좋은 자료를 다 찾아보지 못한 것 같아 아쉽지만, 몇 가지만 모아 두자.
왠, 때 늦은 만학의 늦바람이냐, 아니면 나이착오적인 몸부림이냐고 묻는다면, 이게 다 텍스트를 "내 '머리'로 씹어서 뱉어내는" 번역을 하기 위함이라고 답하겠다. 어느 실용주의적 번역자가 그렇게 번역해서 뭐에 쓰려고 하느냐고 묻는다면, 번역의 겉모습은 기능이지만 그 즐거움의 본질은 바로 앎을 추구하는 데 있기 때문이라고 답하겠다.
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- 자료 하나: 파깨비의 철학 강의(플라톤 철학 요약)
- 자료 둘: 플라톤 동굴의 비유(강훈)
- 자료 셋: http://www.friesian.com/plato.htm
이하는 세 번째 자료다.
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In the end, probably the most enduring image of the entire Republic, as an expression of Plato's view of life and the world, is the Allegory (or Simile) of the Cave. This occurs in Book VII (at 514), following his discussion of the Divided Line (in Book VI),
which illustrated the levels of knowledge and reality in the discussion of the nature of philosophy and the good. (At right, the Divided Line is in black and the elements of the Allegory of the Cave are in red.) Plato says that we are all like prisoners:
- [prisoners] chained up on the floor of a cave. We are so restricted that we can only look in one direction,
- and there we see shadows on the wall that seem to talk and move around. We and our fellow prisoners observe, discuss, and remember what these shadows do or say.
- a fire burning at the back of the cave.
- In front of the fire is a low wall, and on the wall puppets are manipulated, which cast the shadows that are all we have ever seen.
- There is an exit from the cave, which leads up to the surface.
- There we are at first blinded, but then begin to see trees, animals, etc. which in the cave were only represented by puppets. Eventually we notice that all those things exist and are knowable because of the sun.
- Returning to the cave, we would at first be blinded by the darkness, and our fellow prisoners would have no idea what we were doing or saying -- they would probably regard us as insane -- but we could not, of course, take them seriously for an instant.
- The freed prisoner is, of course, the philosopher.
- The cave itself represents the world of Becoming and
- its fire the physical sun in the sky.
- The world on the surface outside of the cave represents the world of Being, where the individual objects are the Forms.
- If the puppets are the actual objects in the world of Becoming, then the shadows must be people's opinions. We do mostly go through life paying attention to people's opinions rather than to the things themselves, so that is suitable.
- Plato, of course, thinks that even the things themselves are like shadows of the Forms. The sun, in turn, is a unique kind of Form: the Form of the Good. This is a unique moment in Plato's writings, since he does not elsewhere single out any Form as different in kind from the others, and he does not elsewhere pay any sustained attention to the good as such.
Then what gives the objects of knowledge their truth and the mind the power of knowing is the Form of the Good. It is the cause of knowledge and truth, and you will be right to think of it as being itself known, and yet as being something other than, and even higher than, knowledge and truth. And just as it was right to think of light and sight as being like the sun, but wrong to think of them as being the sun itself, so here again it is right to think of knowledge and truth as being like the Good, but wrong to think of either of them as being the Good, which must be given a still higher place of honor....This is suggestive and intriguing, and Plato's own students wanted to hear more. Once Plato even promised to give a lecture on the good. But when the day came, all he did was do a geometry proof. So we are left at a kind of incomplete pinnacle of Plato's thought, with a sense of how important in reality the good is, but with mostly metaphorical statements about it. That was either the best Plato thought he could do or, like the Pythagoreans, he thought that his most serious views should not be spoken in public. Later theNeoplatonists would simply conclude that the Form of the Good was God, but there is no hint of that in Plato. He goes so far and then, like Parmenides, leaves us to continue the quest.
The Good therefore may be said to be the source not only of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their existence and reality; yet it is not itself identical with reality, but is beyond reality, and superior to it in dignity and power. [508e-509b, Lee translation, p.273.]
Plato's actual argument for why we should be just suffers from a fundamental misconception. He is always recommending justice fromprudential considerations, i.e. we should be just because of our own best interest, either to be happy (the main argument) or to avoid the punishment of the gods (in the Myth of Er). If there is a difference between moral and merely prudent action, however, Plato has misdirected us. Instead, morality may require actions that are not in our self-interest. This is agreed upon by Immanuel Kant, Confucius, and even the Bhagavad Gita. Thus, Confucius holds that righteouness, 義, is to do what is right, regardless of the consequences. That is how Kant defined the "categorical imperative," the moral command (the imperative) that is to no ulterior purpose (i.e. it is categorical). Similarly, the Gita says, "Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work" [2:47]. This might not satisfy Thrasymachus; but then, with someone of that sort, while we may argue the issues, the ultimate point is not alone to persuade him, but to stop him. That is the surest way to prevent the tyrant from being happy.
History of Philosophy
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