There are few people examining the school systems today who do not recognize the need for improvement. Long founded on relatively common conceptions of logic and reasoning, schools of the present day are based upon what has been termed a logo centric approach to education. This approach involves a discovery of truth through the medium of a relatively homogenized dialogue labeled ‘literacy.’ Dennis Carlson’s essay presents an argument against the idea of logo centric schooling because, he says, it necessitates the use of binary oppositions – in order to have a concept called literacy, there must be an opposite concept called illiteracy. In establishing this dichotomy, the logo centric school system creates students considered literate because of their ability to participate in the ‘accepted’ intellectual dialogue at the same time that they also create students considered illiterate because of their dominant use of alternate forms of dialogue. These alternate, unaccepted, forms of expression may not be any less able to communicate meaning but, because they are not of the accepted, educated forms, they are dismissed as illiterate. Carlson gives this complicated idea a visual analogy by relating it with Plato’s Parable of the Cave. Being one of our best preserved and most ancient writers in fields of philosophy and learning, several branches of science have based their foundational ideas upon the writings of Plato, making his analogy both highly respected and widely understood. Carlson uses the myth of the cave as a means of illustrating for his readers the difference between logo centric knowledge and mythos centric knowledge and then brings it forward through time to apply to today’s school systems, themselves largely based upon the theories and beliefs of the ancient Greeks. Only once he has established these difficult concepts in more approachable terms does he present his argument for a more balanced approach to schooling that includes a delicate balance of logos and mythos. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of Carlson’s use of Plato’s cave as well as the ideas he brings forward concerning today’s educational systems and potential reforms.
There are a number of concepts that need to be understood regarding Plato’s Parable of the Cave before clarity of Carlson’s ideas is achieved as Carlson’s presentation largely assumes these concepts are common knowledge among his audience. The first involves Plato’s Theory of Forms, which is at the core of the Parable of the Cave. Through the Theory of Forms, Plato suggests that there is in existence somewhere a perfect ideal of every possible form known to man. According to Plato, reality is not the world of substance and things that we can see in everyday life, but is something abstract that can only be obtained through intellectual thought (Strathern, 1996: 25). To know truth, one must progress in thought as the only element capable of transcending bodily limitations through the various levels of reality to the highest level, also known as the greatest good or the ultimate truth. In this theory, Plato linked the metaphysical nature of all things, the spiritual or abstract element that comprises the thing, to the concepts of epistemology and ethics as a means of understanding the entire entity rather than a segmented portion of the whole. In today’s terms, one might say he linked the operations of the germ to the entire system of the disease or the understanding of the student to the entire organization of the literate world. However, it also stands to reason in Plato’s theory that if the original Form from which all things were created already existed in complete perfection within its perfect state and position in relation to all other perfect Forms, then the creations that were produced from these perfect forms must have been originally set down in near perfect states, as near as could be to the original, yet still imperfect because they are not the original Form. Because they are not the original forms and now exist in the material plane within the scope of time and space, they are also susceptible to change of a variety of sorts. With each change, these forms necessarily move further and further away from their originator. This introduces problems as the truth becomes sought through many variations, but Plato proposes a solution. He indicates that these problems can be overcome by identifying the ‘proper’ light by which the truth can be seen, discounting all other light as being merely shadows in the cave.
In the dialogue Plato presents that is now referred to as the Parable of the Cave, Socrates explains “here they [human beings] have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads” (Kreis, 2004). In this vision, Socrates explains that the human beings are watching a giant screen on which marionettes and other things dance, but the humans can only see the shadows of these moving things. The actual colors and nature of these things cannot be perceived from such a perspective, but not having known anything else, Socrates argues that the humans don’t know there’s something to miss: “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (Kreis, 2004). These shadows of the images are generally taken by the people in the cave to be the perfect Forms that are the ultimate perfection, but because they are in material form, in physical space and time, they must also be subject to the same forces of change all material forms are subject to, thus they can never be the ultimate perfection of Form. If the people in the cave were able to talk with each other, they might make up stories and theories about these shadows that may or may not be based on actual truth. Their knowledge is therefore based upon myth rather than truth, but they believe it to be truth because they are not able to see the forms in any other light than what’s available in the cave. It is this knowledge that Plato dismisses as being of baser quality than knowledge gained through logic and thought, which is illustrated by the individual who somehow escapes the chains of the cave and becomes enmeshed in the world outside of the cave.
As Plato’s dialogue continues, Socrates explains that when one of the chained individuals from the cave finds himself free of the bonds that once held him and is brought out into the true light of day, “he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows” (Kreis, 2004). The light inside the cave is provided by an unseen source, suggested to be something similar to campfire or candlelight and is thus a false light, unable to reveal the full nature of the objects seen. This is compared to the true light of the heavenly bodies discovered in the moon, stars and especially the full light of the sun. This is the difference between mythos and logos as one is seen through a false light and the other is seen by true light. Socrates also suggests in the dialogue that knowledge can only be acquired in stages. This occurs as the former cave-dweller slowly begins to gain new perceptions as a result of their ability to live in the stronger, truer light. “… first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven” (Kreis, 2004). Once they have become aware of the world as it is revealed in this new and ‘true’ light of logical, Socrates theorized that the person would be very reluctant to return to the cave and would instead take pity on those he had left behind him in the cave because of their ignorance.
