The Exile of Socrates For centuries, philosophers and historians have been traveling the world to experience new cultures and learn from them. According to Bratadan, “culture shapes the way you see the world, its language informs the way you think, and its customs structure you as a social being. However, becoming too comfortable in any culture where one is trapped by the expectations of that culture can tremendously limit the growth of an individual. So the social isolation of exile can lead to liberation and insight that one might not likely to experience if they were not exiled from what they had known all their lives. Plato’s Socrates is a prime example of a philosopher experiencing the radical liberation of exile and hence forth gaining the knowledge needed to increase minds of his followers. Socrates was a Greek philosopher and considered one of the wisest people of all time. However he voluntarily exiled himself into an outsider in his own city. He was a foreigner with the double consciousness of both an outsider and insider. Therefore the insider was inflicted with the outsider’s ability to see things that the insider cannot. Throughout his life, Socrates sought to teach the people of Athens how to invent a better sense of self and expose his followers to ways of thinking that they were not accustomed to. In book 1 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates poses the question of “what is justice?” among his three friends. The first man, Cephalus, responds that justice means telling the truth and paying and paying your debts. Socrates refutes this definition by giving the counterexample of returning a gun to a madman. He states that you owe the madman his gun out of a sense that it belongs to him legally, yet however this would be an unjust act because the madman could jeopardize not only his life but the lives others. The second man, Polymarchus, responds that justice means that you owe friends help and one owes enemies harm. Socrates again refutes this definition. He points out that Polymarchus’s idea of justice is infallible because individuals are not always friends with the most virtuous people and neither are our enemies the scum of society. Finally, Thrasymachus offers his definition that justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger. Socrates disagrees with Thrasymachus’s definition because he was promoting injustice as a virtue with which Socrates wholeheartedly disagrees. Throughout each argument Socrates points out the hidden contradictions present in his of the definitions. For each of the men who defined justice, they had a misguided sense of their own self in defining the word. Socrates attempts to dispel the notion of using personal experience in ruling. He believes that philosophers are devoted to the true wisdom and to rule knowledge is changing, perspectival and incomplete. To seek and find the truth often requires risk and pain and one's whole existence is at stake. In showing the complete progression of his exile from Athens, Socrates presents the allegory of the cave in book 7 of The Republic. The allegory of the cave is a metaphor which describes a group of prisoners who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them. Once a prisoner is freed
