Located within one of the most famous philosophical works ever written, The Republic, is, perhaps, one of the most renowned stories or myths ever told in philosophy. That is, what has come to be known as “The Allegory of the Cave.” The Republic and, indeed, “The Allegory of the Cave” were written by Plato at some unknown period within his life. In fact, what many of Plato's basic purposes and intentions throughout sections of The Republic actually were are not often agreed upon by scholars, historians, or philosophers either. What is generally accepted, however, is that Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” is a story with which he intended to portray very basic truths about our perspectives upon reality. Through the Allegory, Plato arouses questions about reality such as, “How much can we trust what we see?”and “What value does it have?” While many may not find questions pertaining to the nature and validity of reality itself as relevant, valid, or necessary enterprises to undertake, popular mainstream1, philosophical, and even religious thought over the course of recorded history has constantly come back to quandaries such as these. I believe that it is simply the nature of our spirits to endeavor upon such questions while inhabiting this life, whether aforesaid might initially seem rational or not. Indeed, I would actually contend that the preponderance of such basic questions about reality and the sort of conclusions which these questions might surmise infer that just the sort of truths which Plato hints at in his “Allegory of the Cave” are quite intrinsically essential to almost any viewpoint that accepts these questions to be valid to our existence in that there is more to reality beyond the limited confines of our imperceptive existences.
Now, I can't claim to hold such a view because I have experienced and defended a vast variety of other viewpoints affirming the integrity of there being truth beyond and implicit within our perceived reality, but, within my own past exposure, most exemplary approaches are not all that dissimilar in their broad claims. That is, a view which maintains that we can both detect and pursue truth beyond the confines of our own normal perceptiveness and awareness must, necessarily, accept that there is either an imperceptible force or medium aiding our understanding of what we see and know to grasp this truth, or that we simply do contain the capacity to see these deeper and greater truths within reality ourselves but, simply, must acquire the ability to overcome our inadequacy somehow or another. Whichever route one wishes to explain how we could even grapple such awareness, both ideas often venture to propose that there is some purpose or goal for which we ought to be concerned enough with reaching that we strive to be able to see beyond normal limits of the majority. Otherwise, there would be very little significance to such knowledge.
Plato illustrates his course of justification for striving for greater imperceptible truth within his “Allegory of the Cave” by hypothesizing the existence of prisoners who, “...have been [imprisoned in a cave] 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.” He goes on to describe this situation by asking his listener, Glaucon, to imagine that the only light in this cave is from a great fire behind the prisoners. And that, between the fire and the prisoners is a walkway wherein guards will often walk with, “...all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials” (Plato). These statues and figures, being between the light source and the prisoners, actually cast a shadow upon the cave wall which is the only thing the prisoners can see or have ever been able to see. These shadows, then, are the only reality the prisoners have ever known, and the noises which the guards make are the noises which they might imagine the shadows themselves create.
Furthermore, Plato contends that, after attaining an ability to communicate with each other, the prisoners would naturally go on to name the shadows which they constantly observe together and to develop systems of belief and operation which ascribe worth and value to them. In fact, they would probably define their own personal worth and value as connected to their abilities to perceive and interpret these shadows.
Plato continues to speculate that if any of the prisoners were actually released from their confines and forced to view the fire behind them for the very first time, their eyes that have long been adjusted to darkness would immediately experience pain and blindness at the overwhelming experience of light. Moreover, if he (the prisoner) is forced to endure the pain of looking into the brighter lighted area long enough to be shown the inherently alien objects which the guards carry by to create the shadows he has known his entire life, “...will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?” (Plato) Additionally, if the prisoner were then to be dragged the long distance out of the cave into the bright sunlight of day, “...is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all” (Plato). Although this experience of the much brighter, outside world will be even more painful than confronting the original fire, “He will [be] require[d] to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world” (Plato).
Plato argues that, after undergoing all these harsh and painful changes in his perspective, this prisoner would, ultimately, be better off with a much greater understanding of how reality actually is. Further, that the prisoner would hereafter pity his fellow compatriots in the cave because of their lowly and confined states that keep them from true understanding of the world they live in. Now, Plato actually goes on to imagine that this prisoner is then forced to return to his imprisoned condition within the cave. But, after having such an experience of the greater truths contained within his world, the prisoner would no longer greatly care for the honor and value that the others place in knowledge of the mere shadows upon the cave wall. In fact, since his eyes will have to again adjust to the deep darkness of the cave, his own perception of what the others perceive would no longer be as clear. “ [The other] Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending.” For, if the one prisoner who truly saw reality could no longer clearly distinguish what the others saw upon the cave wall the same way, they would believe that he had, clearly, lost his grip upon reality itself!
Plato employs this story to assert that reality as we see it is , in fact, like his imagined cave prison because our senses only imperfectly detect what we already know to be much more scientifically complex and far-reaching than we have so far perceived and studied, just like his prisoners couldn't even entirely comprehend the nature of the shadows which they spent their lives investigating. And, furthermore, that even the near infinitely complex physical world itself is only defined and inspired by much deeper truths of reality, just as the objects which cast the shadows in Plato's story were actually mere imitations of what really existed in the outside world. In summary, Plato proposes that our simple perceptions encompass about as much detail as that of a shadow cast by an object which, itself, is only as real as it is an imitation of what really exists.
