A recollection of the Cave and Shadows as we climb back out of the postmodernist cave of shadows into the sunshine of truth

From Plato's Republic, translated by Benjamin Jowell.  The beginning of Book VII, the famous cave and shadows discussion between Socrates and Glaucon.

Socrates and Glaucon

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:—Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.    

I see.

And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.

And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Very true.

And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?    

No question, he replied.

To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

That is certain.

 

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,—what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them,—will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?    

Far truer.

I was introduced to Plato's Cave and Shadows allegory probably in 8th or 9th grade, certainly by high school.  I probably last read large chunks of Plato's Republic in college.  At the time, it was a dutiful reading.  I knew myself to be reading something which was highly regarded but only lightly engaged with it.  The allegory of the Cave and Shadows was an intriguing catalyst but I got lost with the whole issue of forms.  Youth and inexperience and innocence make for a poor student.

What was once stilted language and an odd allegory, nows takes on more import.  

Soon after my formal education, institutions of higher learning became infected with postmodernism and all its intellectually anemic brethren (Social Justice theory, Critical Theory, etc.) Plato's Cave and Shadows allegory lost salience in the public discourse because it was now the faddish belief that truth was socially constructed.  There was no reality at the core of the shadows.  We believed what we wished to believe and it was so.  

All nonsense of course.  I sense that this long interlude of delusion, widespread in the Mandarin Class, has finally peaked and may start receding soon.  I dearly pray so.  There is a wonderful world, a wonderful set of truths, that can be known and we can know them through effort and diligence.  

And that effort and diligence brings us back to the Cave and the Shadows, the epistemic heart of the West.  The effort to sense and understand what is being sensed.  The hard epistemic work to distinguish between facile beliefs and the knowledge and wisdom that has some grounding in reality and which can be arrived at through thought, word, and deed.