Seminar Paper Book VII

Antony Tran

April 13, 2016

Seminar paper

Perfect Failure into a Perfect Tyrant

            "Shoot for the moon and prepare to be encompassed by crushing darkness when you miss" (College Humor). Although dark, this quote holds some relevance to The Republic of Plato. This quote relates to the idea of perfection in Book 4 when Socrates finds justice in the city as “the minding of one’s own business and not being a busy body”(433ab). This means each of the individual parts are working in their own area. Socrates then shapes the just city into the soul where one must have all the parts; the calculating, spirited, and desiring, in order. In this sense, justice and perfection are the same. In order to reach justice in the soul, one must be perfect. However, when one fails to become perfect, they become tyrants and imitators of rulers rather than becoming the philosopher king. “The Allegory of the Cave” illustrates what happens to those who succeed, but also those who fail.

            In “The Allegory of the Cave” there are three levels: the bottom, the middle, and the outside of the cave. At the bottom, people are chained in a way that makes them unable to move, so they are focused on a fixed location. They have been there since childhood and know nothing other than the shadows and noises created from the people in the middle (514a). In the middle there are people that carry different artifacts, such as statues of men and animals, in front of a fire, and cast shadows for the prisoners at the bottom to see (515a).

The outside of the cave is where the sun and the real objects are. If a person from the bottom was able to escape, he would see the real objects and gain knowledge of the real world. Once up there, he is compelled to help, however, there are those at the bottom that are not willing to accept their help. The ones that come back down are immediately judged by the prisoners and are laughed at (517a). Those that go out would be able to reason through this ignorance and consider if the reason for the confusion can be due to the fact that he came from a place of light into the dark, or because it was because the lack of knowledge was dazzled by the light (518ab). Then there are those that are not able to make it out of the cave. They are the individuals that fail and become imitators, remaining ignorant and keeping the prisoners at the bottom ignorant.  

            The imitator does not know what is right or wrong; they only know what may be right for them. When asked if an imitator knew about what he was imitating, Glaucon answers: “the imitator will neither know nor opine righting about what he imitates” (602a). An imitator is a tyrant because he only knows what a ruler may look like; to have citizens and to conquer cities. However, as Socrates said, “the imitator… understands nothing of what is but rather of what looks like it is” (601c). This is because an imitator imitates other rulers in a way so that then those who do not know anything else are fooled into thinking what they say is correct (601a). Those at the bottom of the cave assume that the imitator knows what he is saying, without knowing they are being deceived. They do not know what the imitator is doing is wrong because they are not able to escape or expand to other cities. These imitators then move on to become tyrants because of the ignorance of the bottom of the cave. 

            Once a leader has become a tyrant, he is no longer concerned with the whole of the city, but with himself. He starts by being kind to the citizens; however, as Socrates explains to Adeimantus, “he is always setting some war in motion, so that the people will be in need of a leader” (566e). In order to maintain his status, the tyrant must be able to identify a problem for the city. That way his citizens will constantly rely on the tyrant. However, in order to keep control of the people, the tyrant “must, therefore, look sharply to see who is courageous, who is great-minded, who is prudent, who is rich… and plot against them until he purges the city” (567bc).  He is getting rid of the best of the city, so there will be no one else to oppose him. The citizens that are allowed to stay are trapped in the city. They are kept there and “can’t go anywhere abroad or see all the things the other free men desire to see; but, stuck in his house for the most part” (579b). The tyrant keeps his citizens from learning about what is truly going on by keeping them in place, much like the prisoners at the bottom of the cave.

            The people at the middle of the cave are the ones that keep the prisoners at the bottom. They are the ones that continue to show their prisoners the truth as “nothing other than the shadows of artificial things” (515c). The ones in the middle are individuals that were able to escape the bottom of the cave, but not able to escape the cave itself. If they were able to escape the cave, they would have seen the sun and “once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right… it provided truth and intelligence” (517c). The ones in the middle do not have this knowledge because they only cast shadows for those at the bottom. They allow the prisoners to believe that the shadows are the truth. If they were truly able to escape the cave, they would know that casting shadows and making noises would not be enough to convince the prisoners at the bottom of the cave that they are ignorant of the real world. Instead, those that are in the middle feel as if they have reached the outside and know how to educate the ones at the bottom.

            An example of this is when Glaucon assumes that it would be unjust if Socrates were to leave the people at the bottom prisoners. Socrates answers that they should not drag them out, but harmonize “the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit that each is able to bring to the common wealth” (519d). Instead of forcing the prisoners out, Socrates wants there to be guidance for them. In this instance, it shows that Glaucon still has not reached the outside of the cave. He felt as if he knew what he should do in order to help others, but Socrates was able to inform him that he was wrong. Without the right guidance, the people in the middle become tyrants for their city.

            Those that make it to the middle of the cave, and stay there, are imitators that become tyrants. In the middle of the cave, the people cast shadows for the people at the bottom. This serves as their truth because those at the bottom know nothing else. An imitator “produces a bad regime in the soul of each private man by making phantoms that are very far removed from the truth” (605c). These “phantoms” server as the truth for those that are too ignorant to know what is real. Both the middle of the cave and an imitator have an artificial truth to what they do. They keep the people at the bottom blind just like a tyrant. As stated before, in order to keep the people ignorant, the tyrant must to purge the city of those who may be knowledgeable enough to see what may be happening. Also, those that came from the bottom of the cave were never free before they were able to escape. They spent their whole life chained to a fixed position. Tyrants are similar because “they live their whole life… always one man’s master or another’s slave. The tyrannic nature never has a taste of freedom or true friendship” (576a). Without the experience of freedom or friendship, Socrates calls them faithless, which would make them unjust.

            In order to become just, one must become perfect. However, when one strives for perfection, there is a cost for those who are unable to make it. They become imitators and tyrants that are not able to do what is just. What imitators do is “far from the truth…because it lays hold of a certain small part of each thing” (598b). Everything that is said by a tyrant has a little bit of truth to it; however, it is twisted so that it seems as if they are still needed. He makes enemies out of those he is purging the city from not because they are a threat to the city, but because they are a threat to himself. This causes the tyrant give to the desiring part “and nourishes it, and, by making it strong, destroys the calculating part” (605b). Without the calculating part, the soul is no longer just and is thrown into chaos. If the soul is not just, then it is unjust. The calculating part is no longer calculating, and the desiring has taken over. The tyrant is not able to control himself but still attempts to rule others (579c). I feel that in order to stop a tyrant from forming, there needs to be guidance from an individual, such as Socrates with Glaucon and Adeimantus. That way, if one were to stray from the path of perfection, there will be someone to lead them outside of the cave.