The Allegory of the Cave (514a-520a of Plato’s Republic) describes how people may come to know t... more The Allegory of the Cave (514a-520a of Plato’s Republic) describes how people may come to know the form of the good, or, the good itself. It depicts a prisoner who with great difficulty leaves the cave in which he was bound and enters the external realm. There, under compulsion, he gazes at the light, responsible for all things, including the shadows which he had mistakenly thought represented truth. My project is to consider why one leaves the cave. Thus, I am interested in the mechanisms by which the philosopher is externally compelled to leave the cave, but I am perhaps more interested in his internal compulsion – his internal desire, and striving, to leave the cave – and how external compulsions may help bring out and in concert satisfy it. Accordingly, I will suggest that while external compulsions are necessary (to varying degrees) for a person’s rise from the cave, they are only successful because there lies in each person (again, to varying degrees) the ability to recognize the good, and the eros-driven desire to do so. It is thus my view that the external compulsions represented in the cave are auxiliary catalysts — they aid people in coming to know the form of good by focusing their natural eros on attaining knowledge. In making this argument, I will consider the Allegory of the Cave and other more focused passages in the Republic which deal with eros and the soul. I will also enter into some conversation with Rachel Barney’s “Eros and Necessity in the Ascent from the Cave,” which deals specifically with this issue and whose reading — that the more conventional external motivations (per her curricular and Socratic readings) and eros can each or even together compel one’s ‘ascent’ from the cave — I will accept in part but attempt to strengthen and specify in my own.
The Allegory of the Cave (514a-520a of Plato’s Republic) describes how people may come to know t... more The Allegory of the Cave (514a-520a of Plato’s Republic) describes how people may come to know the form of the good, or, the good itself. It depicts a prisoner who with great difficulty leaves the cave in which he was bound and enters the external realm. There, under compulsion, he gazes at the light, responsible for all things, including the shadows which he had mistakenly thought represented truth. My project is to consider why one leaves the cave. Thus, I am interested in the mechanisms by which the philosopher is externally compelled to leave the cave, but I am perhaps more interested in his internal compulsion – his internal desire, and striving, to leave the cave – and how external compulsions may help bring out and in concert satisfy it. Accordingly, I will suggest that while external compulsions are necessary (to varying degrees) for a person’s rise from the cave, they are only successful because there lies in each person (again, to varying degrees) the ability to recognize the good, and the eros-driven desire to do so. It is thus my view that the external compulsions represented in the cave are auxiliary catalysts — they aid people in coming to know the form of good by focusing their natural eros on attaining knowledge. In making this argument, I will consider the Allegory of the Cave and other more focused passages in the Republic which deal with eros and the soul. I will also enter into some conversation with Rachel Barney’s “Eros and Necessity in the Ascent from the Cave,” which deals specifically with this issue and whose reading — that the more conventional external motivations (per her curricular and Socratic readings) and eros can each or even together compel one’s ‘ascent’ from the cave — I will accept in part but attempt to strengthen and specify in my own.
Uploads
Papers by David Sacks
Drafts by David Sacks