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Plato's Republic, Book vii 514-18 :
Socrates is talking with Glaucon:
"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 toward 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."
Republic, Book vii 514-18
Human experience for most of us most of the time is like the experience of the prisoners in their fettered state. All they can see are the shadows. And the things producing the shadows are but images and models or mock-ups of real people, real animals.
Then Socrates wants us to imagine the situation of a prisoner who breaks free and makes their way towards the light.
They see the truly limited state of their former existence and are able to rejoice in the state of 'enlightenment' they have now achieved.
Enlightenment costs, but a person who has achieved it is not likely to want to go back, Plato imagines. Should they ever try to go back they would be likely to meet with incredulity and even ridicule.
Plato's reasons for thinking there must be a non-physical realm of the Forms appear to be of several. At the bottom perhaps was a preoccupation with coming to terms with change.
There was also a concern to explain how human beings could think. The suggestion that there was a second real but non-physical realm was used to offer an understanding of human thought as well.
How are general thoughts possible?
We can have a thought of a single individual thing because there are single individual things around us. What Plato proposed was we could have general thoughts because there were also 'general things' we could access. The general things were the Forms.
Other aspects:
This big picture-building of Plato's is one way of doing philosophy, developing a comprehensive story in which everything we know of is given a place, along with other things we probably don't know of, an account which purports to offer a sort of overarching explanation of what is and how things are.
It contrasts as a conception of philosophy with two others:
- philosophy as bringing reason to bear as best we can on any old deep and deeply resistant question that comes our way and
- philosophy as conceptual hygiene, using the analysis of concepts to don't get confused
- philosophy as a kind of music or painting but with ideas.
Revised 22:10:06 | Prepared by VP A module of the BA Philosophy programme Centre for Professional Ethics | University of Central Lancashire | e-mail hhoughton@uclan.ac.uk |