Plato, Allegory of the Cave

I saw the movie The Matrix when it first came out. I enjoyed the movie and intuitively knew that there was something very profound about it. In the movie, the majority of humanity is imprisoned in an artificial, digitally simulated world called The Matrix. I think the story of Plato's Cave sheds some light on the story. When a person's view of reality is restricted for their entire life experience, it's understandable how they might come to believe that that's all there is. For example, people don't believe that they or others can be great, dignified, people with vision and commitment to love and care for all of humanity. I think that is exactly what is happening to humanity now. We are living in a reality created by the collective consciousness of people living from their false selves. People who don't realize that reality is bigger than they know, and there is another way to live, will be unaware, limited, and confined. If a person does not develop the capacity to envision the possibility of a "better life", or loses hope of its possibility, or has no idea how to pursue it, resignation and hopelessness are understandable. Like Plato, I propose the idea that the reality experienced by most of us is an Illusion. I go one step further and assert that it must be the case because our reality is generated by the collective consciousness of people who are living from their false selves. That which is false is not real, that which is not real cannot produce that which is real. I suspect that the things that I am saying will be met by many with disbelief, and maybe worse.

Plato’s educational scheme is indeed a “turning around” of the soul.  His intensive training program involves (1) the soul’s liberation from the shackles of ignorance, (2) the soul’s painful but rewarding realizations of new realities, (3) the soul’s upward journey towards the light of understanding, and (4) the soul’s longing to use new found realities to set others free. By contrast, I sense that most of today’s education lacks this element of “turning around” of the soul.  Schools today tend to merely dump knowledge and information, rather than train individuals to reflect and think critically.  Students are not trained to contemplate on “the good,” rather they are allowed to live their lives with untamed passions.  Instead of wise and virtuous individuals, most students today are lovers of wealth, pleasure, vanity, and convenience.

WONDER WOMEN: SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA, LAVINIA FONTANA AND ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE SELF-PORTRAIT PAINTING BY FEMALE ARTISTS

by Rosa Lena Reed Robinson

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts in Art History at
Studio Art Centers International
Florence, Italy

2017


This  thesis is focused on the self-portrait painting practice by three female artists from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods: Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi. Chapter I introduces the self-portrait as it developed specific to the Renaissance and in relation to a Greco-Roman classical ideal. The chapter focuses on Renaissance concepts of art and the very role of the artist. Chapter II studies the numerous self-portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola, the first great Renaissance female artist to have an international career. The artist’s self-portraits both became a foundation for those of later female artists and self-consciously expressed the new elite status achieved by this Lombard artist of noble lineage who worked as court portraitist for the Spanish monarchy. Chapter III examines the self-portraits and innovative identity self-portraiture of Lavinia Fontana of Bologna. It is demonstrated how her two early self-portraits built on the precedent established by Sofonisba, and yet, are of somewhat greater iconographic complexity. While in her maturity the artist developed self-portraiture into the identity self-portrait through the subject of Judith and Holofernes. Within her treatments of the theme in some examples she put herself into the figure of Judith and in others into Judith’s maid Abra. Lavinia Fontana’s final masterpiece, the improbable painting Minerva Dressing done at the end of her extensive career was likewise arguably an identity self-portrait. Minerva Dressing constitutes the first female fully nude figure painted by a female artist. Chapter IV focuses on Artemisia Gentileschi. This thesis designates the artist’s Pommersfelden Susanna and the Elders as both Artemisia’s first exact self-portrait and the first female full-length nude self-portrait painted by a female artist. The work is also an identity self-portrait. This chapter continues with a discussion of both versions of Artemisia’s infamous Judith and Holofernes (Capodimonte/Uffizi). Both works are arguably exact self-portrait paintings and identity self-portraits. Artemisia’s Allegory of Painting in London, often referred to as a self-portrait in scholarship, is suggested a perhaps better understood as an ideal identity self-portrait rather than a literal self-representation. The Allegory of Painting is considered together with other attributed self-portraits and portraits of the artist. A major theme in Chapter IV is the transition from literal self-representation to allegorical and ideal portrayal of the self. This thesis suggests that, as the artist’s career advanced, Artemisia Gentileschi did continue to paint both the exact and the ideal self-portrait. Finally, in the Conclusion, the legacy of the self-portraits of the Wonder Women, to adopt a phrase from Giorgio Vasari, is considered in reference to future female artists such as Elisabetta Sirani, Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vigée Le-Brun and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

This paper examines the parallels and correlations between James Joyce’s novels, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and Ulysses, to Plato’s allegory of the cave, while looking at epiphany and enlightenment from a more emotional and spiritual point of view. Joyce’s characters all represent some stage of stepping out of the allegorical cave of darkness and experiencing the harshness of reality. Most of the characters cannot endure the shock of the outside world and retreat to the safety of their familiar world, while some--Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus--acclimate and achieve enlightenment in different ways.

