I have long held the conviction that Western thought was formatively birthed in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Recently, while preparing to teach my Postmodern Philosophers class, I found my conviction grimly underscored.

You may have read the Republic, in which the Allegory appears. Prisoners are chained facing the back wall of a cave. Along a parapet behind them, people walk back and forth, carrying objects. A fire built behind the people on the parapet casts their shadows on the wall the prisoners face. What the prisoners see is really only shadows. The prisoners of the Allegory reflect Plato’s estimate of the sophistry-loving citizens of Athens.

A teacher releases a prisoner from his chains and compels him to turn away from the shadows and start a difficult ascent towards the light. The first stage upward brings the prisoner-turned-student to behold the ever-changing world that we see, hear, taste, touch and smell. Nothing permanent here, but a definite step-up from subjectivistic delusions. The motifs of conversion and ascent towards light have for millennia powered and intertwined the West’s conceptions of learning and salvation.Read more