Class 3: Leaving the Cave

Since we were unable to meet during our second scheduled class meeting, Class 3 was actually our second class. I hope that no one minds that I honor our lost meeting by letting it remain Class 2. I did send out a Class 2 lecture, and I plan to make a connection with the ethics of mimesis as I review Class 3.

A short summary of our third class period (and second actual meeting) is quite easy to offer: We talked about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Myth of Er, and we began to make some productive connections between these and both MP and TPS. Of course, such a summary hardly does the class period justice. In particular, it’s impossible to recreate the way that our terms, questions, and connections actually arise. The terms, in particular, are defined for you as we need them: I introduce them as we encounter the constellations of thought for which those terms are a kind of shorthand. (For those who know Wittgenstein we can say this: these terms will be defined by their use, and getting acquainted with their use happens better if we encounter them in a meaningful context – in the game of which they are a part.) Indeed, the course will be largely “discovery-driven” in this fashion.

We concentrated on the following moments in Plato’s text: passages 515c-e, 516d-517a, 518c-d, and 520c from the Cave Allegory; we only had time to take a quick introductory glance at 617d-618b from the Myth of Er. In the course of our discussion of these passages, we hit upon the following questions:

1. There is the triadic question of how we know our authentic self (an epistemological question), what such a self is (an ontological question), and what makes an authentic self good (this is an axial question, i.e., a question about what is axios, which means ‘worthy’; questions about what things are good (worthy) and why is a branch of ethical philosophy, and such questions must face the further questions of how we know this good (another epistemological question) and what it is (another ontological question); we must know these things about the good if we are to then say that some “X,” such as an authentic self, is indeed good).

2. There is the question of manipulation, if that turns out to be the right word. At this point, this might be a mere semantic question, as we might find that what the perfectionist does is not manipulation but something else. (Interestingly, Cavell never addresses this question.) Coercion might be too strong a word for what we have in mind here vis-à-vis perfectionism. What we have in mind here is what the philosopher who returns to the Cave or Haven, who returns to the Lord household, must do in order to turn someone else. The question, then, is, What distinguishes what this person (the perfectionist) does from what the “moralist” does? We will look at many instances of such manipulation, and we will look at both subtle and extreme manipulations, at ones that produce good (perfectionist) results, and at ones that produce bad (moralist) results.

3. There is the question of how the perfectionist impulse begins: How does someone in a state of darkness (or imprisonment or ignorance – there will be different figurations of this basic initial state) wake to the possibility of a better, liberated future self? Insofar as this is an issue of awakening to the possibility of authenticity, it is closely connected to our first (triadic) question. It is also not clear that one can do this alone, and so this question is closely tied to our second question.

4. If we accept that someone else must play a role in any awakening, there is the question of how this is done. This is the question of what we might call perfectionist katabasis, which is when one person has to “descend” in order to help another. How does that work? (Must one manipulate to some extent?) Does the person who goes down initiate an impulse in the other or must that impulse already be there if the imprisoned one is to respond to the one from “beyond”?

5. Finally, there is the question, which we were only able to briefly raise at the end, of freedom and its close cousin, tyranny. At issue here is this: We want to be liberated from that which imprisons us, and this can be taken as a matter of wanting more freedom. However, at times it is precisely our freedom that can be the source of the problem. Tracy, for instance, has a great deal of freedom, and that is tied to the problem she faces. We likely have a semantic issue here first and foremost. For instance, we can distinguish between, say, the freedom of movement (to go where one wishes) and a freedom of choice (to do what one wishes) from a freedom of ignorance: one might be able to go wherever s/he wishes and do whatever s/he wishes and still be imprisoned in some sense. Indeed, ignorance can be tyrannical; it can also, to use a different metaphor, be poisonous: it can affect our every seemingly free choice and movement.

So these, then, are our questions. As for terms, we have the following from Class 3: manipulation, moralism, katabasis, eleutheria, tyranny, and tropos (which means “turn, direction, course, way”). It’s good to keep track of these, as we will likely continue to use them as we develop the vocabulary necessary to think about and further investigate perfectionism and the various texts (philosophic, literary, and filmic) that illustrate various facets of it.

