Short Essay #2

Jordin Post

16^th March, 2016

Dr. Thomas

Er, Our Cave Dweller?

                Poets are banned from Socrates’ just city for their imitative works of fiction. Their myths and stories, while pleasant, are simply too dangerous. And yet Socrates takes up the job of the poet in the conclusion of the Republic. After dispelling the notion that justice and its benefits need not be separated in Book Ten, along with proving the souls immortality, Socrates takes to relating these concepts to his final views on justice in the form of the Myth of Er, a method that seems both contradictory and counter-productive. One has to wonder: What was the point?

                We can start from the end. Socrates, after telling Glaucon the Myth of Er, provides his good friend with two options:

“[The tale] could save us, if we were persuaded by [the myth], and we would make a good crossing of the river of Lethe and not defile our soul. But if we are persuaded by me, holding that soul is immortal and capable of bearing all evils and goods, we shall always keep to the upper road and practice justice with prudence in every way so that we shall be friends to ourselves and the gods, both while we remain here and when we reap the rewards for it like the victors who go about gathering in the prizes. And so here and in the thousand year journey that we have described we shall fare well.”

Option 1: Have a decently just life with the myth. Option 2: Have an awesome life with the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of justice? Socrates choices seem more like backhanded manipulation—obviously he wants Glaucon to agree with him and go with Option 2. Between the sheer loyalty that Socrates has accumulated with the young interlocutors and the fact that poetry and myths have been looked down upon by our group it seems that they, along with the reader, would be inclined to go for the second option. Why then does Socrates bother to bring it up, if a much better option lies before us and the interlocutors?

                Before getting into any possible benefits of the first option, the premise of the myth needs to be retold. The Myth of Er examines through a new lens a bit of the life of a philosopher Socrates and company have condemned to death in Book Seven—the philosopher who goes back down in the cave. Amidst the whopping detail the Myth of Er presents, it is easy to forget why Er was witness to the afterlife in the first place. As the myth tells it, as Er ”was lying on [his funeral] pyre, he came back to life, and, come back to life, he told what he saw in the other world” (614b). While present in the “demonic place,” Er is told by the judges to “become a messenger to the human beings” of the things he witnesses (614cd). It is a detail that I think has been left out of our class discussions. Er doesn’t drink of the Lethe and forget his experiences because he finds a crafty way around doing so; he is “prevented” by doing so (621b), likely from the judges who first tasked him with being the messenger, before being mysteriously beamed back into consciousness.

                Ominously, Socrates never regales what happens to Er after he reveals the secret to the afterlife. While the Myth of Er provides a lot of explanation regarding the rewards of the afterlife, which helps Socrates positions regarding justice and the immortality of the soul, it also calls back to the Allegory of the Cave. Er is in a similar cultural position to the philosopher in the cave—both are outcasts to what is natural in both the allegory’s world and Er’s. Er’s revival is miraculous enough after a devastating battle without him telling insane stories from the beyond—the cave philosopher is the sole person to have made it outside—leading to disbelief. Considering what happens to the latter, we can guess that Er’s second bout of life may not be as long as he had expected it to be.

                If we take this view of the Myth of Er, then the first option Socrates presents isn’t supposed to be a good option. It is instead an option presented to show that, in reality, you can’t have it all. You cannot live forever temperate in justice and involve yourself in the education of the unjust. In the presence of injustice, even the just man with noble intention falters; the cave dwellers eyes readjust to the darkness; Er’s renewed life will eventually supersede his temporal experience—if he doesn’t die first.

The Myth of Er is a warning that benefits everyone, but is likely targeted at Glaucon. While Glaucon has grown as a philosopher and interlocutor from the conversation in the Republic, we must be reminded of his originally reason to “arrest” Socrates and force him to stay beyond the conversation with Thrasymachus. He isn’t persuaded by the argument in Book One (357a), certainly, but he is also tired of being “talked deaf” by others who parrot that injustice is better than justice. So, while his motivations are mainly dialectic, it is likely there is an eristic joy to be gained later if Socrates can lead him to the truth. He will be able to combat these people’s opinion and show them that his unpopular opinion has truth. What Socrates is doing is steering Glaucon from the eristic temptation with a positive reward instead of the negative reinforcement we saw in Book Seven.

                But Socrates doesn’t seem to follow his own advice—the events of the Republic are an exercise in Socrates building up to and then sharing what he found. The cave-dweller who sees the outside is happy for the change, but is motivated to go back down because he pities them (516c). Socrates doesn’t showcase this pity outwardly, instead channeling his own ignorance as worthy of pity. After his talk with Thrasymachus, Socrates does not claim victory—he gleefully asserts that “as a result of the discussion I know nothing” (354b), and should therefore start working towards knowing as much as he can. He takes on a similar tone in the rest the Platonic dialogues. The warning of the Myth, instead of being Socratic, might be by Plato’s personal insistence.