In Plato’s allegory of the cave, people sit before a wall on which the shadows of the real objects of the world can be seen. Since they have seen only shadows throughout their lives, they think these are reality. The philosopher’s task is to explain to people that they should turn around to see how the apparatus of light, which serves as a projection mechanism, produces an illusion. Once people had recognized this, they would free themselves from the chains that had held them captive in the cave and determined the direction of their gaze. They would leave the cave and enter the real world. Plato thought we are all trapped in this cave, and only very few succeed in leaving it.
The questions
This image is so complex that it has prompted reflection for almost 2500 years. We cannot seriously refute this image, nor can we easily leave the metaphorical cave. We are, so to speak, trapped in this image. I used and analyzed this image in my seminars for many years. The analogy to cinema is particularly striking and invites us to interpret the flame as a media projection apparatus. From here it is easy to think about our media. What function do they have, what do they do to us? Do they free us, or keep us fixed in a stance of consumption? What are the conditions of the apparatus that produces these illusions? What might the world outside the cave look like? If all the objects around us are only shadows of reality, in what dimension does reality lie? What is it made of? If everything we perceive is only the shadows, does this also apply to our theories, our science and art?
The answers
In what kind of `vision of essence´ can we grasp reality? The millennia have produced various answers: skepticism (we can know nothing), idealism (reality is ultimately rational and only in our thoughts), phenomenology (the only thing we can really describe is our consciousness), structuralism (the relation of things to one another, that is, the structure of the world, is the only thing we can know). Alongside this broadly materialist tradition of thought, we have Leibniz’s monads (I am my world, and other worlds are likewise closed within themselves, but they can reflect one another), Spinoza (the world is pure immanence, everything is from one reality and this is anchored in God). And, of course, the Christian tradition (a creator made all this, his ways are inscrutable).
What do we learn from this?
Of course I do not know either, yet from the perspective of spirituality the question may arise differently. Perhaps we really are trapped in Plato’s image, and perhaps the image itself is not right? Reality and illusion, true and false—perhaps these are categories of our thinking that represent a mere transitional stage. Perhaps our consciousness is not yet ready for the real question at all. Is it not unlikely that the mind, let us say now in the twenty-first century, has reached the peak of evolution, and even on a cosmic level? This seems unlikely to me. It is more likely that thinking develops further, our consciousness expands, our perception and its amplification through apparatus become more refined. Every philosopher who thinks he or she could free humanity from its chains should first of all free themselves from their own hubris. This seems arrogant and presumptuous to me, know-it-all and contemptuous.
But perhaps Plato’s allegory of the cave is only a tool, a key to make us think. If this is the philosopher’s task, then Plato has fulfilled it masterfully.
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