Key words: James Joyce, Plato, Dubliners, Ulysses, Leopold Bloom

My paper aims at thematizing the notion of “arche-screen,” meant as the ensemble of the conditions of possibility of “monstration [showing],” which in the history of our culture have gradually been opened by the rupestrian wall, the veil, the curtain, the templum, the window, as well as pre-cinema, cinema, and post-cinema screens. This list, however, does not mean to be exhaustive.
Therefore, in order to explore at least some of the conditions of possibility of “monstration [showing]” that are implicit in the notion of “arche-screen,” we shall go back through history. Nevertheless, once we got so far as the Chauvet Cave, in France, we would have to turn to the mythical Cave that Plato conceived in The Republic, Book VII.

A ugustine’s Vision from chapter VII in theConfessions is something one can strive
for, however his Vision in chapter IX is of a greater magnitude and most likely the real
vision one would wish to participate in. This paper explores Professor Henry Chadwick’s
question of the Greater Vision being similar enough to Plotinus’ that it could be one and
the same.
  C  hadwick asks this question in his footnote in chapter IX on the shared vision
Augustine and his mother Monika experienced in Ostia Rome. The footnote is as follows:
“The force of this quotation is debated. Does Augustine imply that the ecstasy of Ostia
was an anticipation of the beatific vision? Or does he mean the most divine part of the
soul, most nearly akin to God, which analogy in Plotinus (5. 1. 3. 4-6) might suggest?
Elsewhere Augustine interprets ‘the firstfruits of the spirit’ to mean the spirit of man,
which would favour the latter view. The description of the vision at Ostia has affinities with Plotinus 5. 1. 2. 14 ff., a text also found congenial by St. Basil.1” This footnote is a
curious thing because would not Augustine have listed a neo-Platonic vision as the lesser
vision in chapter 7? Some questions arise between the two Visions as does the Greater
Vision being a shared one.

Although many commentators on Rousseau’s philosophy have noted its affinities with Platonism and acknowledged the debt that Rousseau himself expressed to Plato on numerous occasions, David Williams is the first to offer a thoroughgoing, systematic examination of this linkage. His contributions to the scholarship on Rousseau in this book are threefold: he enters the debate over whether Rousseau is a Hobbesian (in rejecting transcendent norms) or a Platonist (in accepting them) with a decisive argument supporting the latter position; he tackles from a new angle the ever-challenging question of unity in Rousseau’s thought; and he explores the dynamic metaphor of the chain throughout Rousseau’s writings as a key to understanding them as inspired by Platonism.

The book is organized into three main parts. The first sketches the background of Platonism and materialist positivism in modern European metaphysics and political philosophy that provided the context for Rousseau’s intellectual development. The second examines Rousseau’s choice of Platonism over positivism and its consequences for his philosophy generally. The third addresses the legacy of Rousseau’s thought and its appropriation by Kant, Marx, and Foucault, suggesting that in an age where materialism and relativism are rife, Rousseau may have much to teach us about how we view our own society and can engage in constructive critique of it.

Im vorliegenden Beitrag soll der philologisch basierte Versuch unternommen werden, ein besseres Verständnis dessen zu erreichen, was Platon mit dem Wort φύσις in seinem Höhlengleichnis der Politeia gemeint haben könnte. Während sich die meisten Studien zu diesem Gleichnis (εἰκών, Rep. 515a4; vgl. ebd. 514a1), bei dem es sich definitiv um eine Allegorie handelt, fast ausschließlich auf die zentrale Rolle der παιδεία, auf die elementare Relevanz der Dialektik sowie auf den (von Platon selbst nahegelegten) Abgleich der (Un-)Kenntnisstufen mit Liniengleichnis und Sonnengleichnis sowie implizite politische Aspekte konzentrieren, sei hier das Augenmerk auf die kaum kommentierte Semantik von φύσις in diesem Kontext gelenkt, deren Untersuchung einige neue Aspekte zur Interpretation beisteuern kann.

The concept of a Platonic «political philosophy» is paradoxical. No other
place reveals more clearly this paradox than the image of the cave in the Republic.
A true discourse about the polis should express the knowledge of the shades,
once the philosopher becomes habituated to the darkness. However, it is possible
to distinguish a double «descent» of the philosopher among the prisoners: in a first
moment, he becomes the object of mockery and violence; in a second moment, he
is equipped with political power. Political theory seems to be justified by the philosophical
activity of government (the second descent), so it is necessary to ask about
the meaning of a theory developed by someone who is just an observer of the polis,
having no political power (the first descent). This is the position of Socrates, when
describing the image of the cave. This is also the position of Plato as the author of
The Republic.

