NATURE IN THE CAVE

The role of nature in the allegory is manifestly important, but subtle and enigmatic all the same. As many scholars have emphasized, Socrates frames the allegory as being about ‘our nature’ (τὴν ἡμϵτέραν ϕύσιν) in relation to education and miseducation (514a).Footnote ¹⁵ There is a totalizing generality to the allegory, then. It illuminates something about all of us (hence ἡμϵτέραν) and pertains not to some incidental feature, but our ϕύσις. Translations and interpretations that would have us understand this ἡμϵτέραν ϕύσιν as merely prefiguring the assertion in 515a5 that the prisoners are ‘like us’ are deflating the sense of the phrase.Footnote ¹⁶ Socrates does not intend us to think of the image as mirroring only the unfortunate features of our current political environment, but to be accounting for the human condition.Footnote ¹⁷

The next reference to ϕύσις occurs in the narrow passage with which this article is concerned. There are textual emendations that must be accounted for here. Socrates asks us to consider the release (λύσιν) and healing (ἴασιν) of their (αὐτῶν) chains and ignorance (τῶν τϵ δϵσμῶν καὶ τῆς ἀϕροσύνης), what sort of thing it would be like if some such thing by nature came to pass for them (οἵα τις ἂν ϵἴη, ϵἰ ϕύσϵι τοιάδϵ συμβαίνοι αὐτοῖς).Footnote ¹⁸ Present focus is particularly the word ϕύσις appearing in the dative here, but there is a dispute regarding the ϵἰ that appears just before it. ϵἰ is testified to by manuscripts A (Parisinus gr. 1807, ninth century, with interlineal and marginal additions)Footnote ¹⁹ and F (Vindobonesis suppl. gr. 39, late thirteenth–fourteenth centuries), which are undisputed primary sources.Footnote ²⁰ But it is omitted by manuscript D (Marcianus gr. Z. 185, c. twelfth century), and it is replaced with ἡ by Iamblichus. Schleiermacher, according to Slings’s apparatus, corrected the text to ϕύσϵι ϵἰ, and Adam suggests as a rationale for this that ‘ϵἰ fell out by ὁμοιοτέλϵυτον after ϕύσϵι, disappeared altogether from several MSS, and was wrongly replaced in A’.Footnote ²¹ The difference of position is important because it determines which clause takes ϕύσϵι as adverb. Socrates has us imagine either ‘what sort of thing it would be like by nature if some such thing came to pass’ (οἵα τις ἂν ϵἴη ϕύσϵι, ϵἰ τοιάδϵ συμβαίνοι αὐτοῖς) or else ‘what sort of thing it would be like if some such thing by nature came to pass’ (οἵα τις ἂν ϵἴη, ϵἰ ϕύσϵι τοιάδϵ συμβαίνοι αὐτοῖς).Footnote ²² That is, ‘by nature’ modifies the apodosis and asserts that the results of the protasis being realized will be natural, or else it modifies the circumstances of the protasis and frames the inquiry according to a very specific condition (i.e. something occurring ‘by nature’).

In either case, the meaning of ϕύσϵι remains to be determined, but clarity in how nature figures in the allegory would be helpful in that mission. Slings hopelessly concludes ‘ϕύσϵι omnino suspectum’.Footnote ²³ But he nevertheless perpetuates the transmission of the texts A and F: with ϵἰ followed by ϕύσϵι and internal to the protasis clause. This discussion follows the same orthodoxy. Accordingly, Socrates is understood as inquiring into what the prison-break would be like in the circumstance of the prison-break occurring ‘naturally’ or ‘by nature’ or ‘by the aid of nature’, however our further analysis of the word bears out.

Adam interprets ‘nature’ here as a reminder that the conditions at the bottom of the cave are ‘against nature’, echoing Socrates’ earlier examination of upbringings that are concordant with nature (κατὰ ϕύσιν) or else against it (παρὰ ϕύσιν, 456c).Footnote ²⁴ To be deprived of understanding and to be intellectually unfree is ‘against nature’ for human beings, given that their good consists in the well-functioning of the rational part of their souls. As Adam says: ‘Their release is therefore a return to their nature, and therefore may be described as “natural”.’Footnote ²⁵ On this reading, the ϕύσϵι of the passage is reconciled to the first mention of ϕύσις in the allegory—‘our nature’ (τὴν ἡμϵτέραν ϕύσιν)—by establishing nature as a normative concept. It is the correct or best condition for us to be in, and the allegory provides an examination of how education and miseducation advance or diminish that correct condition.Footnote ²⁶

