The dark side of Plato’s cave

 Symbols can outlast the arguments they serve to illustrate.

The allegory of the cave presented by Plato in The Republic (514a-520a) is embedded in western culture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave). Works of fiction such as ‘The Matrix’ have built on Plato’s vision of a community of cave dwellers constrained by the orthodox, yet false, beliefs they have acquired by watching shadows on their cave walls and mistaking them for reality. One of their number escapes his shackles and glimpses an authentic reality outside the cave but his wisdoms are dismissed by the cave-entombed majority.

Plato likens the rejection of the enlightened escapee by the cave people to the likely rejection of a philosophical truth seeker in society. Plato’s truth seeker is capable of self-correction – not just once in response to a great revelation but as an ongoing labour. He is aware of his own ignorance and fallibility.

Nowadays, a host of zealous truth claimers and conspiracy theorists pronounce to the world as if they are the ones who have escaped a cave of ignorance. They look back at those who remain in the cave with pity and disdain, for surely they are brainwashed by mainstream media and prevailing expert opinion on matters such as climate change or Covid-19.

The humility of the genuine truth seeker is not the modus operandi of the self-aggrandising truth claimer. The virtue of modesty, the painstaking work of acquiring expertise and the patience to sift though evidence before before pronouncing, do not serve them well. And yet they appear to thrive.

This is the dark side of Plato’s allegory as it plays out in modern times.