Benue State University, Makurdi

Is there a Safer Way for a Philosopher to Return to the Cave?

Angwe Ken Agede, PhD

Abstract

In this paper, the author dialogues with the National Universities Commission (NUC) relative to its absolutist approach to accreditation processes. I will focus primarily on NUC’s insistence that universities ensure strict compliance with its benchmarks in order to maintain accreditation. This inquiry urges the universities commission to adapt to new conditions in order to better facilitate Nigerian universities to fulfill their mission of offering quality education to the public. I next engage the specter of politicized professional association membership, especially its totalizing tendencies. I will be interested in one professional association’s proposal that only its registered members should be considered for accreditation duties, as well as the relational suggestion that only philosophy departments affiliated with it should be granted accreditation. The absolutism of NUC is real, while that of politicized association membership remains a wish but normalizing, nevertheless. I use Plato’s allegory of the cave to address the problem of absolutism in academia that receives only scant attention in the literature. Plato’s person of nature and nurture is able to escape from the cave and is, subsequently, able to grasp the Forms. Paradoxically, the philosophic life that facilitates Socrates escape from the cave also imposes upon him the duty of returning to the cave so that he can assist with the liberation of those still held there. Socrates return ends in tragedy, resulting in his death. If the philosophic life is preparation for death, as Plato asserts, he does not envisage the philosopher’s safe return to the cave. Of course, he acknowledges safer alternatives but fears that they come at a price to philosophy.

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