/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20003005]

redpill me on the allegory of the cave

[Anonymous No.20003013]

The original NPC meme

[Εγώ No.20003017]

>>20003005
>What you think it is
>What it is

[Anonymous No.20003026]

>>20003005
You can't smell your own farts, that smell is just a shade of the proto-fart, some abstract, magical fart that exists in a place that... oh, don't worry about that, it's a proto-fart, they just are.

[Anonymous No.20003142]

The point is that what you believe to be the truth may not be the truth or the whole truth. The problem is you would never even know if you were really out of the cave any way.

All the worlds a cave -billiam skookpeah.

[Anonymous No.20003502]

>>20003005
Back then a person could be found hallucinating in a cave while staring at candle light flickering on the wall due to the fumes and low oxygen and would refuse to leave because they enjoyed it. Plato reinterpreted this phenomenon poorly.

[Anonymous No.20003513]

>>20003005
Buddha made it out
Plotinus uh
Help me out bros spot me!

[Anonymous No.20003517]

>>20003005
The journey doesn't stop at leaving the cave: it becomes an ongoing adventure.

[Anonymous No.20003538]

>>20003026
The Buddhas farts are the right farts to smell. On sale lads only tonight here in Palo Alto California. I dont think you THINK DIFFERENT enough to smell these top notch farts though. You're going to have to go to customer service BRAP BAR to talk to the experts.
The Buddhist Repository of Anata Prajna was programmed with the numinous qualities of the Thatagathas (Steve Jobs) great odor that cannot be fathomed by lay customers.

[Anonymous No.20003546]

>>20003005
https://youtu.be/bf9J35yzM3E
Cuck time

[Anonymous No.20003646]

>>20003546
did he change his name from cuck phil??? also why are you recommending that we listen to a cuck pseud

[Anonymous No.20003874]

>>20003005

Basically :What you see and what your sense are not True in the mean that they're not the True things or beings but what is true is the Ideas (Universals ?) that are in a upper-World (abstract world?/Idea World). They're particular and lowered form of these ideas and the only way to know what IS (The Truth ?) is to discover these/Remind (réminiscence) Ideas.

You see this man but this man is the lowered form of The Idea of Man,studying this particular man wont tell what IS the Man but studying THE MAN as an Universal will lead you to know What is and the truth about it.

If someone think im wrong he can go ahead.

[Anonymous No.20003885]

[Anonymous No.20004055]

>>20003013
underrated post

[Anonymous No.20004067]

>>20003005
The image of something is not the thing itself, and in fact, might be several layers true.

The cave stages several dimensions of this.

When you discover this, people will treat you with enmity as it disturbs their understanding of the world.

[Anonymous No.20004074]

>>20004067
>The image of something is not the thing itself, and in fact, might be several layers true.
>The cave stages several dimensions of this.
Go on. I feel like you're just using terms but have absolutely no intention of following up.

[Anonymous No.20004832]

>>20004074
>The image of something is not the thing itself, and in fact, might be several layers true.

What we believe is derived from our senses. It is a limitation. Our perception of a truth that exists independent of what we see, or feel could be completely different than what it is.

>The cave stages several dimensions of this

From what I remember.
The allegory of the cave stages three prisoners chained to the cave wall their whole life. They believe they see shadows and hear noises. Based on their limited sensory experiences they believe these shadow images, are real moving things (independent) and are making sounds themselves (not just echos).

As one prisoner escapes, he discovers the shadows are not what make noise or move directly, but they actually are created from a fire and people that move by the cave.

He later discovers by moving further that the fire isn't the only source of light that exists but he learns that the sun exists which lightens the whole world.

[Anonymous No.20004921]

>>20003005
The real redpill is that the shadows are pretty.

[Anonymous No.20004925]

My viewpoint is right and you live in a cave because you're too ignorant and unenlightened to understand.

