Archive for January, 2011

I took Philosophy with Randy Harris last semester, and one of my favorite classes of that semester was where Randy explained Plato and his story of “The Cave”. From that class, I came to a different interpretation of the story than was explained in class and I thought I should share it to see what the rest of you think.

Remember the story from class. The men who are tied to the rocks can only see shadows and believe that everything is just a dark blob with a distorted figure. A man from outside the cave came in and released one of the prisoners, who learned that there was more to the world than what he had previously thought. When he went back to try to explain to the other men, they were simply incapable of opening their minds to what he was saying.

The lesson I took from this story wasn’t necessarily the lesson that says, “you cannot separate the perception from the perceiver,” although this is a very good interpretation. I also took away the idea that falls into Plato’s Elitist political hierarchy; the idea that some people are born to be ignorant, some people have the ability to become enlightened, but are not wise enough to enlighten others, and some people are born enlightened and have the ability to enlighten others.

This is where I connected it to his hierarchy – the person who is doomed to ignorance and has no hope of becoming enlightened is what he called the “laboring class”, or in this story, the men chained to the stone who are doomed to ignorance. He thought that people in that “lower class” are in that class for a reason, and the reason is that (according to Plato) they are simply not smart enough to do anything else. (Disclaimer: I in no way agree with Plato’s views of social class, I am simply explaining how I interpreted the story in relation to his Elitist political theory.) The man who was wise enough to become enlightened, but not wise enough to enlighten others is Plato’s “military class”, also know as the man who was released from the cave but could not enlighten his fellow prisoners. And last, there is the man from outside the cave who came in and released the prisoner. This is Plato’s famous “Philosopher King”. He is born enlightened and has enough wisdom to enlighten others and because of this innate wisdom, he should rule the world.

Although the “perceiver/perception” interpretation is very applicable, I also thought this was a very interesting way of looking at the story and applying it to Plato’s political/social hierarchical philosophy.