Upon finishing the reading, I couldn't help but try to analyze and conclude what the Truth in Plato's writing could be. It was the analogy of the shadows on the cave walls the was eating at me the most. Aren't we, humans on Earth, the same as those inside the cave, bound with gravity? The universe is so much larger than the space in which we live, and still continues to expand. The shadows on the wall, to me represented, shadows of something detrimental, something real. So is Earth too the shadow of something more exponential? This thought also has a religious connotation concerning both evolution and creation. I mean, to stay correct with the cave analogy, something large but have created those shadows, so in a sense, something larger than ourselves must have created the planet. Humans themselves may even be shadows. The fire in the cave also fits. The fire was only a foreshadowing of the sun, only a taste of what real heat and energy can produce.
But what is shadow and what is its creator may always be in flux, because once the prisoner escapes he is no longer a shadow, he enlightens himself, and returns to those who still are shadows of a man's possible potential. He has completely switched roles through out the parable.
Is education the key to reducing your risk of becoming a shadow? Then again Plato did begin book 7 by saying "make an image of our nature in its education and want of education..."
I agree with what you were saying about the religious connotations hidden within. I too had that feeling throughout the explanation of "light" and "shadows/darkness".
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that you all think this has religious connotations because any religion that we are familiar with was not conceived yet the politics concerning creation and evolution did not exist either we are talking BCE here!!! As far as the whole we only experience shadows thing goes, I don't think it really matters much. Ones perception is also ones reality. If there are thing that are out there that are not graspable how will we grasp them and why would we want to? I also want to know who Plato thinks he is to tell us these things?
ReplyDeleteMany of the major world religions we know today did actually exist when Plato was writing -- Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, to name a few. Christianity did not come along until a few centuries later, and it was heavily influenced by the Greek thought surrounding it. So the religious connotations you are seeing, Lance and Miranda, are actually the result of Christianity borrowing from Plato, rather than Plato referencing Christianity. You make a very good point: how we understand Plato now after 2,000+ years of Western civilization is necessarily different from how Plato was probably understood by his contemporaries. It's fascinating how ideas evolve throughout history and societies, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteTo make myself clear, Christianity is what I was referencing. I assumed that our knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism is some what limited, although I may be jumping to conclusions. I felt that the ideas that are so politically charged today such as creationism, and that light = Jesus had a very different connotation in that century then it does today. I just wanted to warn against presentisum and the idea of putting twenty first century issues on to a piece of work created before christianity was created.
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