Wednesday, August 2, 2017

PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE - METAXY

One of Socrates' (and Plato's) chief ideas was that of forms, which explains that the world is made up of reflections of more perfect and ideal forms. The material world - the one we can see, touch, hear and smell - is really just half-seen images of the reality of the forms. Relying on your physical senses alone - trusting what you see, for instance - is, to Socrates, making yourself effectively blind. The world we see is only a reflection of the forms the world represents (and not even that accurately). A form - whether it's a circle, or a table, or a tree or a dog - is, for Socrates, the answer to the question, 'What is that?' Only understanding forms can lead to true knowledge.

Plato uses a parable, a short informative story, to illustrate 'forms' and the 'cave,' in his main work, The Republic (which first appeared around 380 BC).

The dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon is probably fictitious and composed by Plato; whether or not the allegory originated with Socrates, or if Plato is using his mentor as a stand-in for his own idea, is unclear.

In the dialogue, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave, in which prisoners are kept. These prisoners have been in the cave since their childhood, and each of them is held there in a peculiar manner - they are all chained so that their legs and necks are immobile, forced to look at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a fire and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, on which people can walk.

These people are puppeteers, and they are carrying objects, in the shape of human and animal figures, as well as everyday items. The prisoners could only see these flickering images on the wall, since they could not move their heads; and so, naturally enough, they presumed the images to be real, rather than just shadowy representations of what is actually real. In fact, Socrates claimed, the images on the wall would be so real that the prisoners would assign prestige among each other to the one who could recall the most detail about the shapes, the order in which they appeared and which might typically be found together or in tandem. Of course, Socrates would point out, this was hollow praise, since in fact the images were not real.

Then Socrates offered a twist in the plot - what if one of the prisoners were to be freed and made to turn and look at the fire? The bright light would hurt his eyes, as accustomed as he was to the shadows, and even in turning back to the wall and its flickering images (which would be only natural), the prisoner couldn't help but notice that they weren't real at all, but only shadows of the real items on the walkway behind him.

If the prisoner was then taken from the cave and brought into the open, the disorientation would be even more severe; the light of the sun would be much more brilliant than the fire. But as his eyes adjusted, the newly freed prisoner would be able to see beyond only shadows; he would see dimensions and reflections in the water (even of himself). After learning of the reality of the world, the prisoner now sees how 'pitiable' his former colleagues in the cave really are. If he returned to the cave and rejoined them, he would take no pleasure in their accolades or praise for knowledge of the shadow-figures; for their own part, the prisoners would see him as deranged, not really knowing what reality is and would say of him that he left the cave and returned with corrupted eyes.

METAXY


Metaxy (Greek: μεταξύ) or metaxu is defined in Plato's Symposium via the character of the priestess Diotima as the "in-between" or "middle ground". Diotima, tutoring Socrates, uses the term to show how oral tradition can be perceived by different people in different ways. In the poem by Socrates she depicts Eros as not an extreme or purity; rather, as a daimon Eros is in-between the divine Gods and mankind. Diotima thus exposes the flaws of oral tradition; it uses strong contrasts to express truth, thus revealing vulnerability to sophistry. This portion of the dialogue points to the idea that reality is perceptible only through one's character (which includes one's desires and prejudices and one's limited understanding of logic). Man moves through the world of Becoming, the ever changing world of sensory perception, into the world of Being—the world of forms, absolutes and transcendence., by means of metaxy. Man transcends his place in Becoming by eros, where man reaches the Highest Good, an intuitive and mystical state of consciousness

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