The Allegory Of The Cave

how often do we abuse others when we lack proper understanding of their perspective? it seems the world is full of this.

plato shares a simple story, yet it is so timeless and endlessly profound.

for those who r unfamiliar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

tru story

  On 4/27/2014 at 4:12 PM, Redruth said:

how often do we abuse others when we lack proper understanding of their perspective? it seems the world is full of this.

 

plato shares a simple story, yet it is so timeless and endlessly profound.

 

 

 

for those who r unfamiliar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

It can be their misunderstanding of our perspective, and further of a clearer reading of reality, that can lead to those others abusing us in defence for a perceived slight that they never received. heh.

Many live in the darkness and if i were so inclined that i felt that i needed today to convince fellow my enlightened the value of attempting to instruct the masses of their numerous follies and misunderstandings, i wouldn't turn to this allegory as a starting point. Whilst it's clear what he's trying to achieve, i don't think, apart from the halo that comes from the age of the quote and to whom it's attributed, that it's the clearest way to point out how ignorance works. Sure the mechanics of the thing are fine but it just annoys me for some reason.

lol brain just lost interest half way through the post, sorry troon.

whatisthematrix.com

  On 4/27/2014 at 4:41 PM, delet... said:

 

  On 4/27/2014 at 4:12 PM, Redruth said:

how often do we abuse others when we lack proper understanding of their perspective? it seems the world is full of this.

 

plato shares a simple story, yet it is so timeless and endlessly profound.

 

 

 

for those who r unfamiliar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

 

 

It can be their misunderstanding of our perspective, and further of a clearer reading of reality, that can lead to those others abusing us in defence for a perceived slight that they never received. heh.

 

Many live in the darkness and if i were so inclined that i felt that i needed today to convince fellow my enlightened the value of attempting to instruct the masses of their numerous follies and misunderstandings, i wouldn't turn to this allegory as a starting point. Whilst it's clear what he's trying to achieve, i don't think, apart from the halo that comes from the age of the quote and to whom it's attributed, that it's the clearest way to point out how ignorance works. Sure the mechanics of the thing are fine but it just annoys me for some reason.

 

lol brain just lost interest half way through the post, sorry troon.

 

I'd say Plato's point is rather that there are necessary steps towards knowledge/virtue, not so much a reflection on ignorance per se. So what he does is explain how these steps unfold, that it's painful and tears you apart from the normal course of things, to which you will never be able to return. This is consistent with his view on love as that which changes your course and directs you towards knowledge/virtue. It takes an encounter with something alien to you, like what happens when you fall in love, in order to attain virtue. This doesn't necessarily mean somebody needs to tell you what to do and what not to do. It has nothing to do with personal perspective.

One must go from knowledge of shadows, to knowledge of beings; to knowledge of what makes things be what they are as if this was a thing (i.e. the Idea of "car" as an intelligible being; a triangle is intellectual but it is a body of sorts, etc), to knowledge of what makes things be what they are in its particularity (i.e. the Idea of an Idea, which isn't really a "being".) This is why Plato's dialogues often lead to dead-ends, and why he often talks about "probable discourse" and remarks that what his characters say is somehow inadequate: because the nature of what makes things be what they are is to refuse being handled as an object, so you can't really treat them as a "topic" you discuss. This was mostly lost on his reception by later followers, or turned into the topic of the ineffability of God, which is something else altogether.

The cave is just a fleshing out of the allegory of the line, and is presented as such in Republic itself.

When did they eat?

  Quote

 

Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to designate names to these shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

lol, that's some classical modernist bullshit.

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:13 PM, eugene said:

 

  Quote

 

Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to designate names to these shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

lol, that's some classical modernist bullshit.

 

you'd like badiou's version of the allegory where those freed from the cavern (in his case a cinema) are red guards

oh, and there's a fair bit of psychoanalysis in it too

I don't really like the Platonic hierarchical view. Like there is some ultimate reality or truth on the top from where everything else descends.

Maybe "the higher reality" is an emergent feature of the "shadows". Or maybe the reality is a loop where the higher level and lower level create and keep up each other. Maybe there is nothing but the shadows on the wall. idk fml 2deep4me.