[Anonymous No.20005315]

>>20004925
There is no difference between a 7 year old and an ivy league professor of physics

[Anonymous No.20005837]

The material world is the cave. The realm of bodily senses. You perceive through intellection the 'forms', the determinate 'ordering' of what is by nature shadow, nothingness - Matter. The ideas by which you come to realize the shadows as possessing unique existences are the reality, not the visible 'copies' of them. You turn your head behind, discontented with your impotent pursuits in grasping at said shadows, which are ephemeral and don't have the fullness/reality you're looking for in them. You see that there are objects, Forms, that cast the shadow's limited existence to begin with. The light by which you perceive them is Truth, granting you knowledge of the Forms in their fullest essence, not illusory copies. This is the beginning of the realization of higher realities, where you follow the light that illumines the way out of lower emanations all the way to the source of all Being/existence itself, the One, the Good - represented in the allegory as the sun.

It's an inherently esoteric and 'mystical,' to use a rough term, doctrine that Plato inherited from the Pythagoreans, Egyptian priesthood and his time spent initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis. Atheists/materialists just don't get it and remain with the shadows

[Anonymous No.20005847]

>>20003502
This. There's a reason people have been living in caves for millions of years

[Anonymous No.20005853]

>>20003885

[Anonymous No.20006066]

>>20003005

[Anonymous No.20006072]

>>20003005
It's an author indulgence that ended on the Magic Mountain but returned in spades with the birth of independent publishing.

[Anonymous No.20007693]

>>20003005
You're still in it

[Anonymous No.20007722]

>>20004921
Plato doesn’t even dispute this. But obsessing with the shadows is vulgar

[Anonymous No.20007768]

>>20003005
The 'sun' isn't external reality but the unconscious mind.
I think of it similar to how high level programming languages like Visual Basic or Java abstract the hardware. Visual Basic is a 'shadow', but assembly is a direct reflection of the sun on the surface. You can observe this abstraction/shadowing at work in the way we describe our own cognition. We say "Oh that reminds me! Lucy bought a car." we don't say something like "the mention of Julie has primed me to think of other names that start with a 'J' sound and I recently encoded into memory a conversation with John who during that conversation was updating me on his partner Lucy's search for a new car" which itself is an abstraction of hundreds of little brain processes.
Now all those words we use, including the ones that make this sentence, as of course abstractions. If I explained to you my thoughts using some kind of 'Private Language' it'd be as lost on you as if the prisoner tried to describe what he saw on the surface. However this failure of communication also happens within our own minds. It is why unconscious thoughts, motivations are obscure to us. Why we have 'lightbulb moments' where seemingly things make sense all at once. Why we have words on the tip of our tongue.
This makes much more sense when you remember how the brain processes raw sensory data.

[Anonymous No.20007940]

>>20003005
Starting from the beginning:

>"Next, then," I said, "make an image of our nature in its education and *want* (lit. lack) of education, likening it to a condition of the following kind.
The cave is by intention an image of education. Said education consists of the opinions shared by family and community, and their opinions tend to be shaped by the city they're attached to. The cave is not, at least primarily, materialism simply, but political life in general, which could be both materialism and spiritualism (consider the critiques of the traditional teachings of the gods in books 2 and 3). Consider the following passage about sophistry in light of the cave image, especially about the cave denizens wanting to take hold of the man who sees the sun:

>"Well, then, I suppose that if the nature we set down for the philosopher chances on a suitable course of learning, it will necessarily grow and come to every kind of virtue; but if it isn't sown, planted and nourished in what's suitable, it will come to all the opposite unless one of the gods chances to assist it. Or do you too believe as do the many, that certain young men are corrupted by sophists, and that there are certain sophists who in a private capacIty corrupt to an extent worth mentioning? Isn't it rather the very men who say this who are the biggest sophists, who educate most perfectly and who turn out young and old, men and women, just the way they want them to be?"
>"But when do they do that?" he said.
>"When," I said, "many gathered together sit down in assemblies, courts, theaters, army camps, or any other common meeting of a multitude, and, with a great deal of uproar, blame some of the things said or done, and praise others, both in excess, shouting and clapping; and, besides, the rocks and the very place surrounding them echo and redouble the uproar of blame and praise. Now in such circumstances, as the saying goes, what do you suppose is the state of the young man's heart? Or what kind of private education will hold out for him and not be swept away by such blame and praise and go, borne by the flood, wherever it tends so that he'll say the same things are noble and base as they do, practice what they practice, and be such as they are?"
>"The necessity is great, Socrates," he said.
>"And yet," I said, "we still haven't mentioned the greatest necessity."
>"What?" he said.
>"What these educators and sophists inflict in deed when they fail to persuade in speech. Or don't you know that they punish the man who's not persuaded with dishonor, fines, and death?"
>"Yes," he said, "they punish very severely."

