Welcome to AP Language. Work can be accessed through Google classroom. Join using the class code zylvmdz
This is a college class, and we’re going to do college work, but here is my promise. I will give you the ramp you need to understand the work so you can succeed. Your job is to accept my help. And this summer assignment is your first chance to prove you can do that. We’re going to read one of the most famous pieces of writing in the world: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It’s a brilliant theory that changed the way people see the world.
Bill and Ted Philosophize with Socrates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0czxSi53jI
However, this is not an easy reading. So, I am going to give you some stepping stones. First, you need to have a Stanford vocabulary to read a text off the Stanford site. I have pulled all the words for you. You are going to use Google to search for sample sentences. So if you’re looking up “inscrutable” you’re going to put “sample sentence inscrutable” into Google. Now you need to look at those sample sentences and decide what the CONNOTATION of the word is. Is it positive, negative or neutral? Is it used to describe ideas that are powerful or weak (or is there no pattern in the power of the word)? Does the word have a specific idea attached to it?
Flee, run, dash, bolt, and scramble all mean that someone is moving legs fast. However, these are exceptionally different words.
He fled (strongly negative, powerful, implies fear) He ran (neutral, no pattern, no emotion) This lack of connotation makes the word weak. He dashed (slightly positive, strong, implies more energy) He bolted (slightly negative, strong, implies being startled or moving quickly) He scrambled (negative, no pattern, implies a lack of planning or coordination)
Once you have this work done, the reading will become infinitely easier. So if you skip this and then struggle with the text… dude, just use the stepping stones I’ve giving you to succeed!
Allegory of the Cave Vocabulary
I have given you the definitions (you’re welcome). You need to finish by searching for sample sentences and deciding, what is the emotion (positive, negative, neutral), how strong the word is (powerful, weak, or no pattern how it is used in sample sentences), and what ideas are associated with the word.
I did the first four for you. (Again, you’re welcome.) Make sure you know these words and study them before you start reading the assignment. If your vocabulary is weak and you start reading, the text will become very frustrating.
abroad: in or to a foreign country or countries Neutral No pattern Nothing specific beyond the definition acropolis:a citadel or fortified part of an ancient Greek city, typically built on a hill Slightly positive Strong (large) Maybe admiration, maybe no emotion adamant:refusing to be persuaded or to change one's mind positive STRONG! stick-with-it-ness! adorn:to add something decorative to a person or thing positive No pattern beauty/enjoyment adulation:very great admiration or praise for someone, especially when it is more than is deserved
amalgamate:to join or unite to form a larger organization or group, or to make separate organizations do this
anachronism:a person, thing, or idea that exists out of its time in history, especially one that happened or existed later than the period being shown, discussed, etc.
bearing:someone's way of moving and behaving
bypass:to avoid something by going around it
caveat:a warning to consider something before taking any more action, or a statement that limits a more general statement
chalk up:to have a success or failure, to record that success or failure
conceive:to imagine something
contemporary:existing or happening now <
contested:to oppose esp. in argument
correspond:to match or be similar or equal
corroborate:to add proof to an account, statement, idea, etc. with new information
depiction:the way that something is represented or shown
discourse:a speech or piece of writing about a particular, usually serious, subject
dispute:an argument or disagreement, especially an official one between, for example, workers and employers or two countries with a common border
divine:connected with a god, or like a god
dominant:more important, strong, or noticeable than anything else of the same type
emulation:the process of copying something achieved by someone else and trying to do it as well as they have
enable:to make someone able to do something, or to make something possible
encumbered:prevented from making quick progress by having to carry heavy objects or deal with important duties and responsibilities
enigma:something that is mysterious and seems impossible to understand completely
