The allegory of the cave: the necessity of the philosopher’s descent Autor(es): Mouroutsou, Georgia Publicado por: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra URL URI:http://hdl.handle.net/10316.2/42183 persistente: DOI: DOI:https://doi.org/10.14195/2183-4105_11_4 Accessed : 6-Mar-2023 00:44:31 A navegação consulta e descarregamento dos títulos inseridos nas Bibliotecas Digitais UC Digitalis, UC Pombalina e UC Impactum, pressupõem a aceitação plena e sem reservas dos Termos e Condições de Uso destas Bibliotecas Digitais, disponíveis em https://digitalis.uc.pt/pt-pt/termos. Conforme exposto nos referidos Termos e Condições de Uso, o descarregamento de títulos de acesso restrito requer uma licença válida de autorização devendo o utilizador aceder ao(s) documento(s) a partir de um endereço de IP da instituição detentora da supramencionada licença. 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Na medida em que todas as obras da UC Digitalis se encontram protegidas pelo Código do Direito de Autor e Direitos Conexos e demais legislação aplicável, toda a cópia, parcial ou total, deste documento, nos casos em que é legalmente admitida, deverá conter ou fazer-se acompanhar por este aviso. impactum.uc.pt digitalis.uc.pt L A N R U O 11 DEZ 2011 J Y O T T ISSN 2079-7567 A E eISSN 2183-4105 L P I C O Established 1989 http://platosociety.org/ S O T A L P L A N O I T A N R E PL ATO T N I JOURNAL Société Platonicienne Internationale Associazione Internazionale dei Platonisti Sociedad Internacional de Platonistas Internationale Platon-Gesellschaft MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE: THE NECESSITY OF THE PHILOSOPHER’S DESCENT∗ Georgia MOUROUTSOU The allegory of the cave is about the Platonic ideal of education. It has been received, interpreted, and transformed throughout the entire course of the history of philosophy. After some preliminary remarks on this philosophical image (I), I shall focus on the hotly debated descent of the philosopher back into the cave. On the one hand, I shall examine the issue with regard to the ontological distinction between being and becoming: the middle dialogue in question is not concerned with the ontological aspect of the descent, as I label the return from being to becoming, and thus does not solve the problem so formulated (II). On the other hand, I shall consider a well-known crux: the ethical and political aspect of the problem (III). To do so, I shall center on the concept of necessity (ἀνάγκη) that plays a prominent role in the Cave1 but nonetheless has not yet received due attention (IV). For this it is important to show in what way and to what extent we have to take “necessity” or “compulsion” seriously in the broader relevant context (500d4, 519e4, 520a8, 521b7, 540a-b); and also what kinds of necessity are at stake.2 ∗ This is the elaboration of the paper I gave at the International Plato Society Conference, Tokyo 2010, initially entitled as: The Allegory of the Cave: Methodos and Kathodos. I benefited considerably from the following discussion, and the very helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers. 1 I will capitalize whenever referring to the simile of the cave or the line: from now on “the Cave” and “the Line”. 2 Even researchers who do focus on the special problem of the philosopher’s descent do not consider the concept of necessity sufficiently, although they address the issue as it suits their purposes (e.g. Kraut 1999, p. 238f.). Brown (2000) does not differentiate between different kinds of necessity but reduces them all to external legislative compulsion. Schenke not only fails to differentiate between different kinds of necessity but he also conflates necessity and freedom in the philosopher’s descent (fn. 5; already so White, 1986, fn. 6). Sedley, who provides a distinction between a kind of necessity as external enforcement and a more benign necessity, is an exception (2007). But a more general discussion of necessity would bring to the foreground the Timaeus, a connection with which Sedley takes issue (2007, fn. 33). PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 1 MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " I discern two aspects for the philosophers’ descent (in III), and also a twofold necessity as their source (IV). Accordingly, the levels in my reading prove to be two: On a first, exoteric level, the necessity of the philosophers’ descent emerges as legislative compulsion and moral obligation. On a second, esoteric level,3 it shows itself as inner compulsion: after getting acquainted with the form of the good, the philosophers realize that they are demiurges called to form, unify and perfect the matter in their soul and city. The philosophers’ ultimate motivation for descent lies in their wish to imitate the form of the good.4 Although this second motivation connected with the demiurgy motif is more profound than legislative and moral obligation, it is not adequately spelled out in the allegory of the cave. My endeavor will highlight the analogy to the Timaeus’ context