[Anonymous No.20007977]

>>20007940
In the original Greek what word do they use for 'education'? Is it akin to our modern idea of a student goes to a teaching professional?

[Anonymous No.20008036]

>>20007977
The word is "paideia." It can mean what takes place between a student and a professional (whether artisan or sophist or school teacher), but it can also broadly mean something like cultural upbringing.

[Anonymous No.20008166]

>>20003013
fpbp

[Anonymous No.20008238]

>>20003517
Didn't Plato say you were supposed to return to the cave at some point when you're old?

[Anonymous No.20008244]

>>20008238
sounds like schwabnigger shit. not falling for these games anymore. You're going to hang very soon.

[Anonymous No.20008431]

>>20008036
Do you think Plato was keeping it deliberately vague if he meant the more literal sense or the vaguer cultural upbringing sense?
>>20008238
No he said imagine the difficulty you would have explaining what you had seen to those in the cave.

[Anonymous No.20008468]

>>20003005
The cave is comfy and the sun hurts my eyes.

[Anonymous No.20008474]

>>20008238
The opposite. Old men are allowed to sit outside the cave and bask in the sunlight. It's the younger or middle aged males who have the duty of going into the cave and herding the sheep towards the exit.

[Anonymous No.20008972]

>>20008431
I'm not sure if it would come across as vague to a Greek; the mathematical studies of the philosopher king, for example, constitute the narrow sense, while the education of the auxiliaries and guardians in books 2-4 constitute the broader sense, which I think has to be intentional in order to point to the value of the philosopher's education. In a certain way, the education discussed in 2-4 sheds light on our civic education, what its reach is, how it effects us, etc. Customs about what kind of musical scales to use, what kind of stories about the gods are acceptable, eating as a collective, banning wealth and property ownership from the upper classes, etc. There's attitudes that treat cultural customs as if they're natural, and that's the cave in a nutshell.

>>20008474
Where?

[Anonymous No.20008991]

>>20008238
it's the duty of the king to try to uplift his subjects, and so merely living in divine bliss somewhere in the heavens and denying your duty as king on earth is an injustice. The king must return to the cave and enlighten his subjects even if it means that they kill him out of ignorance.

[Anonymous No.20009046]

>study photography/graphic design at art uni
>Particiapte in philosophy intro lessons bc art hoes there
>prof introducts us about platos cave
>..ao then that one guy sees the real sun..
>..how does he convince the other ones about the real sun that he just wittnessed
>everyone's quiet
>put my hand up to speak
>he won't convince the others unless he takes the sun with his hands inside the cave
>art hoes start to ridicule me and laugh
>prof gives us 2 min more
>points with his finger at me at the end
>anon you exactly hit the bullseye
>Art hoes start to respect me
>Feels good man.jpg

[Anonymous No.20009054]

>>20008991
I think that conflates some kind of ideal king with what's expected from the king in the Republic. There isn't any sense of being able to enlighten the populace, you're lucky if you find one. Recall that the military and non-philosophic guardians are chosen for their memory, and included in those taught the noble lies: the moneymakers will forget them, but the "good memory" of the two upper classes attaches them to falsehood. The chance of general uplift or enlightenment seem to be written off.

[Anonymous No.20009067]

>>20003005
It's about the idea of being redpilled, except the redpill here is blissful rather than stressful.

The redpill here represents a distinctly objective truth that you can reach that makes things more real and luminous, and the (bluepilled)normies prefer suffering in an abstract ignorance with their overly subjective and abstract "knowledge" that keeps them chained in the dark. The shadows on the wall are made by hooded mystery men that represent the "experts" and supposed intellectuals that try and reinvent reality but can only produce shadows because they do not possess and cannot create the orginality of true reality. The idea is that most men are content with the limits of an abstract and subjective understanding of reality and that the few who seek objective reality are the ones who truly attain freedom, strength and bliss. That subjective knowledge is binding and objective knowledge is freeing.