eroded:to slowly reduce or destroy something
eschew:to avoid something intentionally, or to give something up
explicit:clear and exact
extant:used to refer to something very old that is still existing
founding:to bring something into existence
gait:a particular way of walking
garden-variety:very common or ordinary
haunt:a place often visited by an individual
iconic:very famous or popular, especially being considered to represent particular opinions or a particular time
imperceptible:unable to be noticed or felt because of being very slight
impervious:not influenced or affected by something
incidental:less important than the thing something is connected with or part of
inscrutable:not showing emotions or thoughts and therefore very difficult to understand or get to know
irreverence:the quality of not showing the expected respect for official, important, or holy things
lampoon:a piece of writing, a drawing, etc. that criticizes a famous person or a public organization in a humorous way, allowing their or its bad qualities to be seen and making them or it seem stupid
mitigate:to make something less harmful, unpleasant, or bad
mouthpiece:a person or a newspaper that expresses the opinions of others
nominal:in name or thought but not in fact or not as things really are
ominous:suggesting that something unpleasant is likely to happen
paradigm:a model of something, or a very clear and typical example of something
pedestrian:not interesting; showing very little imagination
phenomenon:something that exists and can be seen, felt, tasted, etc., especially something unusual or interesting
physiognomy:the physical appearance of the face
plausible:seeming likely to be true, or able to be believed
prima facie:at first sight (based on what seems to be the truth when first seen or heard)
privilege:having or showing a special advantage
profound:felt or experienced very strongly or in an extreme way
proportionate:being in due proportion; agreeing in amount, magnitude, or degree
propriety:correct moral behavior or actions
relevant:connected with what is happening or being discussed
rhetorician:a person who is good at speaking in public, especially someone who is able to influence people
satyr:a god in Greek literature who is half man and half goat
skepticism:doubt that something is true or useful
sophist:a person who uses sophistry (= smart but untrue arguments) in order to deceive people
stately:formal, slow, and having a style and appearance that causes admiration
superseded:to replace something, especially something older or more old-fashioned
suspect:possibly false or dangerous
thorny:difficult to deal with
transmit:to pass something from one person or place to another
treatise:a formal piece of writing that considers and examines a particular subject
upheaval:a great change, especially causing or involving much difficulty, activity, or trouble
Socrates First published Fri Sep 16, 2005; substantive revision Tue Feb 6, 2018 Hosted at Stanford University, copyright Stanford
The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.), an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. All our information about him is second- hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age. Because his life is widely considered paradigmatic not only for the philosophic life but, more generally, for how anyone ought to live, Socrates has been encumbered with the adulation and emulation normally reserved for religious figures – strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods. Certainly he was impressive, so impressive that many others were moved to write about him, all of whom found him strange by the conventions of fifth- century Athens: in his appearance, personality, and behavior, as well as in his views and methods.
So thorny is the difficulty of distinguishing the historical Socrates from the Socrateses of the authors of the texts in which he appears and, moreover, from the Socrateses of scores of later interpreters, that the whole contested issue is generally referred to as the Socratic problem. Each age, each intellectual turn, produces a Socrates of its own. It is no less true now that, “The ‘real’ Socrates we have not: what we have is a set of interpretations each of which represents a ‘theoretically possible’ Socrates,” as Cornelia de Vogel (1955, 28) put it. In fact, de Vogel was writing as a new analytic paradigm for interpreting Socrates was about to become standard—Gregory Vlastos’s model (§2.2), which would hold sway until the mid 1990s. Who Socrates really was is fundamental to virtually any interpretation of the philosophical dialogues of Plato because Socrates is the dominant figure in most of Plato’s dialogues.