In terms of what we wrote up on the board, we had the following:

1. Allegory of the Cave – beginning / Myth of Er – middle – way of life – transmigration, metempsychosis

2. Perfectionism – CKDH – manipulation – authentic / “moralism” – conform – Torvald and George – inauthentic

3. Katabasis – going down – trip to the underworld

4. Eleutheria – tyranny – “moralism” – daimon – tropos

We began class with the Cave allegory and Er’s myth, but I suggested (following Cavell) that we read Er’s myth as an allegory. It is not common to treat Er’s myth as an allegorical story: it has pretty much always been treated as a myth in the current sense of that term. A myth is typically understood (today) as a traditional story told within a culture in order to explain certain poorly understood phenomena and pass along certain kinds of truth. In Plato’s Athens, however, the understanding of myth (among those who were able to participate in Athen’s democracy and high culture) was a bit more sophisticated: playwrights – and later, Plato – would consciously shape mythic material in response to context and audience, and they would select, reject, or alter aspects of that material accordingly. They would thereby be able to make a statement on some current, pressing issue. Plato seems to have taken this a step further: he began to make new ‘myths.’ Thus, there is good reason to single out Er’s story as a myth: it introduces a very new understanding of (and one might say truth regarding) the afterlife, and it is unique and special in the Republic in this (and some other) regards.

There is good reason, however, to also look at Er’s story as allegorical (in addition to mythical): Plato’s Repbulic is full of allegory, and these allegories are always offered in order to help illustrate a particular thesis regarding our thisworldly human condition. Thus, while Er’s story can operate mythically (as offering an understanding of the afterlife – of our otherworldly condition), it can also operate as an allegory for our current thisworldly situation. Keep in mind (as we did in class) that an allegory is in essence a story that be read as entirely symbolic. A symbol, in literary terminology, is when some ordinary object or thing (including color) at the same time represents something else – usually an abstract concept, value, or meaning. Thus, some everyday material thing represents something abstract and immaterial. The symbolic, then, is a means by which the abstract (including that which is metaphysical (i.e., somehow beyond (meta) the natural world (physis just means ‘nature’))) ‘goes down’ into the everyday world. Of course, it’s perhaps more accurate to say that it’s a means by which someone brings something more abstract (something deeper, hidden, truer) to one who is caught up in the material and the everyday (which is, for Plato, what the Cave is: it’s a figuration for both the material and the everyday and for being caught up in it). Thus, allegory might be seen as a tool by which one person helps to turn another (and so this touches on Question 4 and raises the possibility of a mode of turning that is not manipulative, thereby touching on Question 2).

An allegory, then, is a story that is, in its entirety, symbolic: it can be read literally, and it can also be read as having a deeper meaning to which one gains access by treating everything in the story as symbolic. The prisoners are not actual prisoners; they are us, who think that we are free. The cave is not a literal subterranean space, replete with stalagmites and stalactites; it is the society in which we now find ourselves and to which we tacitly consent (as Locke would say). The sun that one sees upon exiting the cave is not just the sun; it is the Good itself, which exists beyond being and becoming.

As for the Cave, it is prima facie (at first glance) obvious that it is an allegory, and many of the basic features of that allegory are readily apparent (but some of the most essential features are not so readily apparent, and some are in fact what Derrida would call aporetic, meaning, roughly, that we can never determine definitively how they should be interpreted). The way in which Er’s story is allegorical is much trickier, and we didn’t get to far into that. But Cavell’s suggestion is that we take the transmigration of souls (known in Greek as metempsychosis, which was a concept that very much interested Joyce) as a figuration of what the perfectionist is after: the transformation from ‘the self one currently is’ into some future self is, in a sense, a transmigration. This is the situation we find ourselves in once the perfectionist impulse has been initiated. But more on that later (in Class 4), as we spent most of Class 3 on the Cave. The Cave is more accessible, and the Cave also focuses on the beginning of the perfectionist movement, while Er’s story speaks more to the status of one who is in the midst of the perfectionist process of becoming.

