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  • The ancient Greeks were emphatic that philosophy was not just

  • an elaborate abstract exercise.

  • It was, they felt, a deeply useful skill

  • that should be learned and practiced by all,

  • in order to help us to live and die well.

  • No one believed this more than Plato.

  • Who was passionate in his defense of philosophy

  • as a kind of therapy for the soul.

  • One of the most forceful stories he told on behalf of the utility of philosophy

  • Was what has become known as "The Allegory of the Cave".

  • It is perhaps the most famous allegory in philosophy.

  • This was a story that was intended, as he wrote,

  • to compare "[t]he effect of education and the lack of it on our nature."

  • At the start of Book 7 of his masterpiece, "The Republic",

  • Plato tells us about some people living imprisoned in a cave

  • They've always lived there and don't know anything of the outside world.

  • There is no natural light in this cave, the walls are damp and dark

  • All the inhabitants can see comes from the shadows of things thrown up on the wall by a light of a fire

  • The cave dwellers get fascinated by these reflections of animals, plants and people

  • Moreover, they assume that these shadows are real and that if you pay a lot of attention to them

  • you'll understand and succeed in life

  • And they don't, of course, realize that they are looking at mere phantoms

  • They chat about shadowy things enthusiastically

  • and take great pride in their sophistication and wisdom

  • Then one day, quite by chance, someone discovers a way out of the cave

  • out into the open air

  • At first, it's simply overwhelming. He is dazzled by the brilliant sunshine

  • In which everything is, for the first time, properly illuminated

  • Gradually his eyes adjust and he encounters the true forms

  • of all those things which he had formerly know only as shadows

  • He sees actual flowers, the colors of birds, the nuances in the bark of trees

  • He observes stars and grasps the vastness and sublime nature of the universe

  • As Plato puts it in solemn terms:

  • Out of compassion, this newly enlightened man

  • decides to leave the sunlit upper world and makes his way back into the cave

  • to try to help out his companions who are still mired in confusion and error

  • Because he's become used to the bright upper world, he can hardly see anything underground

  • He stumbles along the damp wet corridors and gets confused

  • He seems to the others totally unimpressive

  • When he in turn is unimpressed by them and insists on explaining what the sun is

  • or what a real tree is like

  • The cave dwellers get sarcastic, then very angry and eventually plot to kill him

  • The story of the cave is an allegory of the life of all enlightened people

  • The cave dwellers are humans before philosophy

  • The sun is the light of reason

  • The alienation of the returned philosopher is what all truth tellers can expect

  • when they take their knowledge back to people who have not devoted themselves to thinking

  • For Plato, we are all for much of our lives in shadow

  • Many of the things we get excited about, like fame, the perfect partner, a high status job

  • are infinetly less real than we suppose

  • they are for the most part phantoms projected by our culture onto the walls of our fragile and flawed minds

  • but because everyone around us is insisting that they are genuine

  • we are taken in from a young age

  • It's not our fault individually

  • No one chooses to be in the cave

  • That's just where we happen to begin

  • We're all starting from a very difficult place

  • If, like the man in Plato's story, you bluntly tell people they're wrong

  • You get nowhere, you cause deep offense and may endanger your own life

  • Athens had, after all, recently put Socrates, Plato's friend, to death

  • Plato knew from close experience just what the cave dwellers might do to those who claim to know the sun

  • The solution, Plato says, is a process of widespread carefully administered philosophical education

  • By which he understood the method of inquiry pioneered by Socrates and known to us as the "Socratic Method"

  • It's a very gentle process. You don't lecture or harang or force someone to read a particular book

  • You just start with a general declaration of intellectual modesty no one knows very much

  • It's always good to insist: "wisdom starts with owning up to ignorance"

  • Confess that you don't know exactly what the government should do, what wars meant to achieve or how good relationships work

  • You then get the other person to say what they think and gradually together you investigate the answers

  • Most likely the other person will be confident or rather painfully overconfident

  • They may tell you it's all quite simple really and everyone knows the answer already

  • You must be supremely patient with this kind of bravado

  • If they go off topic, you must cheerfully double back

  • You must take a lot of time and be ready to have chats over many days

  • This method of talking is founded on a lovely confidence that with the right encouragement

  • people can eventually work out things for themselves and detect errors in their own reasoning

  • If you carefully and quietly draw their attention to tricky points

  • and don't cast blame or ever get annoyed

  • You'll never teach anyone anything by making them feel stupid

  • Even if they are,

  • at first

  • We have all started in that cave

  • but it is Plato's deepest insight that we don't have to stay there

  • And the road out is called, quite simply, philosophy

  • This is the sun whose light we can follow and by whose rays

  • the proper nature of things can become clear

  • If you enjoyed the films on this channel, you might want to hear about another smart insightful channel we love called

  • Wisecrack

  • Click here to visit their channel page and discover a succession of videos on

  • world literature, philosophy, cinema, history and more

  • All delivered with a playful beguiling sense of humor

  • They're in L.A., we're here in London, but the School of Life and Wisecrack have become firm friends

  • Based around shared values about making education compelling

  • We'd love you to befriend us both in turn.

The ancient Greeks were emphatic that philosophy was not just

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PLATO上。洞穴的寓言 (PLATO ON: The Allegory of the Cave)

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    VoiceTube 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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