Socrates’s strangeness Standards of beauty are different in different eras, and in Socrates’s time beauty could easily be measured by the standard of the gods, stately, proportionate sculptures of whom had been adorning the Athenian acropolis since about the time Socrates reached the age of thirty. Good looks and proper bearing were important to a man’s political prospects, for beauty and goodness were linked in the popular imagination. The extant sources agree that Socrates was profoundly ugly, resembling a satyr more than a man—and resembling not at all the statues that turned up later in ancient times and now grace Internet sites and the covers of books. He had wide-set, bulging eyes that darted sideways and enabled him, like a crab, to see not only what was straight ahead, but what was beside him as well; a flat, upturned nose with flaring nostrils; and large fleshy lips like an ass. Socrates let his hair grow long, Spartan-style (even while Athens and Sparta were at war), and went about barefoot and unwashed, carrying a stick and looking arrogant. He didn’t change his clothes but efficiently wore in the daytime what he covered himself with at night. Something was peculiar about his gait as well, sometimes described as a swagger so intimidating that enemy soldiers kept their distance. He was impervious to the effects of alcohol and cold weather, but this made him an object of suspicion to his fellow soldiers on campaign. We can safely assume an average height (since no one mentions it at all), and a strong build, given the active life he appears to have led. Against the iconic tradition of a pot-belly, Socrates and his companions are described as going hungry (Aristophanes, Birds 1280–83). On his appearance, see Plato’s Theaetetus 143e, and Symposium 215a–c, 216c–d, 221d–e; Xenophon’s Symposium 4.19, 5.5–7; and Aristophanes’s Clouds 362. Brancusi’s oak sculpture, standing 51.25 inches including its base, captures Socrates’s appearance and strangeness in the sense that it looks different from every angle, including a second “eye” that cannot be seen if the first is in view. In the late fifth century B.C.E., it was more or less taken for granted that any self-respecting Athenian male would prefer fame, wealth, honors, and political power to a life of labor. Although many citizens lived by their labor in a wide variety of occupations, they were expected to spend much of their leisure time, if they had any, busying themselves with the affairs of the city. Men regularly participated in the governing Assembly and in the city’s many courts; and those who could afford it prepared themselves for success at public life by studying with rhetoricians and sophists from abroad who could themselves become wealthy and famous by teaching the young men of Athens to use words to their advantage. Other forms of higher education were also known in Athens: mathematics, astronomy, geometry, music, ancient history, and linguistics. One of the things that seemed strange about Socrates is that he neither labored to earn a living, nor participated voluntarily in affairs of state. Rather, he embraced poverty and, although youths of the city kept company with him and imitated him, Socrates adamantly insisted he was not a teacher (Plato, Apology 33a–b) and refused all his life to take money for what he did. The strangeness of this behavior is mitigated by the image then current of teachers and students: teachers were viewed as pitchers pouring their contents into the empty cups that were the students. Because Socrates was no transmitter of information that others were passively to receive, he resists the comparison to teachers. Rather, he helped others recognize on their own what is real, true, and good (Plato, Meno, Theaetetus)—a new, and thus suspect, approach to education. He was known for confusing, stinging and stunning his conversation partners into the unpleasant experience of realizing their own ignorance, a state sometimes superseded by genuine intellectual curiosity.
Three primary sources: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato
Aristophanes (±450–±386) Our earliest extant source—and the only one who can claim to have known Socrates in his early years— is the playwright Aristophanes. His comedy, Clouds, was produced in 423 when the other two writers of our extant sources, Xenophon and Plato, were infants. In the play, the character Socrates heads a Think- o-Rama in which young men study the natural world, from insects to stars, and study slick argumentative techniques as well, lacking all respect for the Athenian sense of propriety. The actor wearing the mask of Socrates makes fun of the traditional gods of Athens (lines 247–48, 367, 423–24), mimicked later by the young protagonist, and gives naturalistic explanations of phenomena Athenians viewed as divinely directed (lines 227–33; cf. Theaetetus 152e, 153c–d, 173e–174a; Phaedo 96a–100a). Worst of all, he teaches dishonest techniques for avoiding repayment of debt (lines 1214–1302) and encourages young men to beat their parents into submission (lines 1408–46).