So: the Cave. We looked at four key moments. I will turn to them in my next blog entry.

Class 1: Syllabus Day

There’s not too much to say at this point, as I spent most of the first class period introducing the class via the syllabus; I then introduced the six basic tenets of moral perfectionism in the final ten minutes, but we had no time to discuss them. I also began to introduce some technical terms that will need further elucidation in the coming weeks (terms such as “moment of crisis,” “authentic self,” “friend,” and “genius,” each of which will come to function as a piece of technical vocabulary for us). However, there are some things that are worth stressing and clarifying in this first blog post.

First, I repeatedly mentioned two previous iterations of this course, and I want to say a bit more about them in order to more fully clarify the nature of the course. I first taught the Moral Perfectionism course as a senior seminar at St. John’s University/The College of St. Benedict, which is a dual-campus residential Catholic liberal arts college in central Minnesota. (SJU is the men’s campus; CSB is the women’s campus; it is now a joint institution.) The senior seminar at CSB|SJU is an ethics seminar and all graduating seniors are required to take one; most faculty members teach one, and most are not philosophers or trained in the field of ethics. Students are assigned to sections in a largely random fashion, and each section contains a wide variety of majors. In the section that I taught, only one of the students (out of nineteen) was a Philosophy major; only one, if memory serves correctly, was an English major.

I say this in order to drive home the fact that one can benefit from this course without a substantive grounding in either Philosophy or English – although the course will build your knowledge and abilities if you do indeed have a solid grounding in either or both disciplines. It is, really, designed to function on many levels at once; thus, it can function at the level that you, the student, need it to function. This is, in my experience, true of most philosophical texts (with notable exceptions, such as Wittgenstein): you can read Plato and get a lot out of it whether you are a freshman, a graduating senior majoring in philosophy, a graduate student, or a Plato scholar. I first read Plato as a freshman in college, and I have read and reread his work continuously since then; I learn something new every time. Thus, whether this will be your first or fifth look at Plato, it will be valuable – and he will look different (not because he has changed but rather because you have).

With that in mind, while at my next position (at Newberry College, which is a residential Lutheran liberal arts college), I converted this senior seminar into an Introduction to Ethics course. I did so because the standard textbook-based Intro to Ethics that I had taught at Penn State (while a graduate student) and at CSB|SJU did not work at Newberry. At all. I needed to find a new approach. The converted Moral Perfectionism course worked fantastically. I believe that it worked precisely because the course can work on many levels – and it speaks to issues that actually engage most students (whereas textbooks often don’t engage most students). (Perhaps they will let me teach this Intro to Ethics course at ASU some day!)

In our case, the Moral Perfectionism course that I’m now offering is a seminar designed primarily for Philosophy minors and English majors, although some of you may be taking it as an elective out of interest. I anticipate that levels of preparation will vary considerably. Those who took my Wittgenstein course will perhaps find this course much less difficult; indeed, this might give you a chance to work on insights that that course generated. Those who are relatively new to Philosophy may well find it a challenge, and that challenge should come primarily with the writing. In other words, the concepts, texts, and films should be very approachable (as I’ve used them successfully in an intro course), but I will ask you to do some research and will push you to write and think much more than I would in an intro course. (With that in mind, I will have you writing frequently.)

In any case, I will try to pitch the course to three audiences: advanced students who should be working on a meaningful research project; beginning students who need to learn how to think and to do research on a text, philosopher, and/or concept about which they care deeply; and newly-minted experts in the philosophy of Wittgenstein – especially those who might be taking my Ethical Pluralism course next semester. In spite of this threefold pitch, keep in mind that I will apply a single set of grading standards; thus, those who are beginning will likely have to work a bit more on developing their awareness of how to write academically. I, of course, will help you to do that. And, as always, let me know how I’m doing in my attempt to pitch to you (insofar as you are one of these three audiences) or if I’m not pitching to you at all (insofar as you comprise some fourth audience of which I am unaware).