The Soul and the Cave

So today we started to read the allegory of the cave more closely, emphasizing the importance it lays on understanding "our nature" and its education and development rather than merely a political description reinforcing a kind of intellectual elitism. We are all in the cave, we all possess the potency of seeing, of distinguishing between reality and appearances but most fail to turn their gaze on reality as most are content with opinion, the shade of knowledge created not by an eternal light, the sun, but by a man made fire. This is the part of each of us that tends toward relativism, i.e. the dismissal of any one, common and eternal truth. In contrast, when we begin to question the reality of those shades, of those opinions, and ask for their source, we take the first steps toward the light, toward the rays of the sun. In this turn we discover the puppeeters, that aspect of each of us that is content with appearance and projecting appearances (not simply as the politcal reading would demand, the sophists or politicans/heads of state-of course this is a valid reading of the text but one which unfortantely neglects the psychological demand that Socrates explicitly emphasizes). Of course, we ascend slowly, with much struggle and ultimately reality itself is blinding. Here, in the clearing, we squint and gaze first at shadows again but this time shadows (perhaps true opinions) that are caused by the light of the sun on the objects of reality. Next we turn to images in the water, then the "things in themselves," and finally the acknowledgment of the source of the things, the sun/the good. In the end, this conversion of the soul toward reality simply begins with turning toward the light of the Good, striving to ascend from out of the world of illusions, becoming and opinion, perhaps even of meaninglessness. For Socrates, only when we loosen and shake off the bonds of the particular world and do what is difficult, and seemingly crazy (not only to the others in the cave but also via the psychological reading, crazy even for ourselves), does are nature thrive, reach true happines. Only those who distinguish the one from the many, reality from illusion, opinion from knowledge, do the work that allows for the harmony of the soul.

Okay that's enough rambling.
For next time in the first class we will talk about your own analogies of the Good, while in the second class we will finish talking about those analogies. I will also lecture on the opening of Book VIII, instead of Book X as in Book VIII there is a wonderful section describing the various kinds of goverment that are analogous to individual souls.

We will read Book X for Monday.

Hope you are well,
Dr. Layne