Over the years, students in my courses have noted that the Allegory of the Cave describes the experience of seeing movies. The cave and the prisoners inside it remind them of a darkened movie theater. The shadow-play fully engrossing the prisoners’ attention seems like a film. In fact, Plato describes the wall behind which the puppeteers work as being “like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets.” Plato very much seems to employ the entertainment technology of his time to construct his allegory. Would Plato object to a little cinematic spelunking in his cave? It is hard to say, but I’d guess he’d approve of thinking through it as carefully as possible...

Статья сопоставляет различные направления в теории кино, развивающие такие темы платоновских диалогов, как дуализм вещей и идей (в первую очередь - из Мифа о пещере) и феномен желания, переносящего свой объект от плотского вожделения к любви к божественной мудрости. Автор показывает, как "платоновская линия" теории кино развивается от осуждения кино как подражательного искусства, искажающего восприятие действительности, к его оправданию как механизма, открывающего нам нашу природу желающих субъектов.

Cinema always seeking and exploring new and various sources to adapt and creation of films as its final product.  On the other hand, philosophy is more applied as a framework for expression, critic, description, and explanation or value-judgment of cinematic movies. A field on the upstream of cinema allows the researchers to think and philosophizing by a medium or interface named film. Reversely, this paper’s main purpose is to illustrate a path in which cinematographers and particularly scriptwriters used one of the most famous and history-making allegories and anecdotes of philosophy as a theme or motif to plot-creation. The discussion is not related to the prediction of the future by Plato and depicting the cinema in past millenniums. The main issue and question are how philosophy can provide the raw material for cinematic creation? The aim is to show that it is not necessary to make a philosophical film based on the biography of a philosopher or accumulating the dialogs and narrations of the film with philosophical debates and concepts. This paper applies an analytic-comparative method by studying script’s texts through the intermediation of tips and allusions which exist in dialogs and plot to illuminate the manner or quality of adaptation from one of the most famous philosophical allegories. The essay investigates instances from the different cinematic streams, a spectrum from Hollywood mainstream and directors like Peter Weir toward European independent cinema and author film-makers like Bernardo Bertolucci by content interpretation of scripts and introducing this method as a way of adaptation in Iranian experimentalist and independent cinema.

The main aim of this paper is to thoroughly analyze Plato’s simile of the cave. Since it is closely tied to two previous smiles (namely the Sun and the Line), the first section of the paper is devoted to a brief recapitulation of the content of these similes and their relation to the Cave. Then, the simile of the cave itself is being scrutinized. It is argued that in order to understand the simile properly, one must distinguish between different contexts in which Plato applies it. It is claimed that although they are mutually nontransferable (and so, as many scholars think, a consistent interpretation of the whole simile cannot be given), they are, nonetheless, complementary, and only when taken together one can understand the complexity of the human situation in this world. The last section of this paper is then devoted to the topic of philosophical education which plays a key role in the simile of the cave.

O presente artigo tem como objetivo uma análise de aspectos da literatura utópica/distópica em geral, e da obra Planolândia, de Edwin A. Abbot, em específico, a partir de aproximações de ambas perspectivas com o Mito da Caverna, descrito por Sócrates, na obra A república, de Platão. Ao longo da análise, discutiremos as semelhanças das reações dos prisioneiros da narrativa platônica com as formas pelas quais o utopismo e as utopias literárias são, muitas vezes, criticadas e hostilizadas justamente pelo público que pretendem conscientizar. Com isso, pretendemos demonstrar que a recusa do ideal utópico ou mesmo de possibilidades alternativas de organização societária escondem discursos conservadores e autoritários que possibilitam a manutenção do status quo em uma determinada época ou sociedade.

In this paper I examine a fragment of Aristotle's lost DE PHILOSOPHIA in which he presents a thought experiment which owes much to the Allegory of the Cave in REPUBLIC VII. Subterranean people who have lived comfortable and well-furnished lives underground emerge to the surface, and upon witnessing various meteorological phenomena, they conclude that the heavens have "gods", about whom they had long heard rumors.  This passage has been widely considered to be a form of the teleological argument for the existence of god(s), but I argue against this interpretation. Rather, it is an illustration of Aristotle's views concerning the origins of the conception of "gods".

Meditatie, beschrijving van een gevoel. Er gebeurt niets, helemaal niets meer. Behalve dat je vlucht, terwijl je niet eens hoeft te vluchten. Er is niet eens meer iemand voor wie je zou moeten vluchten. Het gevoel helemaal alleen te zijn, een naakt dat in het niets van de wereld. Geen mensen meer, geen dieren meer, geen planten meer. Namen hebben al lang geen zin meer want er is niets om te benoemen. Geen huizen, geen steden, geen beelden. Alleen jij en de lege ruimte. En je loopt, en je loopt en je loopt. Je cameraoog ziet de glooiingen van de heuvels van antraciet en de hemel. Een zwarte woestijn. En dit gevoel. De laatste te zijn en toch te moeten vluchten.