Hall complicates this interpretation of ϕύσϵι and advances it.Footnote ²⁷ Observing that the argument of the dialogue does not in fact support understanding ignorance as unnatural or ‘against nature’ for the vast majority of individuals, Hall argues that the normative force of ‘natural’ in the passage cannot pertain to individual psyches, but instead must pertain to the collective. It is unnatural for a community to be deprived of knowledge through being deprived of a philosopher ruler. The establishment of correct rule is what is natural. As Hall says: ‘Instead of representing our individual intellectual limitations as unnatural, the allegory shows us that without philosophic rule we are like men shut up in an underground cavern denying the sunlight in the world above.’Footnote ²⁸ The release from bonds and healing of ignorance are ‘by nature’, on this reading, in the sense that they correct course for the community.

This type of interpretation has in its favour that it coheres with Socrates’ normative conception of nature.Footnote ²⁹ We ordinarily think of nature merely as an origin or source of ‘natural’ beings and objects. ‘Artificial’ beings and objects, by contrast, are produced by craft expertise (τέχνη). But Socrates conceives of a second sense of ‘natural’: as a normative standard to which both objects originated in nature and those originated in artifice may adhere. That is, nature is a measure as well as a producer. A ‘natural’ object, on this conception, may yet be ‘unnatural’ in either of two ways: by originating in nature but failing to adhere to the ‘natural’ normative standard or else by adhering to the standard but originating in artifice. An example of the former is a tyrant, someone born with a philosophic nature but raised poorly and corrupted (492a), and of the latter, perhaps a just city.

Plato captures the two separate dimensions of ‘natural’ in two separate locutions. His preferred way of capturing the sense of adhering to a standard is with κατὰ ϕύσιν.Footnote ³⁰ By contrast, he captures the idea of originating in nature with the dative construction.Footnote ³¹ For example, Socrates asserts that ‘whatever is in good condition whether by nature or by craft or by both’ (τὸ καλῶς ἔχον ἢ ϕύσϵι ἢ τέχνῃ ἢ ἀμϕοτέροις) is resistant to undergoing change (381b). Nature is evidently the source or cause or origin—pick which notion best appeals—of the phenomenon under examination. Also, in describing the class of rulers as ‘smallest by nature’ (ϕύσϵι ὀλίγιστον), he cannot mean that it is smallest in accord with a normative standard, but that nature produces only a few people who are genuinely fit to rule (428e–429a). When Socrates imagines the effect of an education in music for someone who is ‘spiritless by nature from the start’ (ἐξ ἀρχῆς ϕύσϵι ἄθυμον), he is imagining someone born spiritless before they have been made to adhere to a normative standard (411b).

Some of his uses of the dative may appear mixed between the two senses. For example, when reiterating the purpose of searching for an account of justice, Socrates says, ‘We’ll find out what sort of thing justice is and how it must by nature bring profit to its possessor (ὡς ϕύσϵι λυσιτϵλοῦν)’ (392c).Footnote ³² We might be inclined to read this as saying that nature is the cause of justice being beneficial precisely by being the standard to which justice adheres.Footnote ³³ But this is where we can see that the conception of nature as a source or cause is complex. In being the origin of an entity, nature shapes and determines what is good for that entity, which just is the establishment of the normative standard for that thing. The origin and the standard are not identical, but one does inform the other. They are easily taken as one, but Plato nevertheless observes that they are distinct. Because he assigns a different opposite to each—the opposite of κατὰ ϕύσιν is παρὰ ϕύσιν and the opposite of ϕύσϵι is τύχῃ or even τέχνῃ—we can readily see that they are necessarily different.

When Adam and Hall make the ϕύσϵι of the cave passage into a reminder of the παρὰ ϕύσιν conditions at the bottom of the cave, they set the κατὰ ϕύσιν sense of ‘natural’ as the dominant reading, and perhaps as the exclusive reading. Read in this way, the passage cannot be understood as setting nature as an origin or source of the surprising release of the prisoner. This is unfortunate, for both philosophical and philological reasons. Philosophically, it is unfortunate because it cuts off an entire dimension of Plato’s conception of naturalness. And philologically, it is unfortunate because it does not honour Plato’s usual distinction between κατὰ ϕύσιν and ϕύσϵι.

