body and even the spirit.
In the example of a family with Coca-Cola and TV, there are fewer chances of going out because “sugar” softens the pain and dulls any feelings. And here, it seems to me, natural selection will work, if there is no plague in its well-known understanding, and then its analogue will appear, it will kill a person in other ways. The plague of our time is this “sugar”.
Summing up, we can say that with the allegory of Plato you can see the similarities with our world, but we cannot look at things without our previous experience. The relevance and the right question, whether it is philosophy or art, is already 50 per cent success. Something old gives life to something similar, but different, with improved special effects, with a large amount of “sugar” or “sugar” in a more complex form. Only our intellect and willpower will help us to be independent in our judgments, to see the subject wider than it is, and to find answers to our questions. Therefore, I conclude that Plato’s allegory can be considered relevant to the extent that it does not contradict the beliefs of the individual or if we consider it as a legacy of our culture, a fairy tale that children read at night, without its practical application.
Bibliography and references
1. Gombrich, Ernst (1984) Art and Illusion. (7th printing) London: Phaidon Press. p. 239.
2. Plato, Book VII of The Republic, The Allegory of the Cave [online] At: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html (Accessed on 30.10.19)
3. Smulyansky, Alexander Efimovich Introduction to modern philosophy 2012 [online] In Russian At: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQXk9_XDN67J5jaPMxSUmnE-6KybugguK (Accessed on 30.10.19)
4. Plato and the Simulacrum, Gilles Deleuze and Rosalind Krauss (1983) Published by The MIT Press [online] At: https://www.scribd.com/document/210407689/plato-simulacrum (Accessed on 31.10.19)
5. Wikipedia, Plato [online] At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato (Accessed on 30.10.19)
6. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company New York [online] At: https://www.scribd.com/read/249308926/1984 (Accessed on 30.10.19)
7. Wikipedia, Wahrheit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahrheit (Accessed on 30.10.19)
8. books.google [online] At: https://books.google.de/books?id=q_Cp_fURG28C&pg=PA104&lpg=PA104&dq=colin+turnbull+perceptual+skill+of+size+constancy&source=bl&ots=njuEXFVtNo&sig=ACfU3U1e9qvl2cX6Ez59t4ss9q72Wyj2jQ&hl=ru&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA5O_9scTlAhWGzaQKHfe3AtUQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=colin%20turnbull%20perceptual%20skill%20of%20size%20constancy&f=false (Accessed on 30.10.19)
Comentários