If that person somehow returned to the cave to help the others break their bonds and could make himself accepted as savior rather than condemner, Socrates indicates the people would have a natural tendency to idolize him as a god or a paragon of knowledge. Because this leader would be aware of the concept that they possessed no special gifts othert that having been ahead of the others in discovering the true reality, this person would be reluctant to take on such a role. Just as the people in the cave are seeing shadows, so the people outside of the cave are now able to realize that they may not be capable of seeing the entire truth from where they currently stand. They know they are able to discern more of the form, such as dimension, color and texture, but are still missing an element of the True Form. Thus, when we view a particular Form, we must recognize in it both the fact that it exists in front of us as well as the fact that everything that represents that form is not everything that it is – it is both everything and nothing of the original. As complicated as this concept sounds to the ‘literate’ mind that has been properly inculcated into the ranks of the literate, it seems like near gibberish to those still locked within the cave. For this reason, Socrates conjectures that if the person had returned to their imprisonment within the cave before their sight was properly adjusted, they would be ridiculed, considered crazy by the inhabitants of the cave who had never left and held as an example for why no one should try venturing out of the cave. As an individual, they would be very reluctant to venture outside of the confines of the cave again.
As he explains in his allegory of the cave, Plato does not view reality as being the world of substance and things that we can see in everyday life, but is something more abstract that, once understood, can lead one to the greatest good. In determining the path to the greatest good, Plato differs from Socrates in the proper method of obtaining that level. Where Socrates says it is through right action, Plato says it is through correct thought (Strathern, 1996: 25). In the case of humans, the perfect form is commonly identified as the soul, which, existing in the realm of ideals, begins in a perfect state and can only be harmed by the wrong actions according to Socrates (Magee, 1998: 29) or by the wrong thoughts according to Plato. Admittedly, this is a fine line of distinction as action typically follows thought, but it remains an important distinction as thought does not always precede action and action can take place without full agreement in thought. In determining who should be leader or instructor, it becomes obvious through this story that the uneducated individual would not have the ability to reach the deep level of thought required. Instead, the leader must be someone who has been encouraged to step outside of the cave, have a long enough look around to discern the true aspect of things and then follow the call to assist his former cave-mates to achieve similar understanding. Through this process, Plato makes the case that any individual wishing to have the option of leadership must necessarily be educated according to a logo centric ideal and it is this ideal that educational systems have been founded upon by and large ever since.
In critiquing Plato’s Parable of the Cave, Carlson very effectively brings out all these points regarding what is considered logos as opposed to what is considered mythos and then pulls it forward to relate to today’s systems. “What students really are learning in schools and colleges is not primarily a collection of facts or ideas, but rather a way of speaking, writing and engaging in discourse or conversation with others” (Carlson, 1998: 87). In making his case against a dominantly logo centric system, he opens his essay by pointing out the very expressive way in which students of ‘alternative’ high schools use language differently, yet to sometimes even greater effect than those conversing in the accepted patterns of logos. Yet these equally expressive means of communication are “not the kind of literacy that is assessed or valued on the state’s high school proficiency test” (Carlson, 1998: 88). The system as it is established is thus designed to cull those who are capable of rising into the light of the sun and become literate from those who are more comfortable sinking into the darkness of the inner cave – it is designed to place the light of logic well above the light of myth to such a degree that the values of myth are discounted, disfavored and denounced. As he relates today’s world to that of Plato, Carlson points out that the literacy of the cave-dwellers is today’s “world of common sense, uneducated speech. That is, it incorporates folk wisdom that has not been fully thought out, and it deals in metaphors, illusions, opinions, fictions and mythology. It is an undisciplined language which speaks of personal feelings and desires – a world of imagination and diverse truths” (Carlson, 1998: 90). While these ways of knowing might lead to a form of knowledge, Plato’s parable suggests that this is not the True Knowledge upon which everyone can depend and is thus unworthy of the term ‘knowledge.’
The problem with this understanding of knowledge, Carlson points out, is that it has become blind to the values of other forms of expression such as that used in the cave. Although the logo centric system might tend to negate the role that myth and opinion play in our daily understanding, the fact remains that these are elements of our being that we cannot generally control or escape. Logocentrism has been exposed as being itself a cave within which no other interpretations are valid. “Indeed, it is possible to interpret much of the ‘postmodern’ critique of modern culture as an ‘unmasking’ of these authoritarian, anti-democratic tendencies in the logos/mythos binary. At the most basic and general level of critique, the cave analogy has been unmasked as itself a myth” (Carlson, 1998: 91). Translated into the modern school system, Carlson points out how the placement of this myth at the center of our educational system has created an approach in which the definition of literacy is created by the economic powers that be in order to produce more perfect workers and disseminated through the medium of the scientific method and objective fact. “Logocentric teachers have seen their job as one of leading their students towards the ‘truth’ through a series of preplanned steps or learning objectives, and then administering ‘objective’ tests to see how well they have learned this truth” (Carlson, 1998: 92). This type of program necessarily depends upon a clear conception of the dominant ideology as the defining factor in determining the body of logos while all other modes of thinking are given the categorization of mythos.
References
Kreis, Steven. “Plate: The Allegory of the Cave.” 2004. The History Guide. 2008. Web.
Magee, B. The Story of Philosophy. New York: DK Publishing, 1998.
Strathern, P. Plato in 90 Minutes. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996.