Education is not a stuffing of sight into blind eyes. It is a turning of the whole soul. The one who has seen the sun is ridiculous when he comes back down.
This is an earlier Workshop experiment; the finished Cave is linked below. The cave is not a picture of screens. It is a picture of paideia, and of why philosophy and the city cannot simply be friends. Shadows here are the city’s opinions about justice. Walk the four stages. The same four, restressed, are a soul. Click a shadow.
Pl. I · Republic 514a–517aShadows — the city’s names for justice
Click a shadow on the wall — justice, honor, the day’s news. These are opinions.
Salient: the wall, the names. Receding: the fire, the mouth, anything that would turn a head.
514a–515c — bound to the wall
They have been here since childhood, necks and legs chained, unable to turn. What passes on the wall they name: justice, honor, what happened. The contest is who can most quickly name the next shadow. This is not a parable of media. It is the city as it is without philosophy — doxa taking itself for the real. The wall is the public.
Republic 514a–515c. The prisoners “would take the shadows of the artifacts to be the unhidden.” Paraphrase; this page is not a text.
Three questions (toy)
Canned sentences, inflected by this stage and this scale. Not an oracle.
Ask. The answer will be this cave’s grammar, not a later one.
514a–515c — bound to the wall
They have been here since childhood, necks and legs chained, unable to turn. What passes on the wall they name: justice, honor, what happened. The contest is who can most quickly name the next shadow. This is not a parable of media. It is the city as it is without philosophy — doxa taking itself for the real. The wall is the public.
Republic 514a–515c. The prisoners “would take the shadows of the artifacts to be the unhidden.” Paraphrase; this page is not a text.