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Shadows in the Cave

This Rock Volume 16, Number 9   November 2005     Frontispiece By Karl Keating   Letters   No Longer Catholic By Tim Drake   What is the Mandatum?   Benchmarks of Catholicity   Where the Catholic Colleges Are   Achieving the Goals of Ex Corde Ecclesiae By Bishop John M. D'Arcy   The Land O' Lakes Statement By TR staff   Right Ways and Wrong Ways to Influence People By Alice von Hildebrand   The Apostolate of Being   Europe Must Return to Christ By Joseph Previtali   What Is an Elephant Like? By Anthony E. Clark   The Dao   Shadows in the Cave   Ratzinger on Relativism   Scripture Speaks   Fortitude By Mark Lowery   Step by Step Is Purgatory Found in the Bible? By Christine Pinheiro and Kenneth J. Howell   Fathers Know Best Apostolic Tradition   Brass Tacks Moral Investing By Jimmy Akin   Damascus Road Finding Mere Catholicism By Peggy Frye   Reviews   Quick Questions    Subscribe    Permissions

In Book VII of The Republic, Plato discusses a state in which the general run of humanity is unaware of truth and reality. He describes a cave in which prisoners are chained and unable to turn their heads. They see only the wall in front of them while a fire burns behind. Men manipulate puppets behind the prisoners that cast shadows on the wall, and because the prisoners are able to see only the shadows, their reality, or perception of truth, is limited to the illusions created for them. While this allegory has become popular among some postmodern thinkers who use it to argue that we are imprisoned in the cave of the shadows, Plato’s assertion is that we can indeed ascend into the light of truth and reality. One method of emerging into the light is to study mathematics, as math is bound to singular and unchallengeable answers. For Plato, such exercises are a starting point for emerging from illusion. Truth exists and is knowable.