Enjoying the view from Limbo
All of us are born in a cave, Socrates teaches (Republic VII), staring at shadows cast upon the back wall by images held in front of a fire behind us. From this starting point, he explains that education is the process of turning around in our chairs to see the fire, the objects dancing before it, and the men holding those objects, and...
Plato’s allegory of the cave (Republic, Bk. VII) is the most memorable and detailed presentation of a belief that was essentially shared by classical thinkers in general, namely that a societally constructed view of reality is a necessary condition of life for all humans, although a minority of men may gradually, through a painful process of spiritual reorientation, begin to find their way...
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