of demiurgy, but it will be sensitive to the disanalogies as well, offering a reflection on the relation to the later dialogue. I. Preliminaries: The Cave as a Philosophical Image Plato had to distinguish philosophy from its rivals, the arts and sophistry. In this dialogue and conflict over boundaries, in order to demarcate the three image rich activities, Plato both distinguished different types of images and defined the nature of image. And he did not remain content with a theoretical distinction but wanted to show what philosophical images are and how philosophers make good use of them in different contexts. We therefore learn some things about sensible and discursive, philosophical images in the Republic. But it is only when philosophy confronts sophistry, namely in the Sophist, that the question is raised about the nature of image qua image.5 The allegory of the cave is the last of the three celebrated philosophical images in the central books of the Republic. All three of them exemplify the form 3 I refer to Schleiermacher’s distinction between esoteric and exoteric readings of Plato, pp. 33f., 36, 42, 47. 4 I am in accordance with what is labeled as the “creative” or “expressive” argument: According to Parry’s terminology, 1996, 200ff. 5 Cf. Patterson’s nuanced monograph, and my account of development on image and metaphysics in Plato. PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 2 MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " of the good, in the acquisition of which the education of the philosopher-rulers culminates. Socrates had previously characterized the sun as an image and offspring of the form of the good,6 and provided an incomplete list of images as the objects he allocated to the very last section of the Line, which stood for conjecture: among them he enumerated first shadows, and then reflections in water, or in any dense, smooth, shiny surface and everything of that sort (509e1- 510a3). In the Line, Socrates had furthermore condemned the mathematicians for using sensible images for their operations and confined dialectics exclusively to the intelligible forms. Socrates resorts to the image of the cave in order to explain how the ideal education takes place. The Cave is a discursive image, not a visible one,7 which underlines the philosophers’ ascent from the Sensible to the Intelligible. In this respect, the Cave is an apt image in contrast to both the mathematician’s visualisations in the sixth and seventh books and the contemporary artistic production of copies in the tenth book. The Cave exemplifies not only the philosophers’ ascent but also their descent, to which we now turn. II. From the Possibility to the Problem of the Descent into the Cave: Ontological and Ethical/Political Aspects of the Problem Socrates introduces the descent of the philosophers into the cave as a hypothesis but not as a problem: If someone like that should come back down into the cave and take up his old seat, wouldn’t he get his eyes full of darkness, coming suddenly from the sunlight? (516e3-6).8 6 509a. 7 517d1: προειρημένη εἰκών. And it is rather a complex discursive image, which is a whole made out of parts, as Socrates stresses in 517b2. 8 Similarly in 517c8 we hear about the ones who have returned to the cave and prefer not to participate in politics, but the return in itself does not yet pose a problem. PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 3 MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " This conditional expresses a real possibility. Although remote and difficult to realize, the third and largest wave of Socrates’ political proposals for Callipolis can indeed become true as he stated in the sixth book. The necessity derived from fortune, which Socrates addresses in 499b5 (ἀνάγκη τις ἐκ τύχης), concerns the external circumstances of realization. This necessity is divine, as a much later passage (592a7-9) makes explicit: the coincidence of philosophical knowledge and political power can neither be predicted nor expected, but the project is feasible, and no mere wishful thinking (499c7-d6).9 In the Cave, Socrates draws the distinction between becoming (τὸ γιγνόμενον) and being (τὸ ὄν) for the first time in the Republic,10 which correlates to the Line’s twofold distinction between the Sensible and the Intelligible.11 Based on the former ontological distinction, we can formulate the philosopher’s descent as a return from being to becoming. The ontological problem, which the philosophers’ descent seems then to raise, is the following: How does the dialectician return to the realm of becoming after studying the realm of being and acquiring the form of the good, i.e. after thirty-five years of studies and practical experience according to the proposed educational curriculum? Against the entire background of the upward philosophical motion, the ontological version of the philosopher’s descent poses a serious problem: For 9 R. 499b-d: “[…] under compulsion of the truth [ἠναγκασμένοι] we said that no city or regime, and likewise no man