The sense of originating in nature yields a more sensible reading all around. ‘Let us consider’, Socrates says, ‘if some such thing came to pass for them by nature (ϕύσϵι)’. If an act of nature directly causes what he goes on to describe, then we can understand the event to be possible through specifically that act of nature. The event is the release of the prisoner’s fetters. What act of nature could cause that? Whatever act it is, that act is among the necessary conditions for making the release possible. Nature is a cause. This means that educational programs or releasers or mysterious ‘someones’, even Socrates himself, are conjoint causes at best, and perhaps only downstream or secondary causes.

Before attempting to reconcile this reading with the first mention of ϕύσις in the allegory, we should look forward to the subsequent mentions of the concept in the same image. The word is invoked twice more, both at the end of the allegory, and in both cases in the context of describing the individuals who will be compelled to knowledge in the way that the released prisoner is compelled to knowledge. After describing such individuals as possessed of especially keen eyesight (ὡς δριμὺ μὲν βλέπϵι), Socrates refers to them abstractly and collectively as ‘a nature such as this’ (τῆς τοιαύτης ϕύσϵως) (519a). And, a little further on, he admonishes his interlocutors and himself that ‘our work’ (ἡμέτϵρον δὴ ἔργον) is to ensure that the ‘best natures are compelled to attain to learning’ (βϵλτίστας ϕύσϵις ἀναγκάσαι ἀϕικέσθαι πρὸς τὸ μάθημα) (519c). The ‘best natures’ here must be those possessed of the keen eyesight described in the antecedent passage. There are no further mentions of ϕύσις in the allegory.

Now, it seems apparent—once we see in these latter passages that ϕύσις can pick out not a general human condition, but a particular psychic profile defined by innate distinct characteristics (e.g. keen eyesight)—that the ϕύσϵι attending the event of the release could also be picking out a particular psychic profile. But how exactly can this reading work? In what way can a particular psychic profile attend, in the dative, the event in question? By being born. The event occurs by nature (ϕύσϵι τοιάδϵ συμβαίνοι αὐτοῖς), and this means that the special nature described at the end of the allegory—the ‘best’ nature, i.e. the remarkably keen-sighted nature—causes the event to come about. It is by means of this nature (instrumental) or from this nature (source) that a release is possible. In other words, the particular psychic profile is causal.

It may seem impossible to reconcile this understanding to the framing of the allegory as being about ‘our nature’ (τὴν ἡμϵτέραν ϕύσιν). Once the keen-sighted nature has been carved out as distinct, implying that there are more natures than one among human beings, it is puzzling that Socrates should refer to a singular nature as ‘ours’. But Socrates has in mind, at the opening of the allegory, to make our collective condition the focal point of the image. Each of the particular psychic profiles has its own potential in relation to education and miseducation, but the collective of all those dispositions is something that meaningfully is all of ours, seeing how we are bound together as social and political beings. What is true of any one particular psychic profile—that this one is money-loving, this one honour-loving and that one truth-loving (581c)—is true of ‘us’. It is ‘our nature’ to be these various ways. In this, my interpretation adheres to Hall’s collectivity reading.

In sum, my suggestion is that we understand ϕύσις as playing a causal role in the release of the prisoner at the bottom of the cave. Specifically, it is the ‘best nature’ that makes the event possible, and it must be the case that the prisoner himself is possessed of that nature. He is special. The bonds cannot hold him. Briefly, we should describe the special nature my interpretation attributes to the prisoner in order that it may be clear how it can be a cause of the release. We will turn to this task presently.

THE NATURE OF THE PRISONER

Interpreting the text conservatively, we can describe the nature of the prisoner by restricting ourselves to the resources of the passages constituting the allegory. As already mentioned, Socrates convinces his interlocutors of the potential for knowledge—that is, the potential for ascending from the cave—among individuals who are ‘keen-sighted’ (519a). The context of that trait being emphasized is a fuller description of individuals who are ‘popularly spoken of as bad, but intelligent men’. These individuals, Socrates explains, are recognized by the majority for their sharp intellects, despite the foul purposes to which those intellects have been put (519a):

Socrates is seeking for Glaucon to agree to the existence of a natural type (τῆς τοιαύτης ϕύσϵως) by describing the way it appears in non-ideal circumstances (519a). Having secured Glaucon’s agreement, Socrates next describes how differently that same type will appear in ideal circumstances (519ab):

These two pictures account for education and miseducation (παιδϵίας τϵ πέρι καὶ ἀπαιδϵυσίας) of the same natural type (514a).

