Week 1
I don’t know if I can completely agree with the Socrates suggestion that with out philosophical education we are all like the prisoners in the cave. However I have to agree with him that every one have the right to know the truth, and that’s what philosophy is all about. The problem that I see with this is if you are the only one that sees the truth, how can you convince everyone else, that’s really the truth? Do you impose that truth? How can you convince them that the world of shadow that they were living in is not the real world? May be that’s why Socrates seem so pessimistic about life with out philosophy. Philosopher, at the time, were very special people, with a lot of knowledge, they knew about physics, biology, chemistry and so on, and because of that they were people that could bring the truth from the shadow, they could bring the truth that the average people would not know and for me this is a type of liberating. For me this passage is very complex, we can discuss different points indefinitely, but the one thing that I have to defend is that the truth has to be revealed and it is up to the individual to embrace it or not.
I don’t know if I can completely agree with the Socrates suggestion that with out philosophical education we are all like the prisoners in the cave. However I have to agree with him that every one have the right to know the truth, and that’s what philosophy is all about. The problem that I see with this is if you are the only one that sees the truth, how can you convince everyone else, that’s really the truth? Do you impose that truth? How can you convince them that the world of shadow that they were living in is not the real world? May be that’s why Socrates seem so pessimistic about life with out philosophy. Philosopher, at the time, were very special people, with a lot of knowledge, they knew about physics, biology, chemistry and so on, and because of that they were people that could bring the truth from the shadow, they could bring the truth that the average people would not know and for me this is a type of liberating. For me this passage is very complex, we can discuss different points indefinitely, but the one thing that I have to defend is that the truth has to be revealed and it is up to the individual to embrace it or not.
posted by Monica @ 6:54 PM
2 Comments:
At 2:34 PM,
Professor Roger said…
'The problem that I see with this is if you are the only one that sees the truth, how can you convince everyone else, that’s really the truth?'
This is a great point to mention, and it is something that Socrates wrestles with in the Republic, the larger book of which the cave allegory is a small part. Nice start here!
At 7:53 PM,
MM said…
I completely relate to that question of "how do you convince everyone else." I often times and referred to by family members as being self-righteous or a know-it-all because I have raised my conscious level - and no matter how hard I try to demonstrate that to them, it's a lost cause. I hope by the end of this semester I might have stronger tools to prove to these family members that I am not self-righteous and a know-it-all but just have a raised level of consciousness.
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