either, can ever be perfect until some necessity derived from fortune [ἀνάγκη τις ἐκ τύχης περιβάλῃ], invests the few philosophers […] with the charge of the city, whether they want it or not, and the city with obedience. Either that, or until due to some divine inspiration the sons of those in positions of authority or sole rule, or the actual holders of those positions, are seized by with a true love of true philosophy.” “If some necessity [τις ἀνάγκη] has arisen in the boundless past for the experts in philosophy to take charge of their city, or if it exists now […] or will ever arise in the future,” Socrates continues, the project is real and not mere wishful thinking.” Cf. Szlezák (1996), 29ff. 10 In 518c. 11 After introducing the Cave, Plato gives us the following interpretative hint: the entire comparison has to be applied to the things said so far (517a8-b1). Rather than just the Visible and Sensible, the cave represents what in the Line was called δοξαστόν, the object of opinion, for example the social and cultural patterns and opinions about justice, like the ones introduced in the discussion in the first book. PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 4 MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " sensu stricto, the Line and the Cave depict dialectics as inseparably connected with, defined by, and even confined to, its own, genuine objects of inquiry: the forms. The dialectician may “descend” from more to less general forms (510b3- c2) but the Republic never attests that the dialectical science comprises the investigation into the sensible realm of becoming.12 In a broader sense, the “dialectical journey” that leads the soul from becoming to being includes the mathematical disciplines as well:13 but in any case, it concerns the upward transition from becoming to being. Someone might try to play this problem down by suggesting that the philosophers’ descent is nothing but a moment of the entire method,14 which would also include the path that leads upwards, from becoming to being. Such a refuge in a holistic concept of the dialectician’s journey would render what I called the ontological problem trivial, yet it does not hold: Whenever Socrates mentions the dialectical journey, he always addresses the upward movement and never the one that leads back to the Sensible. Moreover the philosopher’s love is directed exclusively to being as a whole and not to being and becoming (475aff.). The philosophers may be the only ones who understand becoming in its dependence on the forms, but this happens on the basis of their investigation into the realm of forms. The sensibles are neither real nor knowable but degraded into mere shadows and images of the forms upon which they are dependent. The only knowledge attributed to the sensibles is the knowledge of the forms they are copies of.15 Only in the later dialogues, like the Philebus and the Timaeus, the philosopher turns anew to the sensibles, which are no longer degraded as “rolling about in the midregion between being and not-being”,16 but are rather reevaluated and rehabilitated. We do not encounter this crucial shift in the 12 On the dialectical ascent cf. 532a1-b2 and 532b6-d1. 13 R. 532b-c. 14 R. 510b8, 533b3, c7. 15 Cf. 520c4f., which throws light on the knowledge of the things our beliefs are about in 479e1-5. 16 R. 479d. PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 5 MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " Republic. What I initially labeled the ontological problem of the descent is not dealt with in the Cave. Thus I will leave aside the ontological aspect of the descent for now only to come back to it at the end, and will introduce the second aspect of the descent, which the text itself poses. Plato scholars were right to find the celebrated crux only later in the seventh book (519b-521b) and not when the notion of descent is introduced. The ethical problematic can be summarized as follows: the philosophers seem to be acting against their own self-interest and sacrificing it when they are compelled to return to the cave because they have to give up the life that is much more worth living, namely their pure theoretical endeavour. How could this necessity be reconciled with the thesis that just acts promote the agent’s own interest? As for the political dimension, the pivotal role of compulsion jeopardizes the practicability of the entire project: Doesn’t the element of compulsion after all underscore the impracticability of the political ideal? III. The Story of the Descent Retold: Motivations for the Descent Here I cannot even outline the solutions given to this battery of problems17 but briefly depict my own proposal according to which neither the ethical doctrine nor the practicability of the political ideal are jeopardized, since the external compulsion will prove to be grounded in an inner compulsion that arises as part of the transformative process of philosophical education. This education renders external compulsion or command unnecessary.18 The philosophers descend into the cave both because law compels them to do so and because they realize they are demiurges. These are the two fundamental motivations for the descent, which Plato neither differentiates adequately from one another nor analyzes to the same extent. 