In favor of Aristophanes as a source is that Xenophon and Plato were some forty-five years younger than Socrates, so their acquaintance could only have been in Socrates’s later years. One may reasonably doubt that the life and personality of Socrates was so consistent that Plato’s characterization of a man in his fifties and sixties should utterly undo the lampooning account of the younger Socrates found in Clouds and other comic poets. More to the point, the years between Clouds and Socrates’s trial were years of war and upheaval, so the Athenian intellectual freedom of which Pericles boasted at the beginning of the war (Thucydides 2.37–39) had been eroded completely by the end (see §3). Thus, what had seemed comical a quarter century earlier, Socrates hanging in a basket on-stage, talking nonsense, was ominous in memory by then.
Comedy by its very nature is a tricky source for information about anyone. A good reason to believe that the representation of Socrates is not merely comic exaggeration but systematically misleading is that Clouds amalgamates in one character, Socrates, features now well known to be unique to other particular fifth-century intellectuals (Dover 1968, xxxii-lvii). Perhaps Aristophanes chose Socrates to represent garden-variety intellectuals because Socrates’s physiognomy was strange enough to be comic by itself. Aristophanes genuinely objected to what he saw as social instability brought on by the freedom Athenian youths enjoyed to study with professional rhetoricians, sophists (see §1), and natural philosophers, e.g., those who, like the presocratics, studied the cosmos or nature. That Socrates eschewed any earning potential in philosophy does not seem to have been significant to the great writer of comedies. Aristophanes’s depiction is important because Plato’s Socrates says at his trial (Apology 18a– b, 19c) that most of his jurors have grown up believing the falsehoods spread about him in the play. Socrates calls Aristophanes more dangerous than the three men who brought charges against him in 399 because Aristophanes had poisoned the jurors’ minds while they were young.
Xenophon (±425–±386) Another source for the historical Socrates is the soldier-historian, Xenophon. Xenophon says explicitly of Socrates, “I was never acquainted with anyone who took greater care to find out what each of his companions knew” (Memorabilia 4.7.1); and Plato corroborates Xenophon’s statement by illustrating throughout his dialogues Socrates’s adjustment of the level and type of his questions to the particular individuals with whom he talked. If it is true that Socrates succeeded in pitching his conversation at the right level for each of his companions, the striking differences between Xenophon’s Socrates and Plato’s is largely explained by the differences between their two personalities. Xenophon was a practical man whose ability to recognize philosophical issues is almost imperceptible, so it is plausible that his Socrates appears as such a practical and helpful advisor because that is the side of Socrates Xenophon witnessed. Xenophon’s Socrates differs additionally from Plato’s in offering advice about subjects in which Xenophon was himself experienced, but Socrates was not: moneymaking (Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7) and estate management (Xenophon, Oeconomicus), suggesting that Xenophon may have entered into the writing of Socratic discourses (as Aristotle labeled the genre, Poetics 1447b11) making the character Socrates a mouthpiece for his own views. His other works mentioning or featuring Socrates are Anabasis, Apology, Hellenica, and Symposium.
Something that has strengthened Xenophon’s prima facie claim as a source for Socrates’s life is his work as a historian; his Hellenica (History of Greece) is one of the chief sources for the period 411–362, after Thucydides’s history abruptly ends in the midst of the Peloponnesian wars. Although Xenophon tends to moralize and does not follow the superior conventions introduced by Thucydides, still it is sometimes argued that, having had no philosophical axes to grind, Xenophon may have presented a more accurate portrait of Socrates than Plato does. But two considerations have always weakened that claim: (1) The Socrates of Xenophon’s works is so pedestrian that it is difficult to imagine his inspiring fifteen or more people to write Socratic discourses in the period following his death. (2) Xenophon could not have chalked up many hours with Socrates or with reliable informants. He lived in Erchia, about 15 kilometers and across the Hymettus mountains from Socrates’s haunts in the urban area of Athens, and his love of horses and horsemanship (on which he wrote a still valuable treatise) seem to have taken up considerable time.
