Tuesday, February 19, 2008 ideas- plato's dollroom allegory.
Reflections on Plato’s cave allegory.
Prisoners shackled into a fixed position, unable to even turn their heads, for all of their lives. Fire (source of light) behind them. They see shadows- their only certainty, and perceive it to be ‘truth’.
We, bound to this mass of land (surface of earth), and what we see becomes our reality and ‘truths’. But what we are seeing is actually ‘shadows’, like that in the cave.
It would be a fallacy to label ‘shadows’ as illusions, since shadow is a real and grounded phenomenon which is revealed through the ‘source’. The ‘source’ is thus what we call ‘the light’.
What we can see or revealed to us on a normal basis are shrouded in semi-unhiddeness- of half-truths. It is reality, but not yet reality. It serves as a hint to the ‘source’ that reveals it.
Everything is thus an effect of truth.