Basically the matrix pills but reverse the effect of stressful and blissful between the two. The truth is the only real bliss, ignorance isn't bliss, it's rarely if ever bliss, it's usually a subtle torment that chains you and inhibits freedom.

[Anonymous No.20009071]

>>20009067

[Anonymous No.20009395]

>>20009071
>materialism
>redpilled

[Anonymous No.20009438]

>>20003005
Solipsism is true, tha man in the light is tje lucid dreamer, telling you that the mind is powerful enough to be reality itself. The guy in the cave is you believing in objective outside reality and seperation.

[Anonymous No.20009470]

>>20003005
Life in the cave will never be as good as outside the cave. Inside the cave, the only life you're guaranteed is the ones the shadow people decide for you. Outside the cave, life is whatever you make of it.

[Anonymous No.20010270]

>>20009395
>noticing that niggers are savage animals is somehow materialism

Can you explain how?

[Anonymous No.20010271]

>being filtered by the very first redpill
ngmi bro frfr

[Anonymous No.20010288]

>>20009071
was this meme made by ben garrison? lmao nice bait, 6/10

[Anonymous No.20010316]

>>20003005
The original Stirner.

[Anonymous No.20010349]

>>20003005
the only reality is the monks controlling light and shadow. for everone else, you're only exchanging one illusion for another.

[Anonymous No.20010357]

>>20007768
cringe

[Anonymous No.20010483]

>>20003005
The matrix did it better

[Anonymous No.20010831]

>>20010270
>biological determinism is somehow not materialism
>focusing on a material matter as awakening is somehow not materialism.

[Anonymous No.20010903]

>>20003005
On an exoteric level, it can be interpreted that societal conditioning and education gives us a false, limited view of reality deliberately inculcated us by our “handlers,” or the people we accept as experts — political, scientific, moral, and philosophical “authorities” who are, in fact, simply either trying to control and delude us for their own financial benefit, or misguided and repeating things on authority which they fully believe to be true but haven’t actually gotten the full experience of. On an esoteric/metaphysical level, it refers to the natures of reality and of perception and cognition themselves, as has been made abundantly clear in this thread, by posters correlating it to Plato’s theory of the forms. The average person, taking pleasure in things like sport, food, sex, various forms of recreation, the pursuit of money and power, is caught up in physical reality and not getting to the truth behind the physical manifestation of the realities they’re witnessing and experiencing and enjoying. Metaphorically, the Sun could be equated with the One from which all reality derives, or the Logos, equated with the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The images on the cave of the wall which are enticing for the prisoners — a woman’s nude body, tasty food, the accumulation of wealth — are themselves mere manipulations and diminished versions of the light from the Sun. While they offer a fleeting pleasure in themselves, the Sun, being the source from which it all derives, offers an even greater bliss than simply witnessing shadows moving on the wall of a cave. But, returning to the cave, the one who has seen the One finds it hard to convince others of what he has witnessed, and even is despised, mocked, pitied, embarrassed for, etc. — “Clearly this man has gone mad, and the fact that he’s talking about crazy mystical experiences we’ve never seen any proof exists, here in our abode, means that he’s insane and it’s, moreover, dangerous for anyone to try to escape from us.” This is the same principle behind the crucifixion of Christ, the persecution of many saints, the sentencing to death of Socrates by hemlock, the execution of Mansur al Hallaj, and so forth. Sociologically, an analogous process goes on with “conspiracy theorists,” who may be mocked and despised and spurned but turn out to have been right. Those who were against the invasions of the Middle East from the very start may have been seen as unpatriotic non-Americans, giving lenience to the enemy and sympathizing with radical Islam, until it became clear what a tragic farce the invasions were. Those warning about the cancers of radical leftism, or even (too far out and kooky for /lit/, probably) things like toxic GMO foods, are effectively people who have left the cave, trying to explain to skeptical cave-dwellers that their corporate and political handlers are manipulating the shadows on the wall before them & feeding them shit.