Plato (424/3–347) Philosophers have usually privileged the account of Socrates given by their fellow philosopher, Plato. Plato was about twenty-five when Socrates was tried and executed, and had probably known the old man most of his life. It would have been hard for a boy of Plato’s social class, residing in the political district (deme) of Collytus within the city walls, to avoid Socrates. The extant sources agree that Socrates was often to be found where youths of the city spent their time. Further, Plato’s representation of individual Athenians has proved over time to correspond remarkably well to both archaeological and literary evidence: in his use of names and places, familial relations and friendship bonds, and even in his rough dating of events in almost all the authentic dialogues where Socrates is the dominant figure. The dialogues have dramatic dates that fall into place as one learns more about their characters and, despite incidental anachronisms, it turns out that there is more realism in the dialogues than most have suspected.[5] The Ion, Lysis, Euthydemus, Meno, Menexenus, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, the frame of Symposium, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (although Plato says he was not himself present at Socrates’s execution), and the frame of Parmenides are the dialogues in which Plato had greatest access to the Athenians he depicts.
It does not follow, however, that Plato represented the views and methods of Socrates (or anyone, for that matter) as he recalled them, much less as they were originally uttered. There are a number of cautions and caveats that should be in place from the start. (i) Plato may have shaped the character Socrates (or other characters) to serve his own purposes, whether philosophical or literary or both. (ii) The dialogues representing Socrates as a youth and young man took place, if they took place at all, before Plato was born and when he was a small child. (iii) One should be cautious even about the dramatic dates of Plato’s dialogues because they are calculated with reference to characters whom we know primarily, though not only, from the dialogues. (iv) Exact dates should be treated with a measure of skepticism for numerical precision can be misleading. Even when a specific festival or other reference fixes the season or month of a dialogue, or birth of a character, one should imagine a margin of error. Although it becomes obnoxious to use circa or plus-minus everywhere, the ancients did not require or desire contemporary precision in these matters. All the children born during a full year, for example, had the same nominal birthday, accounting for the conversation at Lysis 207b, odd by contemporary standards, in which two boys disagree about who is the elder. Philosophers have often decided to bypass the historical problems altogether and to assume for the sake of argument that Plato’s Socrates is the Socrates who is relevant to potential progress in philosophy.
THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE A philosophical story told by Plato (Socrates’ student) who used Socrates as a character while implying that the original idea came from the teacher himself. Plato presents himself as recording the teaching conversation between Socrates and a student named Glaucon.
SOCRATES: Next, said I [I= Socrates], compare our nature in respect of education and its lack to such an experience as this.
PART ONE: SETTING THE SCENE: THE CAVE AND THE FIRE
The cave
SOCRATES: Imagine this: People live under the earth in a cavelike dwelling. Stretching a long way up toward the daylight is its entrance, toward which the entire cave is gathered. The people have been in this dwelling since childhood, shackled by the legs and neck. Thus they stay in the same place so that there is only one thing for them to look that: whatever they encounter in front of their faces. But because they are shackled, they are unable to turn their heads around.
A fire is behind them, and there is a wall between the fire and the prisoners
SOCRATES: Some light, of course, is allowed them, namely from a fire that casts its glow toward them from behind them, being above and at some distance. Between the fire and those who are shackled [i.e., behind their backs] there runs a walkway at a certain height. Imagine that a low wall has been built the length of the walkway, like the low curtain that puppeteers put up, over which they show their puppets.
The images carried before the fire
SOCRATES: So now imagine that all along this low wall people are carrying all sorts of things that reach up higher than the wall: statues and other carvings made of stone or wood and many other artifacts that people have made. As you would expect, some are talking to each other [as they walk along] and some are silent.
GLAUCON: This is an unusual picture that you are presenting here, and these are unusual prisoners.
SOCRATES: They are very much like us humans, I [Socrates] responded.
What the prisoners see and hear
SOCRATES: What do you think? From the beginning people like this have never managed, whether on their own or with the help by others, to see anything besides the shadows that are [continually] projected on the wall opposite them by the glow of the fire.
GLAUCON: How could it be otherwise, since they are forced to keep their heads immobile for their entire lives?
SOCRATES: And what do they see of the things that are being carried along [behind them]? Do they not see simply these [namely the shadows]?
