Poubels

Beyond the moment.

Plato: Ruyter has returned to the cave. His companions still compete for the places with the clearest view of the shadows; he no longer competes. When they ask him to announce the next one, he hesitates, and they laugh: the journey has ruined his eyes. They call him the Fool. Tell me, Aristotle: what have they learned about him from seeing him stumble?
Aristotle: That he could not see well at that moment. They have not yet learned why. But you have given us something they do not possess: we know he has been outside. For those who stayed, news of another reality comes from a man who seems less able to judge this one. How can they examine it?
Plato: First, by ceasing to treat every disturbance of the eyes as the same affliction. Some are dazzled when they step into the light; others, coming from it, can barely make out the darkness. The movements are opposite, though the confusion looks alike. If they judge only the hesitation, they will not distinguish someone beginning to learn from someone returning after having learned.
Aristotle: Granted. It is not fair to conclude that he has lost his understanding. But his memory of the outside cannot serve the others as though it were their own experience. He will have to show what they previously misunderstood. What question can he ask without requiring them first to believe in his superiority?
Plato: He can ask the wall’s best diviner what produces the things he predicts. They speak of the future there too: a man remembers sequences, announces what will come and receives honours for being right. This is the contest Ruyter has left. Now he sees that anticipating the next shadow can keep a man occupied for his entire life without his ever turning around.
Aristotle: His earlier learning was not worthless; he knew regularities. The error would be to take them for a sufficient explanation. And there is another question the diviner may not ask: why does he wish to predict? He may arrange many years in the service of a life not worth choosing. Cleverness achieves ends; practical wisdom requires that we also judge what is worth desiring.
Plato: Then give Ruyter the figure of the Fool who travels with a small bundle and pauses at the edge of a precipice. Those watching see, above all, what he might lose. He looks ahead. The image interests me because his first departure was not made by a wise man who already knew the whole path. If it had been, what would he have needed to free himself from?
Aristotle: I am also interested in the ground he is not looking at. Two men may take the same step: one knows the danger and accepts it for something worthy; the other has not even noticed it. Their outward confidence does not reveal the difference. I would not want us to make ignorance of risk a condition of freedom.
Plato: Nor would I. But if we demand from the prisoner the knowledge he will acquire only after turning around, we will have justified his remaining still. At first the movement hurts; what he has always seen seems truer than what he can now barely distinguish. He may wish to be left alone. His resistance does not demonstrate that education is harming him.
Aristotle: I do not ask him to arrive before departing. I ask that we distinguish his reason for taking the first step from the knowledge acquired afterwards. He may begin by trusting someone; he will have to learn to judge what he encounters. Having travelled that path, Ruyter can remember how long it took. He should not expect the others to change their lives at the first sentence he addresses to them.
Plato: What if, instead of addressing them solemnly, he appears as a jester? Let us call this other figure the Joker, the wild card. He takes the crown everyone reveres, puts it crookedly on his own head and asks what, exactly, made it worthy of reverence. Perhaps they can hear that question in a joke when they would refuse it as an accusation.
Aristotle: Perhaps. But a crooked crown does not make a government unjust, any more than a straight crown makes it just. The joke must leave something to examine. Some make others laugh with discernment; others sacrifice every consideration to get a laugh. The latter need approval as much as the man who only dares to speak solemnly.
Plato: Then the problem is not merely how to make them laugh, but what they will continue to desire afterwards. They may laugh at the old winner and choose another for the same contest. They may even award the prize to the Fool, provided he agrees that the prize should remain the measure of his worth.
Aristotle: And they may demand that he never cease to be the Fool. If he must contradict them in everything to keep the name, he will no longer choose according to the situation: he will choose the opposite of what they expect. An opinion does not become truer by being unpopular. The question is whether he can still agree when there is reason to agree, even at the cost of the effect he has on them.
Plato: That would make his return harder than his departure. In leaving, he withdrew from an order he took to be the whole of things; in returning, he must speak with people whose desires were still educated by it. Telling them what he saw is not enough. Education does not put sight into empty eyes: it turns the soul towards the Good, by which its desires must be judged. But why would they turn, if here they receive everything they have learned to want?
Aristotle: That is why I would not begin by demanding that they despise everything they know. It is in the lives they lead that they will have to notice some difficulty: a promise of happiness that goes unfulfilled, a decision they defend but cannot justify. Ruyter can help them examine these cases. But I still do not see how knowledge of a Good separate from human goods would guide him in choosing how to speak to each person.
Plato: It would not give him a formula for every encounter. But we will disagree if relieving one difficulty is enough to end the inquiry. Suppose they now listen to him. They no longer laugh; they recount his words, repeat his gestures, wait for him to speak again. He has gained their attention. Has he begun to free them, or merely offered them a more interesting image to contemplate?
Aristotle: That will depend on what he does when one of them stops looking at him. If he says that this man has understood nothing because he no longer follows him, he will have made himself the measure he criticised in others. I would ask what he wants this companion to be able to judge without his help. Then I would stay to hear the answer.

An imagined dialogue, outside time, inspired by Plato and Aristotle.