Upbringing accounts for all of the difference between the two pictures, but it is only partially explanatory of all the details we find in each. The keen-sightedness is equally explanatory, and strictly prior, in making this individual into either the ‘bad, but intelligent’ or else enlightened citizen they become. That is, their nature as intellectually sharp individuals is largely determinant of their outcome. Applying this to the released prisoner, we can say that he is intellectually sharp in a way that cannot be dulled even by miseducation, that is, by being forced into fetters. He will persist as ‘intelligent’ and unequal to other miseducated individuals. This inequality in the strength of his mind is the first cause of the chains not holding him.

If we interpret the text more liberally, stepping beyond the confines of the allegory passages, we will find the conservative reading reinforced. The Book 6 description of a ‘philosophic nature’ (τῶν ϕιλοσόϕων ϕύσϵων) sets the same intellectual sharpness as the distinguishing feature of anyone capable of knowledge (485a).Footnote ³⁴ Socrates says that the ϕύσις of these individuals is the first thing to consider (485a). They ‘must above all strive for every kind of truth from childhood on’ (485d), be ‘moderate and not at all a money-lover’ (485e), be ‘just and gentle, from youth on’ (486b), be a ‘fast’ learner (486c), ‘one with a good memory’ (486c), and ‘someone whose thought is by nature (ϕύσϵι) measured and graceful’ (486d). The emphasis on possession of these traits at the outset of the education demonstrates that individuals possessed of this nature are so by nature, in the sense that nature, not nurture, is the cause. There remains the possibility that they will grow up to be παρὰ ϕύσιν.Footnote ³⁵

This description spells out the metaphorical ‘keen-sightedness’ in terms that more readily pertain to the soul.Footnote ³⁶ The soul is not, strictly, an eye. If it is ‘keen-sighted’, it must be by possession of psychic traits that enable the soul to do whatever it is that is analogous to seeing. That psychic power is knowledge, or at least learning, and so all these traits that enable the philosophic nature to learn are the traits that make that nature ‘keen-sighted’.Footnote ³⁷

The ‘best nature’ in the cave passages is the philosophical nature, then, and the philosophical nature is the one possessed by the released prisoner who goes on to attain knowledge. The fact that the prisoner has ‘a nature such as this’ explains his capacity for learning, and Plato’s use of the dative ϕύσϵι when Socrates asks us to consider how the prisoner will be released indicates that this special nature is among the causes of the release itself.

OBJECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

There are several strong objections to my reading. Here we consider four. First, the interpretation does not account for the bonds themselves. In failing to specify what they represent, the case is not made that the metaphorical ‘keen-sightedness’ is sufficient to weaken or break them. Indeed, as Reeve and Scott each suggest, the bonds are best understood as a metaphor for unnecessary appetites. Such desires have a very strong and negative influence on the soul. Socrates indicates exactly this when, in the passage quoted at length in my previous section, he says that ‘feasting, greed, and other such pleasures’ drag the prisoner’s vision downwards like ‘leaden weights’ (519a–b). The prisoner is attributed the potential to see true things ‘most sharply’ just in case these leaden weights can be dropped. But this sharpness is explicitly identified by Socrates as being ‘just as it now does the things it is presently turned towards’ (519b). That is, the prisoner endures bondage even with his keen-sightedness. This shows that his nature is not sufficient for breaking the bonds.

This point must be conceded. The bonds surely do represent unnecessary desires. The image echoes the depiction of the negative influence of appetitive desire upon the functioning of reason at 485d.Footnote ³⁸ And given that the prisoner is able to exercise his sharp-sightedness even while in the grip of this destructive appetitive desire, his nature as ‘keen-sighted’ is not sufficient for singularly causing his release. But his nature is necessary to the event and explanatorily prior to whatever it is that is required in addition. And, most importantly, his nature as a truth-lover does weaken the strength of appetitive desire in his soul, even if it cannot entirely mute those desires independent of external intervention. This is what Socrates means when, in describing the philosophic nature as a lover of truth, he says: ‘We surely know that, when someone’s desires incline strongly for one thing, they are thereby weakened for others’ (485d). The prisoner’s nature is partly defined by its resistance to the bonds, then, even if it is not defined as unbound. This explains why ϕύσις alone is isolated as a cause in the dative. Though strictly not sufficient for causing the release, it is prior to any and all other complementary causes.

The second objection to consider fits well with the first, since it focusses on the necessity of a second causal element. Even if we accept that the inborn rational capacities of this prisoner are exemplary, there must still be a catalyst for his transformation. He has been staring, apparently with sharp vision, at the shadows on the wall of the cave all this time, and suddenly his shackles fall away. But why now? Something must have changed in his environment to precipitate this change in his condition. This is where champions of education and the Socratic elenchus will rush to suggest that it must be the influence of someone exerting pressure on his beliefs that allows the prisoner to blink, so to speak.Footnote ³⁹ A Socratic figure breaks the spell, initiating the soul’s disconnect from the worldly things that are gripping it.