GLAUCON: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Now if they were able to say something about what they saw and to talk it over, do you not think that they would regard that which they saw on the wall as beings?
GLAUCON: They would have to.
SOCRATES: And now what if this prison also had an echo reverberating off the wall in front of them [the one that they always and only look at]? Whenever one of the people walking behind those in chains (and carrying the things) would make a sound, do you think the prisoners would imagine that the speaker were anyone other than the shadow passing in front of them?
GLAUCON: Nothing else, by Zeus!
SOCRATES: All in all, I responded, those who were chained would consider nothing besides the shadows of the artifacts as the unhidden.
GLAUCON: That would absolutely have
PART TWO: THREE STAGES OF LIBERATION
FREEDOM, STAGE ONE
A prisoner gets free
SOCRATES: So now, I replied, watch the process whereby the prisoners are set free from their chains and, along with that, cured of their lack of insight, and likewise consider what kind of lack of insight must be if the following were to happen to those who were chained.
Walks back to the fire
SOCRATES: Whenever any of them was unchained and was forced to stand up suddenly, to turn around, to walk, and to look up toward the light, in each case the person would be able to do this only with pain and because of the flickering brightness would be unable to look at those things whose shadows he previously saw.
Is questioned about the objects
SOCRATES: If all this were to happen to the prisoner, what do you think he would say if someone were to inform him that what he saw before were [mere] trifles but that now he was much nearer to beings; and that, as a consequence of now being turned toward what is more in being, he also saw more correctly?
The answer he gives
SOCRATES: And if someone were [then] to show him any of the things that were passing by and forced him to answer the question about what it was, don't you think that he would be a wit's end and in addition would consider that what he previously saw [with is own eyes] was more unhidden than what was now being shown [to him by someone else].
GLAUCON: Yes, absolutely.
Looking at the fire-light itself
SOCRATES: And if someone even forced him to look into the glare of the fire, would his eyes not hurt him, and would he not then turn away and flee [back] to that which he is capable of looking at? And would he not decide that [what he could see before without any help] was in fact clearer than what was now being shown to him?
GLAUCON: Precisely.
FREEDOM, STAGE TWO
Out of the cave into daylight
SOCRATES: Now, however, if someone, using force, were to pull him [who had been freed from his chains] away from there and to drag him up the cave's rough and steep ascent and not to let go of him until he had dragged him out into the light of the sun...
Pain, rage, blindness
SOCRATES: ...would not the one who had been dragged like this feel, in the process, pain and rage? And when he got into the sunlight, wouldn't his eyes be filled with the glare, and wouldn't he thus be unable to see any of the things that are now revealed to him as the unhidden?
GLAUCON: He would not be able to do that at all, at least not right away.
Getting used to the light
SOCRATES: It would obviously take some getting accustomed, I think, if it should be a matter of taking into one's eyes that which is up there outside the cave, in the light of the sun.
Shadows and reflections
SOCRATES: And in this process of acclimitization he would first and most easily be able to look at (1) shadows and after that (2) the images of people and the rest of things as they are reflected in water.
Looking at things directly
SOCRATES: Later, however, he would be able to view (3) the things themselves [the beings, instead of the dim reflections]. But within the range of such things, he might well contemplate what there is in the heavenly dome, and this dome itself, more easily during the night by looking at the light of the stars and the moon, [more easily, that is to say,] than by looking at the sun and its glare during the day.
GLAUCON: Certainly.
FREEDOM, STAGE THREE: THE SUN
Looking at the sun itself
SOCRATES: But I think that finally he would be in the condition to look at (4) the sun itself, not just at its reflection whether in water or wherever else it might appear, but at the sun itself, as it is in and of itself and in the place proper to it and to contemplate of what sort it is.
GLAUCON: It would necessarily happen this way.
