The Field, part 2

- Jesus, dis-je, il y a icy un nouveau monde?

- Certes, dist-il, il n'est mie nouveau, mais

l'on dist bien que hors d'icy y a une terre

neufve ou ilz ont et soleil et lune et tout plein

de belles besoignes; mais cestuy cy est plus ancien.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, ch. 32

Rabelais

What the Prisoner Experienced in the Cave

[From a previously unknown dialogue of Plato.  Part I is here.]

Socrates : Our prisoner awakens to find himself chained to a bench. His head has been constrained to face forward; in this way he can only see a kind of screen upon which are projected shadows. It happens that there is a fire behind our prisoners which casts these shadows onto the screen which is visible to them. The shadows are cast by large cut outs on long poles carried by actors who parade back and forth behind the prisoners. The shadows from these shapes are all that the prisoners can see. The shapes being carried are of every imaginable kind. There are cut-outs to signify the stars, the sun, the moon and the other heavenly bodies. Great houses and temples are represented as are humble abodes of common laborers. All the animals and plants are represented as well as all the other phenomena of the earth; mountains, hills, rivers, and roads. Some of the shapes are of human beings and their voices are simulated by those who carry the respective cut-outs.

Our prisoner rejoices to see this because they are of a much simpler version of that complex ‘reality’ which he, formerly a prisoner in the field, had previously been familiar. He finds everything much more comprehensible.

Glaucon : He prefers it to the open field?

Recess in S wall of Roman Agora. Athens, Attica, Greece. 1CBC.
Courtesy of SquinchPix

S. : And why not? Indeed his being imprisoned in the open field has prepared him to take maximum advantage from the cave. Because of his previous imprisonment he can far more easily detail the minutest shades of meaning in the ‘plays’ of the sign holders. Nothing for him is baffling; indeed the discourses of the priests and the prominent men (for they, too, are represented) are greatly simplified from the reality of such dignitaries in the upper world from which he has fled to this refuge. Would he not prefer these clearer meanings, Glaucon?

G. : Indeed, I don’t think so, Socrates!

S. : But consider, best of students, the upper world in which he was previously a prisoner was complex, incommensurable; sometimes cruel and baffling. The world of the cave, in which he is now so happy, is clear, plain, understandable. And, in addition, the vagaries of nature have no place in this better lower world.

G. : But how could a person choose a poor simulacrum over the richness of his former reality?

S. : Most of the prisoners (I mean, from the upper world of the Field) would choose it because they are safe in the Cave. The world is more comprehensible there. And you fail to consider the advantages of such a life over the disordered and chaotic mental life that he led previously. In the new life of the Cave ideal concepts are presented in their clearest and simplest form. They are easy to absorb. Instead of attempting to dredge meaning from complex phenomena (which, I assure you, are all too easy to misunderstand) the meaning of life and one’s place in it will be much simpler to absorb from the signs carried by the actors. Such a fortunate prisoner would never be confused about the founding ideas of life. Does one understand Virtue better from a controlled environment marked out by clear and intelligible signs or is it better to throw a child into a complex and confusing environment such as our own and trust to happenstance that the child will absorb the right lessons about life?

G. : The former, surely.

S. : Most certainly Glaucon, attentive one! For consider the study of Truth. The material world outside the cave has no certain or natural way of communicating knowledge of, or love of, the Truth to the poor prisoners sitting under the canopy in the field. And how can all the prisoners in the upper world all reach the same conclusions? Indeed, what certain and unerring idea can be communicated by means of the multifarious and ever-changing phenomena of the upper world? Because, Glaucon, what is Truth?

G. : Truth is the Unchanging.

S. : Precisely so! But how can the Unchanging emerge from the Changing?

G. : It cannot.

S. : Just so. But the opposite obtains in the Cave. For in the Cave the work of the great Truth-tellers can be clearly and unambiguously communicated by using symbols and words that have fixed and unchanging meanings. Now, suppose that our prisoner is again accidentally freed. What shall he do?

G. : Entirely free? Able to choose whether to stay in the cave or to go back out into the world of the field?

S. : Yes.

G. :Well, according to what you say, I suppose that he would ignore his new freedom – even conceal the fact that his bonds had slipped – and remain in the cave watching the projected shadows.

S. :  But let us continue this in our next meeting.

G.: Very well, Socrates.

The Field

Oct5

“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d”
WS

~~~~~~~~~~

[From a previously unknown dialogue of Plato]

Socrates: Imagine, Glaucon, a great field.

It sits in a landscape like ours; there are mountains around it, rivers, other plains and woods. In this new world there is every sort of animal and bird with which we are familiar as well as everything else in which we take pleasure. The sun, moon, and stars are just as they are in our own world.  Nor must we neglect to provide every plant and tree. In short, there is everything there to make men and women happy.

But now see!

In the midst of this landscape there is a grassy field and there, beneath a canopy,  people sit chained to benches and with their heads in fixed positions gazing out on this world. They have been this way all their lives.

Glaucon: A strange sight, Socrates! And these are strange prisoners.

S. : They are like ourselves.

Grounds of the Baths of Caracalla, Rome, Italy.
Courtesy of SquinchPix.com

Now further imagine that in front of them there are other people, ordinary town and country dwellers who are as free as we are ourselves. And they live out their daily lives in front of the prisoners. They earn money through trade or farming or crafts. They celebrate the feast days with processions and sacrifices. Every season of the year brings to these townspeople and farmers the required tasks and these, too, are played out before our prisoners. Nothing is hidden from our prisoners, not even their loves or hates, because the townspeople live for the prisoners alone. If the prisoners had lived their lives in this fashion, chained and yet perfectly free to see everything around them, would they not have gained an intimate and detailed knowledge of the lives of the town-dwellers which are lived, as it were, in their faces? Would they not think of what they have seen as comprising the whole of reality?

G. : Indeed they would, Socrates, but I don’t understand. Do you mean to say that they are chained up all the time?

S. : They are indeed, Glaucon. But I am about to release one. So imagine further that one of them, unseen by the guards, manages to loosen his shackles and slips away from his imprisonment undetected. He now wanders down the road and sees other towns, other rivers, other peoples. He has no trade or any knowledge of how to earn his daily bread since he has only seen such things but never performed them. He has only the thin clothing he has escaped in and is subject to the inclemency of the weather. The sun which had seemed such a friendly star to him through his whole previous life is now found to be too hot on occasion. And when it rains or snows he has no shelter but must cower under the nearest tree. For the first time in his life he is subject to every unhappy circumstance which our daily life affords. The moon, previously thought of as merely the lovely orb of the night, now announces only a bitter cold and a frightening darkness.

G. : A predicament indeed, Socrates!

S. : Certainly. And then, one day, while cowering in the hedges from some too-inquisitive wild dogs, he discovers a hole in the earth. It is wide and lofty enough for him to wander into without even bowing his head. He resolves to explore this cave and see whether he can turn it to his benefit. Immediately he is happier because he is out of the glare of the pitiless sun. The cold winds which had chilled him to the bone are now stilled. The marauding bears and wolves are here absent.

But then, as I allow no free men in my cave, he is set upon by men unknown and overpowered. Rendered unconscious, he awakes to find himself deep underground and once more chained to a bench before a kind of stage on which shadow plays are performed.

G. : But what sort of plays, Socrates?

S. : You shall see, Glaucon.