THE PATH TO INSIGHT VIA THE SENSORY WORLD
On a lazy, Sunday, I look at the shadows on my wall and feel like stagnating in things that make me feel secure, doing safe routines and staying with things I know. I smell the gorgeous coffee simmering and taste the tartine and strawberry jam.... and ate them all.
And then I stayed inside, even though there was so much going on outside.... so much life.... a museum to visit, a dance class, an exhibition... the leaves on the trees were ringing like bells... but I just felt really useless and bummed around inside.....
And then I remembered from Plato's 'Republic', the myth of the cave.
He described people sitting in a cave. They have their backs to the entrance and have been watching, all their lives the shadows that are created on the back wall of the cave. They think that this is all there is.
Sitting in this cave, reminded me so much of what I was doing in my own little flat.
Then Plato goes on to say that one day, one of the men in the cave stands and wants to know what is creating the shadows on the wall, so he turns and exits the cave to see that the shadows are created by form and people walking outside and he discovers a whole new world outside, full of flowers, animals, new forms that he'd never imagined existed.
Instead of go off alone and explore this new world, he decides to return and to tell the people in the cave so that they can learn that there are true ideas behind all natural phenomena, but instead they kill him.
This is a parallel with the story of the killing of Socrates, who was also trying to show his fellow men that the natural world is the cave and the world of ideas is the vast, bright expansive world outside the cave and that Socrates was just trying to help people find a path to their own insights.
However the state found this threatening and undermining, so he was asked to drink hemlock.
Plato also wanted to help people find a path lighting the way to their true insight.
But how do you get to true insight?
He believed, like the shadows in the cave, that every physical object and form were just the products of different 'moulds' and that there were many more ideas out there then what you can see in the sensory world.
He believed as well that ideas that were eternal and immutable, whereas things in the sensory world were always flows and changing. Physical forms were finite and would change. The reason we can study ideas is that they don't change.
Behind every solid form there is the 'idea' form, the mould or model from which it came.
Plato believed that all natural phenomena are simply shadows of the eternal forms and ideas.
The soul, however is in the realm of reason and can survey for us the world of ideas.
He believed that ideas were accessible to your intelligence through the 'eye of your soul' You can start picking up and gaining access to this world via your own soul by learning to listen to your own insights and inner soul, whether it be through philosophy, reflection, meditation, imagination, discussion etc.
He goes on to present an ideal state, coming from the body. Since the body is composed of three parts: the head, the chest and the abdomen, each of these correspond with a faculty of the soul. Reason belongs to the head, will belongs to the chest and appetite belongs to the abdomen. Each of these soul faculties also has an ideal or 'virtue' Reason aspires to wisdom, will aspires to courage and appetite must be curbed so that temperance can be exercised. When these three parts function together we get a harmonious individual.
The Hindu caste system has the same tripartite division.
Plato was the first philosopher to advocate state-organized nursery schools and full-time education.
On a lazy, Sunday, I look at the shadows on my wall and feel like stagnating in things that make me feel secure, doing safe routines and staying with things I know. I smell the gorgeous coffee simmering and taste the tartine and strawberry jam.... and ate them all.
And then I stayed inside, even though there was so much going on outside.... so much life.... a museum to visit, a dance class, an exhibition... the leaves on the trees were ringing like bells... but I just felt really useless and bummed around inside.....
And then I remembered from Plato's 'Republic', the myth of the cave.
He described people sitting in a cave. They have their backs to the entrance and have been watching, all their lives the shadows that are created on the back wall of the cave. They think that this is all there is.
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| Sunday in my cave, watching shadows on the wall |
Then Plato goes on to say that one day, one of the men in the cave stands and wants to know what is creating the shadows on the wall, so he turns and exits the cave to see that the shadows are created by form and people walking outside and he discovers a whole new world outside, full of flowers, animals, new forms that he'd never imagined existed.
Instead of go off alone and explore this new world, he decides to return and to tell the people in the cave so that they can learn that there are true ideas behind all natural phenomena, but instead they kill him.
This is a parallel with the story of the killing of Socrates, who was also trying to show his fellow men that the natural world is the cave and the world of ideas is the vast, bright expansive world outside the cave and that Socrates was just trying to help people find a path to their own insights.
However the state found this threatening and undermining, so he was asked to drink hemlock.
Plato also wanted to help people find a path lighting the way to their true insight.
But how do you get to true insight?
He believed, like the shadows in the cave, that every physical object and form were just the products of different 'moulds' and that there were many more ideas out there then what you can see in the sensory world.
He believed as well that ideas that were eternal and immutable, whereas things in the sensory world were always flows and changing. Physical forms were finite and would change. The reason we can study ideas is that they don't change.
Behind every solid form there is the 'idea' form, the mould or model from which it came.
Plato believed that all natural phenomena are simply shadows of the eternal forms and ideas.
The soul, however is in the realm of reason and can survey for us the world of ideas.
He believed that ideas were accessible to your intelligence through the 'eye of your soul' You can start picking up and gaining access to this world via your own soul by learning to listen to your own insights and inner soul, whether it be through philosophy, reflection, meditation, imagination, discussion etc.
He goes on to present an ideal state, coming from the body. Since the body is composed of three parts: the head, the chest and the abdomen, each of these correspond with a faculty of the soul. Reason belongs to the head, will belongs to the chest and appetite belongs to the abdomen. Each of these soul faculties also has an ideal or 'virtue' Reason aspires to wisdom, will aspires to courage and appetite must be curbed so that temperance can be exercised. When these three parts function together we get a harmonious individual.
The Hindu caste system has the same tripartite division.
Plato was the first philosopher to advocate state-organized nursery schools and full-time education.
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