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:30 PM, mokz said:

I don't really like the Platonic hierarchical view. Like there is some ultimate reality or truth on the top from where everything else descends.

 

Maybe "the higher reality" is an emergent feature of the "shadows". Or maybe the reality is a loop where the higher level and lower level create and keep up each other. Maybe there is nothing but the shadows on the wall. idk fml 2deep4me.

That is Plotinus, not Plato. For Plato it is not possible to "descend" from a "higher idea" to everything else. First of all because there isn't a higher idea. A discussion of being as such leads to multiple ideas rather than to an ultimate idea. For example we might hypothesise that if things are they are one, but in order to discuss "the one" you need to discuss "the other", "the multiple", and so on, until a nonsensical loop is formed (check the Parmenides out.) There is an ontological gap: you don't derive being from "above". It's the same with Aristotle, where there is an ontological gap between the categories of being and ousia. You don't "deduce" anything from ousia.

While Plato does say that knowledge of reality is a dialectical process, for him truth is not "ultimate". For him there is one reality and one true knowledge of it (but please mind this knowledge is also virtue, not a list of factually correct statements), but for the longest time this was the core tenet of any sort of rigorous thought!

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:30 PM, mokz said:

I don't really like the Platonic hierarchical view. Like there is some ultimate reality or truth on the top from where everything else descends.

 

- My nigga !

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:44 PM, poblequadrat said:

 

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:30 PM, mokz said:

I don't really like the Platonic hierarchical view. Like there is some ultimate reality or truth on the top from where everything else descends.

 

Maybe "the higher reality" is an emergent feature of the "shadows". Or maybe the reality is a loop where the higher level and lower level create and keep up each other. Maybe there is nothing but the shadows on the wall. idk fml 2deep4me.

 

That is Plotinus, not Plato. For Plato it is not possible to "descend" from a "higher idea" to everything else. First of all because there isn't a higher idea: a discussion of being as such leads to multiple ideas rather than to an ultimate idea: if things are they are one, but in order to discuss the one you need to discuss the other and the multiple, and so on (check the Parmenides out.) There is an ontological gap: you don't derive being from "above". It's the same with Aristotle, where there is an ontological gap between the categories of being and ousia. You don't "deduce" anything from ousia.

 

While Plato does say that knowledge of reality is a dialectical process, for him truth is not "ultimate". For him there is one reality, but for the longest time this was the core tenet of any sort of rigorous thought!

 

Ok, I have to admit that I've never read Plato but only heard the allegory from secondary sources and it's been used for things like defending Christian theology. I'll probably need to catch up on my classical philosophy.

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:45 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:30 PM, mokz said:

I don't really like the Platonic hierarchical view. Like there is some ultimate reality or truth on the top from where everything else descends.

 

- My nigga !

 

toplel

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:52 PM, mokz said:

 

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:44 PM, poblequadrat said:

 

  On 4/27/2014 at 6:30 PM, mokz said:

I don't really like the Platonic hierarchical view. Like there is some ultimate reality or truth on the top from where everything else descends.

 

Maybe "the higher reality" is an emergent feature of the "shadows". Or maybe the reality is a loop where the higher level and lower level create and keep up each other. Maybe there is nothing but the shadows on the wall. idk fml 2deep4me.

 

That is Plotinus, not Plato. For Plato it is not possible to "descend" from a "higher idea" to everything else. First of all because there isn't a higher idea: a discussion of being as such leads to multiple ideas rather than to an ultimate idea: if things are they are one, but in order to discuss the one you need to discuss the other and the multiple, and so on (check the Parmenides out.) There is an ontological gap: you don't derive being from "above". It's the same with Aristotle, where there is an ontological gap between the categories of being and ousia. You don't "deduce" anything from ousia.

 

While Plato does say that knowledge of reality is a dialectical process, for him truth is not "ultimate". For him there is one reality, but for the longest time this was the core tenet of any sort of rigorous thought!

 

 

Ok, I have to admit that I've never read Plato but only heard the allegory from secondary sources and it's been used for things like defending Christian theology. I'll probably need to catch up on my classical philosophy.