This point, too, is conceded. If the philosophic nature alone is not sufficient for breaking the chains, then there is surely a complementary cause. However, it is doubtful that we should identify any particular conception of the catalyst as necessary. Though it is reasonable to posit education or an educator as the catalyst, for that process or agent can be understood as operating the hammer that frees the prisoner (519a), the figure of Socrates as Plato imagines him in the Apology and other early dialogues offers an alternative account. Reared by the laws of a non-ideal, ignorant and unjust Athens, Socrates escaped the metaphorical bonds to become something of a philosopher.Footnote ⁴⁰ But he was assisted by a δαιμόνιον rather than a teacher (Apology 31c–d). And even if Socrates always needed some kind of intervention for becoming the Socratic figure we so love, it was nevertheless the case—in Plato’s mind—that his nature was the cause of the intervention being effective. Education is not a necessary element of the release either, then, since all that is needed is something that might trigger the philosophic nature to question the images presented to it.Footnote ⁴¹

Finally, we consider an objection gleaned from interpretations denying that the nature described as ‘best’ in the allegory corresponds to the philosophic nature of Book 6. This is Weiss’s reading. On her view, the initial release represents an attempt to turn a non-ideal state into a Kallipolis by appointing to the position of ruler someone who might approximate the philosopher: ‘Since, however, philosophic natures cannot be manufactured—they are, after all, natures—the founders set about to produce philosophers who mimic the real thing, philosophers who, though their first and natural love is the realm of sights and sounds, the realm of opinion, can nevertheless be trained to prefer the intelligible realm.’Footnote ⁴² This reading makes the allegory entirely political. What we are made to imagine is a random selection of someone who will undergo a rigorous education. Nature is not explanatory in that initial ascent, except to the extent that those selecting an individual for the project will seek the ‘best’ (considered comparatively rather than absolutely) nature, on the basis of their limited ability to discern differences in the darkness.

A significant disadvantage of this reading is that it cannot make sense of ϕύσϵι. Weiss might retreat to a reading like that of Adam and Hall, asserting that the word highlights the παρὰ ϕύσιν conditions of the prisoners. The problems with such readings have already been addressed. To further her troubles, though, she must multiply the referents of ‘philosophic nature’, making the phrase refer not only to those who love truth by nature, but also those who love truth in accord with nature. She must make pains to convince us that the philosophic nature of Book 6 is fundamentally distinct from the philosophic nature of Book 7.Footnote ⁴³

Socrates tells against this reading when he says: ‘only a few natures possess all the qualities that we just now said were essential to becoming a complete philosopher’ (491a), and asks Adeimantus: ‘Or do you think that […] a weak nature is ever the cause of either great good or great evil?’ (491e). Given that the ascent is possible only for the one nature, we cannot propose that other natures will make the ascent, not even if we insist that it is only that initial ascent from the non-ideal environment.

This last conclusion—that only one nature has hope of ascending—is impetus for one further objection: if my reading is correct, then how are we to construe the lesson of the allegory in any way other than pessimistic? Most of humanity is destined to languish in the dark shadows at the bottom of the cave. The egalitarian promise of education seems lost.Footnote ⁴⁴ Even worse, Plato forbids us the conceit of believing we are exempt from this lottery of natural abilities. Recall that it is ‘our nature’ (τὴν ἡμϵτέραν ϕύσιν) that is allegorized (514a). What holds in the allegory is a reflection of the human condition, so if an inborn ability is depicted as a necessary cause in any journey to philosophical enlightenment in the allegory, then it is thought by Plato to be necessary in reality.

This moral psychology is deployed by Socrates at every step in the dialogue, though. He cannot endorse the idea that ‘only a few natures’ possess the philosophical aptitude and simultaneously endorse an enlightenment-for-all conception of education (491a). My response to this objection is that Plato is a meritocrat, but not the kind who believes everyone has the same potential. Rather, he is an aristocratic meritocrat: the nature that merits receiving the philosophical education is a special and rare ‘philosophic nature’ (415c, 490a, 495a, 503b). And when that philosophic education has come to its end, the nature which merited undergoing it is counted ‘most valuable’ (415a) and ‘gold’ (415a).Footnote ⁴⁵