Frigga’s Day, March 30: Plato and the Cave Men
EQ: Why do we prefer ignorance to wisdom – and why does wisdom hurt?
 Welcome! Gather
paper, pen/pencil,
Socrates work, wits!
 POSTPONED: Apology
With No Apology
 “The Unexamined Life”:
Worth Living, Or Not?
o Discussion of student writing
from Wednesday in terms of
argument/counterargument
 Reading/Discussion:
Plato’s Republic – The
Parable of the Cave
ELACC12RL-RI1: Cite strong and thorough
textual evidence to support analysis
ELACC12RL-RI2: Analyze two or more themes or
central ideas of text
ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how
individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop
ELACC12RL4-RI4: Determine the meaning of
words and phrases as they are used in text
ELACC12RL5: Analyze an author’s choices
concerning how to structure specific parts of a text
ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant
ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text
ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal texts of World Literature
ELACC12RL-RI9: Analyze for theme, purpose rhetoric, and how texts treat similar themes or topics
ELACC12RL10: Read and comprehend complex literature independently and proficiently.
ELACC12W1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts
ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas
ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience
ELACC12W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis
ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames
ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions
ELACC12SL3: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, evidence and rhetoric
ELACC12SL6: Adapt speech to a variety of tasks, demonstrating a command of formal English
ELACC12L1: Demonstrate standard English grammar and usage in speaking and writing.
ELACC12L4: Determine/clarify meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases
ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases
According to Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Disagree
 I believe everyone does not have to question everything and
die. They can question whatever they want. They do not
have too, either. This does not mean they have to die.
 I think lies are easier to believe than the truth. If no one ever
examined life then no one would ever know the real truth; we
could make up things and people would believe us. Life
would be worth living in lies that everyone believed.
 Maybe someone has a disorder and cannot remember things –
and therefore cannot examine life. I don’t believe they should
be dead. That person was born for a reason.
 What if you were searching for something but found another
thing that completely ruined your life, or changed it forever in
a negative way.
 Many people in Athens didn’t question everything and they
were perfectly fine. Some were even rich …. The men who
charged Socrates were not very wise, but yet obviously had
enough power to charge him. Even the man known to be the
wisest man was not wise.
According to Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Agree
 What is the point of keeping yourself in a lie, trying to make
yourself look so good [if examination would prove that was
not true]? There is no achievement in your days, and you will
have not standard reason to look at your self in bliss – only in
pity and disappointment.
 If you don’t think before you act it’s like writing your own
death sentence. It’s like walking into a store not thinking
about what you need, and then getting about thirty things of
ice cream for no reason.
 Living an unexamined life would be like living in a hole in
the ground, never knowing what the world was like. Anyone
could walk up and tell us the sky is green and we would go
along with it. Even if we look up and see that it is blue we
would believe [the one saying it’s green] because we
wouldn’t question what he told us, and would tell ourselves it
is blue. It would be as if we were dead already.
This sounds a lot like something Plato wrote:
his most famous parable (“The Cave”)
in his most famous book (The Republic).
In this book, as in all of Plato’s books,
Socrates is the narrator.
Here, he is trying to explain to his followers
why wisdom is difficult, painful, and worthwhile.
Because the idea is complicated,
he explains by using a parable –
a simple story with a deeper meaning.
Jesus, Confucius, Buddha all used these, too.
It’s what philosophers do.
Plato, The Republic: Allegory of the Cave
Adapted and edited from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html
Imagine men living in a deep cave. They have been here since childhood. Their legs and necks
are chained so that they cannot move; they can see only what is in front of them, being prevented
by the chains from turning round their heads. Some distance behind them a fire is blazing, and
between the fire and the prisoners there is a path and a low wall. Along this path men walk,
carrying on their heads like laborers pots of water and wine, loads of bricks, and statues and
figures of animals made of wood and stone. Some of the men are talking, others silent; and the
loads they carry on their heads can be seen over the low wall.
The prisoners are chained facing a wall. On this wall they see shadows: their own shadows,
and the shadows of the objects being carried by the men walking on the path. And from the
wall they hear sounds: echoes from the men behind them. Naturally the prisoners talk,
trying to describe and understand the shapes which seem to move and speak but which are
only shadows and echoes. Because they have been chained in this way since birth, this is all
they know, so they think they are describing real things and sounds; they do not know that
they are seeing only shadows, and hearing only echoes, and that the reality creating these
sights and sound is much more complex than, and different from, what they can see and hear.
One day, the prisoners are released, and for the first time stand up. As each turns around his
eyes are blinded by bright light. This hurts and scares him; and being blinded he cannot see
the real men and objects which formerly he had glimpsed only as shadows – shadows he had
thought were the only realities. Perhaps the first to stand and turn will explain to the others
that what they saw and heard before was an illusion, but that now they see and hear reality.
What will be each man’s reply? Will he not be perplexed? Will he not instinctively, though
wrongly, believe that the shadows which he once saw clearly and comfortably are truer than the
objects which he now sees in a bright blur? And will not his confusion and pain cause him to
turn away from the light to look again at the shadows he can see clearly and without pain – and
will he not believe these to be clearer than the real men and objects which are now being shown
to him? He will, left on his own, prefer to look at shadows and hear echoes, and will prefer to
live with them – unless forced to look at the real men and objects and fire until his eyes adjust.
Now go a further step: suppose each man is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged
ascent out of the cave, and forced into the sunlight. Will he not be even more pained and
irritated? When he approaches the sunlight his eyes will be dazzled, and for a time he will
not be able to see the real world. Will he not want to go back to the cave and shadows?
If a man is made to stay outside, he will slowly grow accustomed to the sight of the upper
world. At first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in
the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and
the stars at night, and see them better than the objects of day. Last of all he will be able to
see the sun itself, the true sunlight in his own proper place – the sun as it is really is.
Now, when that man remembers his life in the cave, and thinks about what he believed was
true when he was a prisoner there, do you not suppose that he would be amused the change,
and pity the prisoners still inside? And as the men discussed which of them seemed wisest
when discussing the shadows and echoes, do you think they would think those same men
wise now? So they would go inside to save the rest. How would the men still inside the cave
would regard them? The newly wise men would stumble and fall in the dark cave, trying to
describe the sun and trees to the men who know only shadows. The men still inside the cave
would say that these wise men had lost their eyes, and that it was better not even to think of
ascending; they would ridicule, resist, and even battle against those who came to free them.
That’s what the world we usually call “reality” is like. We who live in this world here are
still in a cave, in terms of ultimate reality; the light of our sun is only a fire; and our journey
toward wisdom, and the ascent of our souls into the intellectual world, is like walking out
of the cave of our current existence. My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the
ideas of goodness and truth appear last of all, and are seen only with an effort. When they
are seen at last, we understand that the good, true, ultimate reality is the universal author of
all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world,
and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual, and the power upon which
we who would act rationally and wisely must have his eye fixed.
So a wise man always seems blind and foolish to those of this world who are content with
the shadows and echoes of the dark cave. But the wise man would rather seek truth even
when it hurts than to have the respect of those who live in darkness.