On Plato's Cave

Years ago I taught ethics to high schoolers. I did vibe with them–some things I taught really stuck–but when it came to Plato and Aristotle, I more or less babbled incoherently. Another teacher saw this and helpfully suggested I teach Plato's Allegory of the Cave. For two reasons I didn't: 1) I'm a terrible person 2) until very recently–I mean like yesterday–I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about the Cave. OK there's a big cave with lots of people tied up in it, forced to watch a puppet show of shadows. Since they don't know anything else, this is their reality. If someone escapes and manages to see what's outside, if they behold objects in sunlight, they will get killed if they return and try to free those inside. No one is going to believe there's a thing called an "apple" and it is "red" if they can bet someone that the circular shadow appears after the square shadow dances a bit.

It's been six years and I finally know what to say. Or rather, ask. Why is Plato's Allegory of the Cave compelling? Why has it captivated readers for centuries? I can identify my resistance readily. "Bro what if everything's an illusion meant to control us:" this is, along with endless variations on the trolley problem, the last discussion I want to have. It is often too stupid and too large to turn into anything useful. Yes, people have devised many ways of insidiously controlling us. You're not going to find them by declaring them the entirety of reality.

It's worth listing some thoughts about why the Cave has endured, besides the fact it is a parable inviting interpretation:

• it illustrates the notion we could be trapped by our own mind
• the mass delusion involved: everyone thinks the shadows are real
• the sense of unease we hope we would have, if we were inside the cave. Can our skepticism save us?
• if we're in the cave now, is it because there is something so much better we will stumble upon? Does the cave's existence depend on a vision of the Good?

Each of these is not only a proposal for the allegory's meaning. Each also holds a peculiar sort of philosophic wealth. It is one thing to have a sufficiently challenging thought in philosophy, and quite another to have one which emotionally resonates. These achieve both. For example, how could I possibly navigate being trapped by my own mind? It's a horrible situation, a spiral of despair and terror, yet we know there are ways out. We've been there and somehow found peace. The feeling finds its match in the prospect of a puzzle worthy of reflection.

You probably can guess what grips me at the moment. What is the nature of mass delusion? Why would someone be killed for the truth? What about those reaping rich rewards for ignorance? I want to focus on Socrates exploring the viewpoint of one who has come back down into the cave after experiencing sunlight:

Socrates: "Well then, if he recalled to mind his first habitation and what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow-bondsmen, do you not think that he would count himself happy in the change and pity them?"

Glaucon: “He would indeed." (516c-d)

Socrates asks if one who left the cave would have no regrets. Would he be happy with life outside a dark, shadowy place? Would he have pity on those still stuck there? His interlocutor Glaucon promptly answers yes, as if people who know the truth automatically commit to all it entails. As if we don't live in a world of cowards who know better and routinely fail others.

In discussing the allegory, Daniel R. DeNicola emphasizes the bodily aspect of freedom. That aspect is very much in play here, as it is easy to imagine someone with basic freedom of movement being much happier than someone without it. His words:

"Freedom is primordially the ability to move our body. Beyond being our basic capacity for meeting our needs, bodily movement, including change of place, leads us to new experiences, permits learning, and generates perspective. But confined in such profound ignorance, the world of experience is severely restricted."

This leads DeNicola to a further consideration. Ignorance entails accepting the puppet show. Ignorance traps one's capacities; you could lose your bonds and still fear the sunlight. In DeNicola's words: "The horror of ignorance is incapacity."

It's a beautiful thought and I don't doubt that's the true horror of ignorance. But how content so many are within this nightmare! I deal with those all the time who are terrified of leaving the house. They'll judge others for doing anything. Not just travel to other countries, but even going to a different store in the neighborhood. How do we account for a desire to do nothing? To revel in ignorance?

After hearing that one outside the cave would surely not want to return to his former, bonded state, Socrates slyly explains why people choose ignorance. There are "honors and commendations" for those who claim to identify shadows. If you can spot a sequence or predict which two will be near each other, people will applaud you. Socrates asks if the one who has seen sunlight would ever want "such rewards." Glaucon answers absolutely not, and I wonder about academics who give up on credible lines of research in order to say bigoted things for the sake of cable news:

Socrates: "And if there had been honors and commendations among them which they bestowed on one another and prizes for the man who is quickest to make out the shadows as they pass and best able to remember their customary precedences, sequences and co-existences, and so most successful in guessing at what was to come, do you think he would be very keen about such rewards, and that he would envy and emulate those who were honored by these prisoners and lorded it among them, or that he would feel with Homer and 'greatly prefer while living on earth to be serf of another, a landless man,' and endure anything rather than opine with them and live that life?"

Glaucon: "Yes. I think that he would choose to endure anything rather than such a life." (516c-d)

For another paper, I've been reading Arlene Saxonhouse, who speaks of the importance of calculation in the Republic. Our ability to recognize a given thing also goes hand-in-hand with being able to add and subtract from that thing. Calculation requires differentiation and categorization. And here's Socrates, talking about those trapped in the cave doing mathematics for the sake of DraftKings, 400 B.C. edition. You memorize the sequences so you can be said to have the power of prediction. You are a prophet and a bookie, a game theorist par excellence. Glaucon rejects this. He'd rather say that someone who could have such skill would rather be a "serf"–"landless"–than live this sort of life. Unfortunately for Glaucon, the United States of America exists.

Ignorance in the cave is structured and incentivized. It is near impossible to distinguish from knowledge except for the brute fact knowledge exists. Actual knowledge can come to us like a revelation, wiping away whole swaths of what we thought we knew. And I think that's the big puzzle of the cave: how do we get to the foundational, hard truths we need? I do believe it is true that if the aliens come and say they're going to destroy all of us unless someone knows the batting averages of the 1993 Cubs' starting lineup, then wisdom is the batting averages of the 1993 Cubs' starting lineup. The shadows aren't entirely inessential.

But I also think of the allegory of the cave points to finding your truest grounding. Why do you want knowledge in the first place? The gamified logic of predicting sequences of shadows is ripe for dismissal, but being bodily free is not. Openness and sunlight are infinitely preferable to claustrophobic, tight spaces. Nowhere is it mentioned what the lives of those producing the shadows are. Inasmuch you have to constantly create images, you're trapped too. The completely relative sense of knowing–"I know better" as a means to rule and only rule–can't be taken seriously.

Our inability to pinpoint a full sense of what freedom means in the allegory points to the absolute character of knowledge. Sometimes, there is something we must accept or change, and only with that we are free. The idea of the Good is the sunlight we cannot look at directly. We can't fully see what we do.