Now, in regards to the deeper truth which Plato believes to exist, he asserts that the ever greater amounts of light which the freed prisoner was exposed to represents greater amounts of 'good' of which his, “...opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort.” Yet, Plato does not simply believe that this light of 'good' requires substantial effort to see and understand, but that the more one is able to do so, the more one understands everything in reality which the truth has the quality of illuminating. And, he further goes on to say that through having reality illuminated by the foundation of 'good', that one will never wish to degrade themselves by, “...pass[ing] from divine contemplations to the evil state of man...” (Plato). Because, man's default state is one of dwelling within complete darkness of ignorance.
What one ought to be able to notice about the perspective which Plato proposed with his story is that he encouraged the sort of view I described people maintaining through believing that we do, in fact, have the ability to grasp the deeper truths of existence ourselves and realize the lesser value of what our senses want to regard as all of reality. This is, in fact, the basic assumption that any philosophical inquiry into our perception of reality must make. Plato, further, regarded this as a far more worthwhile state to pursue rather than not because of the greater lasting pleasure that the illumination of understanding, which he called 'good', would bring. However, even Plato concluded that this 'good', when understood, “...is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth...” Plato believed that his light of understanding, by definition, would be the source of actual reason and truth taking place in our minds! This conclusion does not actually find itself all that much different from what I proposed is the only other rational course one might take in explaining how we could possibly pursue truth beyond the confines of what we can normally perceive.
The other course, that our ability to be able to understand reality beyond what we can see is only existent as per a greater medium or force aiding or assisting us, is, most often, a fundamentally religious viewpoint. It would be silly to say that belief in a greater existence than us with a purposeful will was anything other than a classic belief in existence of the Divine. And, when there is a belief in Divine existence, it is most often accompanied with a belief that such existence, “...is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right...” (Plato). Now, the perspectives with which I am most familiar with in the areas of religious thought are mainly Christian in nature. And, within Christian thought, Plato's own reasoning of our perceptions simply being shadows of the truth has been employed as well. One of the earliest founders and propagators of Christian Churches in the ancient world, the Apostle Paul, used such terminology when discussing even more ancient religious ceremonies, rituals, and other sorts of observances in his epistle to the Church in Colossae, Laodicea. Paul said these, “...things [are] a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ” (New American Standard Bible, Colossians 2.17). Essentially, Paul was teaching that the entirety of Jewish religious traditions, which Christianity was based upon, were mere representations (or, shadows) of the greater truth which was to be communicated through them, and that the actual truth, which that greater truth represented, resided in the personification of the Divine presence, which was Jesus Christ.
Paul isn't even the only Christian thinker I know to have made claims similar to Plato's from a Divine Perspective. Although one could argue that he was much more directly influenced by Plato, C.S. Lewis—a Christian Apologist who wrote, mainly, during the 1940s – 1960s—also employed similar arguments about reality implicating much more to pursue as far as truth is concerned due to God's instillation of desire and beckoning call to us.
In Chapter 20 of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis actually discusses what the Catholic and Anglican Churches at the time called the “Theological Virtue” of Hope. Hope, as Lewis defines it, is a continual looking forward to the eternal world, and is something which he says a Christian is meant to do. What Lewis means is that he believes every person has inherent, inexpressible desires for far more than our current state of reality actually has to offer satisfaction. He says that:
Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. (Lewis)
What Lewis actually suggests is that, when we pursue anything with which we have a desire for, “There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality”(Lewis). Basically, he is calling each and every one of our desires a beckoning from the Divine Presence to pursue the greater, eternal truth and satisfaction God has to offer. In consideration of pursuing desires of love, travel, or study in the here and now, Lewis says, “ [Although] the wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: […] something has evaded us.”. Lewis conceives that when nothing seems to fully satisfy the desires within existence that you could simply pursue endlessly further desires to attempt to find out what can satisfy you, decide that it was actually ignorant to believe you could ever receive satisfaction for your desires, or believe that, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.” Upon this third potential reaction, Lewis postulates that your present desires simply imply that you were made to pursue a greater existence. He continues that, “ Perhaps earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy [your desire], but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.”
C.S. Lewis, then, asserts that the Christian understanding of desire ought to be that it is, in fact, God arousing within us a hunger to pursue greater truth and understanding from him within our limited perceptions of reality. Doing this will both enhance and illuminate our pleasure in understanding our earthly desires and move us ever closer to greater understanding and acquisition of what our spirits truly desire which is only something the Divine Presence can provide and assist us in attaining. I do not think that the respect which Lewis ascribes to God's provision and assistance in this endeavor is all that different from the respect which Plato ascribes to 'good' in his view of man having found within himself the capability of recognizing the existence of greater truth beyond his perceptions of physical reality. In fact, I contend that the conclusions look almost exactly the same and it is simply the descriptive details, in these instances, which differ.
In conclusion, I attest that if anyone is to rationally discuss questions about how much we can trust reality and what value it might have beyond the limits of our perception, then they must either accept the view that there is an understanding, or, reality that can illuminate our perceptions to much greater heights than we would normally be capable of reaching. You can call this understanding as originating from 'good' or God or any other title you might like. But, no matter what you call it, this very idea of something else which will enhance our own perceptions past their own normal ability is, essentially, ascribing what is classically known as Divinity (Greater than man with a nature and purpose of itself) to something. And, if you don't accept this conclusion, then you do not accept the ability to rationally discuss these questions.
1. One might consult the online Wikipedia entry for The Matrix (movie) for example of a pop culture utilization of fundamental questions about the fidelity of our senses in depicting reality.
