This is fantastic. Found it at The Browser.
The cave allegory encapsulates to my satisfaction all human attempts to comprehend the nature of reality, through science, through religion, and every other way.
Plato’s Cave In Clay
10 Responses to Plato’s Cave In Clay
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Bryan says:
Well how ’bout Socrates and Adeimantus discoursing in Tex and Buster Bedell’s classic Waco Educational Film Ranch production:
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Someone Else says:
William Poundstone’s “Labyrinths of Reason” has a wonderful discursion on a “1 bit Plato’s Cave”, where the shadows are reduced to a single LED blinking out all the richness and complexity of the world. It’s a great book.
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Lancelot Lamar says:
I did my senior thesis on Walker Percy’s great novel, The Moviegoer, and found that the metaphor of Plato’s Cave was what, in part, inspired it, with the novel being an extended meditation upon it.
Binx goes to the movies, the movies are what he lives for, and their unreality is his reality. The novel is even more to the point today, as the cave includes a 24/7 immersion in media/computer/TV/film.
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MH - Secular Misanthropist says:
These prisoners are only watching the shadows on the wall, but they should also be interacting with them. Which makes all the difference in the world in their situation.
To channel Sextus Empiricus for a moment. There may be a world outside the cave, but in the mean time the prisoners should learn about the rules which govern the shadows on the wall. Given their ability to interact with the shadows, that knowledge will be useful to them, even if it is not the ultimately correct interpretation of reality.
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TimG says:
I’ve felt that the Apostle Paul is referring to this in Colossians 2:16-17 when he says about religious impositions: “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” (NIV) In Christ, Reality made an incursion into the cave and…well we could always run the analogy into the ground. Nor is that to claim “in Christ” a perfect grasp of reality. But better, yes, and hopefully growing. “Through a glass, darkly” and all that.
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Jamie O'Neill says:
Thank you for sharing this. I will treasure it.
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Uncle Vanya says:
“Through a glass, darkly” and all that.
Although a pretty phrase and perfectly understandable to most 17th century English-speakers, it’s meaning to us now is often “dark.”
By “through” Paul meant “by means of” and by “glass”, he meant “a mirror”, i.e a looking glass, which in Paul’s time were just pieces of highly polished metal, which almost always distorted images and reflections. By “darkly”, he meant “unclear” or “obscure.” (See the Spanish word oscuro for a good English equivalent of a word that can mean “dark”as in color or “unclear.”)
The “dark” ages, although they might have been brutal and depressing, were called such because records from that time are scant, hence the age was “dark.”
So, that line that “we now see as through a glass darkly,” has made me wonder if Paul wasn’t familiar with Plato’s cave.
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MEH 0910 says:
The cave allegory encapsulates to my satisfaction all human attempts to comprehend the nature of reality, through science, through religion, and every other way.
I see science as attempting to see past our parochial anthropomophic view of reality, whereas religion embraces it.
Thanks for posting this, Rod.