Thoughts about the sun: its nature and functions
SOCRATES: And having done all that, by this time he would also be able to gather the following about the sun: (1) that it is that which grants both the seasons and the years; (2) it is that which governs whatever there is in the now visible region of sunlight; and (3) that it is also the cause of all those things that the people dwelling in the cave have before they eyes in some way or other.
GLAUCON: It is obvious that he would get to these things -- the sun and whatever stands in its light -- after he had gone out beyond those previous things, the merely reflections and shadows.
Thoughts about the cave
SOCRATES: And then what? If he again recalled his first dwelling, and the "knowing" that passes as the norm there, and the people with whom he once was chained, don't you think he would consider himself lucky because of the transformation that had happened and, by contrast, feel sorry for them?
GLAUCON: Very much so.
What counts for "wisdom" in the cave
SOCRATES: However, what if among the people in the previous dwelling place, the cave, certain honors and commendations were established for whomever most clearly catches sight of what passes by and also best remembers which of them normally is brought by first, which one later, and which ones at the same time? And what if there were honors for whoever could most easily foresee which one might come by next?
What would the liberated prisoner now prefer?
SOCRATES: Do you think the one who had gotten out of the cave would still envy those within the cave and would want to compete with them who are esteemed and who have power? Or would not he or she much rather wish for the condition that Homer speaks of, namely "to live on the land [above ground] as the paid menial of another destitute peasant"? Wouldn't he or she prefer to put up with absolutely anything else rather than associate with those opinions that hold in the cave and be that kind of human being?
GLAUCON: I think that he would prefer to endure everything rather than be that kind of human being.
PART THREE: THE PRISONER RETURNS TO THE CAVE
The return: blindness
SOCRATES: And now, I responded, consider this: If this person who had gotten out of the cave were to go back down again and sit in the same place as before, would he not find in that case, coming suddenly out of the sunlight, that his eyes ere filled with darkness?"
GLAUCON: Yes, very much so.
The debate with the other prisoners SOCRATES: Now if once again, along with those who had remained shackled there, the freed person had to engage in the business of asserting and maintaining opinions about the shadows -- while his eyes are still weak and before they have readjusted, an adjustment that would require quite a bit of time -- would he not then be exposed to ridicule down there? And would they not let him know that he had gone up but only in order to come back down into the cave with his eyes ruined -- and thus it certainly does not pay to go up.
And the final outcome:
SOCRATES: And if they can get hold of this person who takes it in hand to free them from their chains and to lead them up, and if they could kill him, will they not actually kill him?
GLAUCON: They certainly will.
End
Assignment: You have to explain this philosophy to someone. Your student ID number will determine WHO you have to explain this to. Look at the LAST number in your student ID, and then explain this idea in terms that your audience will understand and relate to. Your goal is to make your given audience understand and appreciate this story.
If your ID ends with Then you are writing for… 0 An 80 year old man with very little patience for education. He’s worked a farm his whole life and prefers to focus on the practical aspects of the world.
1 A twelve year old precocious child who loves to learn about everything, especially dinosaurs and horses; however, like most children, he/she has a short attention span
2 A developmentally challenged teen who struggles with school because of learning difficulties. He/she is a great cook and wants to be a chef but is not school-oriented.
3 A thirty year old waiter/waitress who loves learning about new topics, but who has never financially been able to afford to go to school
4 A middle-aged lawyer who paid someone to write all his humanities papers in school because anything that is not about the law is useless.
5 An artist who did well in school, but who doesn’t actually care about something that happened two thousand years ago. Current events and politics are more interesting
6 An IT technical expert who loves history; however, he/she had horrible teachers in school and has relied on history channel and documentaries to learn about the world
7 An elderly grandfather/grandmother who is interested in anything the younger generation is learning, even if he/she would rather be gardening than learning about Plato
8 A ten-year-old sibling who wants to learn all about the subject because an older sibling is learning about it. Anything a sibling does/likes is automatically interesting.
9 A student who is taking, and expects to ace AP physics and calculus, but who doesn’t know if he/she can handle AP language because philosophy is not his/her thing.