[Anonymous No.20010909]

>>20009046
Wha...

[Anonymous No.20010932]

>>20010903
(Cont.)
As >>20005837 makes clear, this is also a very mystical and esoteric story with clear analogies to the ancient mystery traditions and perennial philosophy — from Hermeticism, to Egyptian wisdom, to Neoplatonism, to Gnosticism, to the Judeo-Christian tradition. For instance, in Gnosticism, you find the idea of the Demiurge, Yaldabaoth, a sort of false god extruded by the true God, and who created this material universe as a trap for the souls who incarnated in, as well as the Demiurge’s emissaries, known as the archons (rulers, in Greek, which terminology is also used in the New Testament by figures like St. Paul).

>For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12

In the Ancient Greek, “rulers” literally read “archon”. So, transcending even the crude political/sociological interpretation of the allegory, it also becomes highly mystical — nonhuman, non-physical entities who manipulate our perception of reality and have created this material universe as a sort of trap for us.

The beauty of Plato’s allegory of the cave — and much of the best of Ancient Greek philosophy — is that even to the skeptical agnostic or atheist, you can disregard the mystical subtext and simply take the political and sociological aspects of it. Ironically, this will probably be done while viewing oneself as “too superior for the mystical subtexts of the allegory,” whereas, for the initiated, it would be interpreted that PLATO himself was too superior for THEM, but they at least got a little something out of it.

[Anonymous No.20010967]

Short version: >>20003013
Long version: it's the ultimate cope, the a priori rejection of EVERYTHING you might ever wish to reject, a convenient delusion to avoid considering the possibility you might be wrong.
In more recent terms, "I reject your reality and substitute my own".

[Anonymous No.20011604]

So the people holding the shadow puppets are Jews?

[Anonymous No.20011851]

>>20003005
The allegory itself is a shadow on the wall.

[Anonymous No.20011877]

>>20010932
>>20010967
The duality of man

[Anonymous No.20012790]

>>20009071
Also: No 2-story buildings in Africa. KEK.

[Anonymous No.20012848]

>>20003005
What you fail to understand is, you ARE the cave.

[Anonymous No.20013313]

>>20008991
What kind of kings do chores nigger?

[Anonymous No.20013321]

>>20008972
>Where?
...In the Republic, where he mentions the allegory? Did you not read it?

[Anonymous No.20013644]

>>20009046
nigga what

[Anonymous No.20013706]

>>20003005
the real cave is the friends we made along the way. and thats a bad thing.

[Anonymous No.20013789]

>>20011851

HA!
...That'll get'm thinkin'.

[Anonymous No.20013800]

>>20013789

OOo OH! I've got a couple of more:

1. Its caves all the way up and all the way down!

2. The people are shadows too!

AH HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA!

... what stupid allegory.....

[Anonymous No.20014125]

>>20003005
It's nothing complex, nigger. If you receive information from other people, it will be distorted by them. The only way to get pure information (truth) is to reach and see it yourself...
But this takes effort. If you just wait, you will only receive dirtied information

[Anonymous No.20014209]

>>20013321
Sorry, I was asking for citation; I don't see any passages re: the cave and who may be allowed to remain in the light and who required to go back down. At 539b-d there's a distinction drawn between the young and old, but it's with regard to learning arguments. Did you have in mind 539e-540b? There it looks like the old are compelled to return too for the philosopher king position.

[Anonymous No.20014396]

>>20003005
That’s literally me

[Anonymous No.20014517]

>>20003005
https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/reading-from-bacteria-to-bach-and-back-ii-the-human-squircle/

"Generally speaking, we find these ‘no information otherwise’ justifications so intuitive that we just move on. We never ask how or why the absence of sensible movement cues reports of motionlessness. Plato need only tell us that his prisoners have been chained before shadows *their whole lives* and we get it, we understand that for them, *shadows are everything*. By merely conjuring an image, Plato secures our acknowledgment that we suffer a congenital form of *frame neglect*, a cognitive insensitivity to the limits of cognition that can strand us with fantastic (and so destructive) worldviews—and without our permission, no less. Despite the risk entailed, we neglect this form of neglect. Though industry and science are becoming ever more sensitive to the problems posed by the ‘unknown unknown,’ it remains the case that each of us at once understands the peril and presumes we’re the exception, the system apart from the systems about us. The motionless one.

