I have asked you to read Plato's cave allegory from book seven of Republic.
We are reading this cold, without any appreciation for its context in the larger work.
And I’ve asked you to reflect on the meaning and relevance of the symbolism in this story for education today, in the 21st century.
In the previous video I gave you three questions to think about as you read: the difficulty of the escape from the cave
and the ascent to the surface, the escapee’s increased self-knowledge from the time that she leaves
the cave to the time that she returns, and the idea of philosophical education
as a reorientation of the soul, a transformation of the self at a fairly fundamental level.
In this video I’d like to develop some of these ideas and give you some food for thought going forward.
Let's begin with the ignorance of the cave prisoners. The cave prisoners, it seems to me, are ignorant in two different ways.
First, they don't know the truth about what they're looking at, which are the shadows on the wall.
They think the shadows are the only reality.
And the thing that we know about shadows, and that also was known in Plato's time, is that their reality is secondary.
What I mean is a shadow is always a shadow *of* something.
So whenever we see a shadow, we think automatically of the object casting the shadow,
and of the source of light that's illuminating the object. In other words, our thought never just stops with the shadow.
But this is not a move that the cave prisoners make.
The cave prisoners see the shadows and think that these shadows are their full and final reality.
And it's this ignorance of what's in front of them that I'm going to call their first level of ignorance, Level 1 Ignorance.
Now the cave prisoners also don't know *that* they don't know the truth. They are unaware of their level 1 ignorance.
They think their situation is normal and unproblematic. And this is their second level of ignorance, Level 2 Ignorance.
So they are deceived both about the objects of their attention, and about themselves and their situation.
They don’t know the truth about the shadows, and they also don't know that they don't know the truth about the shadows.
Now combining this with what I said before, I think I can say that this second level ignorance is what Socratic
philosophy is trying to address.
We will see Socrates, in Plato’s Apology, discuss how he attacks the situational ignorance of his fellow Athenians.
Philosophical education as he does it is about waking people up to their true situation,
making them aware of problems in their reality so that they can seek a solution.
Just like in a 12-step program, where admitting you have a problem is the beginning
of solving the problem, these prisoners don't know that they have a problem.
They think that everything is normal.
So it's the job of Socrates, it's the job of the liberator in the cave story,
to call their attention to the fact that their situation is not normal.
Breaking them out of that complacency is the first task of the liberator: to remove the shackles from the prisoners
and to convince them to turn around and to cooperate in their own liberation and their rise to the surface.
So the liberator in the cave story
doesn't just take off the shackles and say “All right, you're free to do what you want,
you're free to escape or to stay, as you like.” The liberator, the philosophy teacher, has to take the shackles off
and then persuade the person to turn around and to begin the difficult process of upward motion, of self-improvement.
Now, this causes resentment and resistance.
We're told in the allegory that this resentment can get the liberator killed by the cave
prisoners, who don't want to be freed, and don't see any need for being freed.
They think of this new freedom as actually kind of burden or imposition or aggression against them.
They’re happy being who they are, because of their Level 2 Ignorance.
Keep this idea in mind for when we read Apology later on and discuss
the life and the trial of Socrates, and the Athenians’ complaints against him.
Let's turn now to the relevance of this story for education now, in the 21st century.
What this story suggests is that philosophy education will be unlike other types of education.
Philosophy, it seems, will be more about becoming aware of the larger context,
of a bigger or we might say deeper, world around us.
It's going to involve understanding our own selves in a way that training in practical skills might not.
It involves questioning and reevaluating our assumptions and our received truths.
It also seems to require the cooperation of a teacher of a particular kind, not just a teacher
who has a skill and can share it somebody, who can “put sight into blind eyes,” to use Plato's metaphor.
But instead someone who knows the truth and who has your long-term interests at heart, a kind of mentor or life coach.
And this is why I think this type of philosophy education requires trust.
It's that lack of trust that leads to the murder of the liberator in the cave story.
So it seems that, in some way at least, the character of the philosophy teacher matters
and the student’s trust in that character matters. And this is not the case for some other types of education. For example,
if somebody wants to teach me the art of cartography, teach me map making, it doesn't especially matter to me
whether that person is a good or bad person, just so long as he knows the skills and he's willing to teach me the skills.
But it's going to be difficult or impossible to learn true and good philosophy from a bad person,
from a teacher who is himself a bad person.
Maybe we can think and talk more about this later on.
Philosophy education is a long-term project.
It can be difficult or painful at times, and it requires a constant commitment and re-commitment on the part of the student.
It begins with a decision to turn around, a decision to wake up, a willingness
to try thinking of oneself and of one's world in a new and different way.
It means allowing that there might be a fuller reality that you are ignorant of right now,
but that you can come to know with the effort of study and self-discipline in cooperation with the teacher.
So I’d like you, going forward, to think about some specific examples of this new type of education,
this education as a situational awareness in the larger and deeper sense that I’ve been talking about.
Here are a few questions to start you on that path.
First, how is this type of education different from acquiring skills and knowledge in more everyday fields?
Second, how can we know whether philosophical education has been successful?
At what point in the process can you discover whether it's working or not?
At what point are you able to evaluate the whole process that you're going through?
Certainly not at the beginning, because it's at the beginning that the cave prisoner needs to have the *most* trust in the liberator,
because her eyes are completely blinded by the even the dim light of the fire.
Lastly, what is the difference between a good philosophical education and a bad one?
To put it a different way: what if philosophical education goes bad because of some defect in the student or in the teacher?
What does that look like? What does the error state look like for a philosophical education,
and can it be recognized and fixed from inside, by the student herself?
That's all for right now. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.