 

Well, there are many readings of Plato, and he's a bit of a tricky guy. Since for him the structure of being is not an ontic thing you can talk about directly as if it was just a "thing", he's always distancing himself from the subject matter by using allegories and myths, or by bracketing what is said by claiming that only a "probable discourse" can be attained, and so on. This makes reading him very difficult, but he's a good stylist so you get tricked into thinking you get what he's saying, and when you try to piece a coherent ontology out of everything you're left scratching your head.

The thing is the ancient Greeks really had no need for an ultimate "thing". They didn't get that notion until the Hellenistic period. For Plato, things as you find them are consistent and knowledge ruins this consistency. That's what he does when Socrates asks people what is to be brave? what is to be fair?, etc. They start out being sure about what it is and in the end they come to an irresoluble aporia.

But for Plotinus, and later on for Christianity, the world is inconsistent and you need a mystical experience to be reunited with the consistent One, which, though ineffable, is a "thing": you can "be" the One.

Your reading of Plato sounds very Heideggerian!

Most people think that what we come to know outside of the cave are indeed 'things,' but things that exist in a different way & place than the things we come to know inside of the cave. That is, the stereotypical reading has it that the forms are non-physical timeless, unchanging things, in which all other things similar to the form in the relevant respect somehow 'participate' (usually through resemblance or imitation).

I'm surprised about your claim about 'ultimate things' -- for one, what about the discussion of love in the Symposium? Isn't that the paradigm of reconciling a pervasive sense of imperfection, incompleteness and unfulfillment within ourselves alone? Also, I think there's a case to be made that for both Plato and Aristotle (and the presocratics), there is a 'need for an ultimate thing' with respect to explanation -- they all wanted to understand the first principle that would explain why there is a world and why it is the way it is. But maybe that's not what you mean by 'ultimate thing'?

it's a really nice allegory and one that has yet to be bettered even by the matrix. it's quite amazing the awareness certain people had back in those times.

one small thing that i will mention is how the language caused people to reify non physical objects such as "good" which turns a human concept only perceptible through human experience into something beyond it. it is a nice idea to think of these immortal and immutable ideas beyond our experience.

however, "good" is a human concept as with all value judgements and cannot be thought of as separate from the human perception or experience.

So all you guys Illuminati or wat?

It's been a while since a Troon GenBan thread. Whoopee!!!!

i'm more happy about encey's reappearance, there were rumors that he got sucked into euro-trance scene and as a result stopped posting on watmm.

the allegory is nothing more than platon's optimistic view on philosophy it self so/but is there anything sweeter than that? ...view/belief that truth exists

The Republic is on my reading list.

This question immediately popped up after reading that ".. the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners."

Who says the philosopher isn't watching some other shadow in the guise of a flame?

Mind you, I haven't actually read The Republic, so Plato might've said something on the matter.

  On 4/27/2014 at 7:52 PM, eugene said:

i'm more happy about encey's reappearance, there were rumors that he got sucked into euro-trance scene and as a result stopped posting on watmm.

I feel we need to once again see the mightyness of encey's beard before euro-trance makes another comeback.

  On 4/27/2014 at 8:44 PM, spratters said:

 

  On 4/27/2014 at 7:52 PM, eugene said:

i'm more happy about encey's reappearance, there were rumors that he got sucked into euro-trance scene and as a result stopped posting on watmm.

 

I feel we need to once again see the mightyness of encey's beard before euro-trance makes another comeback.

 

encey during his heideggerian phase:

Sisyphus' myth (Camus' version) : People think he's unhappy pushing the boulder again and again, but it's the opposite. He accepts the absurdity, becomes free and finds true meaning to his life

  On 4/27/2014 at 4:12 PM, Redruth said:

how often do we abuse others when we lack proper understanding of their perspective? it seems the world is full of this.

 

plato shares a simple story, yet it is so timeless and endlessly profound.

 

 

 

for those who r unfamiliar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

So, before we delve deeper into this philosophical cave, it might be good to know what kind of ABUSE we're talking about here. IT MATTERS.

in a meta-ontological way even... ;D

I blame capitalism.