The most important lesson you will ever learn from studying philosophy is that you live in a lie, you live in a cave where the lie is holy. The cave is associated with living in society, and a society, in order to be peaceful, needs to cultivate lies, or fundamental falsehoods. Ultimately, peace is achieved through lie, whilst truth gives birth to war, just because the lie is taken as truth, and defended violently.
All states, all countries and cities are build on these fundamental lies. It is the lie, not the truth, that brings people together, building societies. Awakening to this fact of the lie, to a cavernous existence, is the destiny of the philosopher. The philosopher is the first to discover this fact of the human condition: that of being shackled in the cave.
And this is why the philosopher becomes an enemy to the society he lives in. In the Gorgias, Socrates says that he, and only he, is involved in true politics. That's because he only says the truth, the deadly truth, and this makes him dangerous, because he refuses to lie.
In the Hipparchus, Socrates also describes how Athens was turned from tyranny into a democracy. Those that killed the tyrant Hipparchus didn't do it from a love of freedom and democracy, They did it from a set of very selfish motives. Socrates' ''deadly truth'' in this matter must be strengthened by Thucydides' account of it. Remember Thucydides' contrast between spoken causes (lies) and unspoken causes (truths) in war. The spoken cause of the end of tyranny in Athens was the desire for freedom, but the unspoken, true, cause, for the end of tyranny was just an erotic scandal. Hipparchus fell in love with a certain Harmodius, and his lover, Aristogeiton, got jealous, swearing revenge. Eventually, Hipparchus was killed by the jealous lover. So, democracy in Athens wasn't a product of a desire for freedom, but an erotic scandal. And what's more ''deadly'' is that democracy was actually caused by the Spartans who defeated Hipparchus' brother - Hippias, who became the actual tyrant, swearing revenge for the slaying of his brother.
By saying all these deadly truths, this is how the philosopher becomes an enemy to his own society. In the cave allegory, the mob kills the philosopher who makes them aware of the reality of the lie and the cave. Socrates was indeed killed by the angry mob.
Now, being aware of this, you're now in a better position to study Nietzsche, who is the philosopher of the ''deadly truths'' par excellence.
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