17 For a comprehensive overview cf. Schenke. 18 Plato would certainly concur with the Aristotelian answer to what is the benefit of the philosophical education: Diog. Laertius V, 20. PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 6 MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " Let us take the issue from the very beginning. Already in the first book, the good rulers’ motivation is problematized. In 347a-e, Socrates replies to Glaucon’s question and explicates the kind of penalty he considers the good rulers’ motivation. There he argues, namely, that there should be a compulsion on the rulers or a penalty, since payment or fame are disgraceful. So if they are going to agree to be willing to rule, some additional compulsion and penalty must be imposed on them (δεῖ δὴ αὐτοῖς ἀνάγκην προσεῖναι καὶ ζημίαν); that is why it has been regarded as disgraceful to seek office voluntarily and not await necessity (μὴ ἀνάγκην περιμένειν). And the greatest penalty is to be ruled by someone worse, if they are not willing to rule themselves. It is because of this fear that decent people seem to rule, when they rule. And it is then that they enter an office not because they are entering something good, or it will bring them any benefit but because they enter something necessary (ὡς ἐπ᾽ ἀναγκαῖον) and do not have anyone better than themselves, or as good as themselves, to delegate the task. (347b9-d2). The necessity which is introduced here is imposed by the external circumstances, is said to be added and waited for. It is left open what kind of necessity this could be. We are long before the seventh book, and Socrates has not yet presented the ideal state and its educational institution, which will provide the explanatory frame for the philosophers’ descent. Before we enter the context of the seventh book, let our second station be a crucial and dense passage in 500b-d, in which the philosopher is said to imitate the intelligible divine model as far as this is possible. Against this background of the paradigm and its imitation, the concept of demiurgy finds its appropriate place in 500d4-8: PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 7 MOUROUTSOU, Georgia, "The Allegory of the Cave : The Necessity of the Philosopher’s Descent " Suppose then, I said, that a necessity arose for the philosopher, instead of molding only herself,19 to practice putting what she sees in that world yonder into the characters of men in private and public life. Do you think she will be a bad craftsman of temperance and justice, and civic virtue as a whole? The philosopher is compared to a demiurge, who looks at her paradigm and works on her material.20 She searches at first in herself for the material she has to mold:21 becoming just means turning the three parts of her soul into a unity (443d7-e1). But she will also be willing to become bond and cause of unity in her own city, which admittedly is a far cry from the intelligible order of the forms. Her goal is to bind the individual co-citizens and the city together (520a4). Socrates exposes the exact educational path of the ideal state in the seventh book. After ten years of mathematical studies, five years of dialectics follow before the dialecticians devote themselves to fifteen years of practical experience in the cave. The problem of the descent into the cave, which Socrates addresses in the seventh book, does not concern this first return to the cave, but the one after the completion of their education, namely after their acquaintance with the form of the good (540a). Thus the relevant question to ask is how the knowledge of the form of the good motivates the philosophers to descend. It is there in the specific knowledge of the good that the definite motivation for the descent is to be looked for. After all, the well-ordered ideal patterns (500b-d) can explain that their imitation can produce good results in the human realm, but are not sufficient to motivate and explain the philosopher’s descent.22 19 I allow myself to use the feminine pronoun as Socrates underlines the real possibility of queen-rulers of Callipolis. 20 Cf. the programmatic text on demiurgic activity, Gorg. 503d5-504a5; in 503e Socrates speaks of the demiurge compelling different elements of his material so as to arrange and order his entire work. My point is that although Plato depicts the notion of demiurgy differently, the demiurge, the paradigm and the material are present in all diverse contexts. 21 Molding is used both for the soul and the city (cf. 374a5, 377c3, 420c2, 466a5f.). 22 Kraut offers a solution along this line (1999), which is refuted by Brown (2000). PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, n 11, 2011. http://gramata.univ-paris1.fr/Plato/article105.html   © All rights of reproduction of any form reserved. Page 8