Frame neglect, our insensitivity to the superordinate systems encompassing us, blinds us to our position within those systems. As a result, we have no choice but *to take those positions for granted*. This renders our cognitive orientations *implicit*, immune to deliberative revision and so persistent (as well as vulnerable to manipulation). Frame neglect, in other words, explains why bent orientations stay bent, why we suffer the cognitive inertia we do. More importantly, it highlights what might be called default sufficiency, the congenital presumption of implicit cognitive adequacy. We were in no position to cognize our position relative the heavens, and yet we nevertheless assumed that we were simply because we were in no position to cognize the inadequacy of our position."

[Anonymous No.20014857]

>>20003005
Real truth lies beyond the fleeting superficial impressions you encounter in life. Don't believe everything you see/read at face value. There is greater depth in everything, and seeing beyond the "shadows" and illusions of life requires a philosophical or at least inquisitive mind. Most everything you see on social media/popular media/discuss in conversation with normies will be "shadow", and the allegory encourages you to think deeply and look beyond. That was my interpretation of it anyway when reading The Republic. I'm a midwit btw

[Anonymous No.20015080]

>>20003005
It just means that you should go outside and experience reality.

[Anonymous No.20015662]

>>20011877
Why do people keep echoing that phrase in these threads?

[Anonymous No.20016428]

>>20003005
It’s so fucking easy to understand it’s referenced in pop philosophy. Are you really this retarded? *blows raspberry* *thumbs down*

[Anonymous No.20016436]

>>20007768
based human as computer analogy reinterpreter

[Anonymous No.20016534]

It's Plato backhanding his critics and preempting 2400 years of arguments, if you came back from the surface and told what you saw to your former peers back down in the cave, they'd laugh at you and say you were fucking crazy or pic related. Which is the exact same reaction people have to Socrates' proposed city.
>Can you believe this fucking shit in Politea!? Oh my god, it's fucking whack, secret elders controlling who you fuck. Children don't know their parents. Everyone but the elders lives under a lie. Poetry is banned. It has to be a fucking joke or something
>>20007940
>the cave is not, at least primarily, materialism simply, but political life in general
This
>"Or don't you know that they punish the man who's not persuaded with dishonor, fines, and death?"
He doesn't believe in the shadows! Get him!
>>20008468
yes
>>20011851
Of course, that's implicit in it being an allegory rather than the actual political life itself
>>20012848
yes

[Anonymous No.20016561]

>>20010903
>>20010932
Excellent posts, Anon. I am glad I am able to concurrently partake of Being with you.

[Anonymous No.20016583]

>>20010932
I could empathize with gnostics if they stopped externalizing the demiurge as some alien being and instead understood they made the trap for themselves. Plato acknowledges this to an extent in his explanation of the cave; the viewers do not want to leave. Ambrosia is poison to the weaker natures. Hence why I empathize with Buddha.

[Anonymous No.20016734]

>>20003005
If your reality is mediated you are in the cave.

[Anonymous No.20016740]

>>20014209
It's at the end of the book.
>At the end of their education (ie middle age, around 30 years old) they must be sent down again into the dent and compelled to hold any military or other office which young men are qualified to hold
>How long is this stage to last?
>Fifteen years, and when they have reached fifty years of age, then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves in every action of their lives and in every branch of knowledge come at last to their consummationL the time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all thing and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern by which the state is ordered as well as what is to be the pattern of the remainder of their lives. ... When they have brought up in each generation others like themselves and left them in their place to be governors of the state, then theywill depart to the Islands of the Blest and dwell there; and the city will give them sacrifices and honour them, if the Pythian oracle consent, as demigods, but if not, in any case as blessed and divine.

[Anonymous No.20016764]

Okay boys, redpill me on the myth of Ur

[Anonymous No.20016849]

https://youtu.be/iofqgV0XIlQ

[Anonymous No.20018226]

incel thread

[Anonymous No.20018525]

>>20003013
This