PHOTO COURTESY OF THOUGHTCO
In approaching the pursuit of knowledge I am often given to Plato’s analogy of the cave. Fellow liberal arts majors can sympathize with me, I’m sure.
For those unfamiliar, Plato conjures up a brilliant metaphor in his landmark “Republic.” He argues that man is by nature shackled to the floor of a cave watching shadows dance along a wall illuminated by the light of a fire. Carved objects are placed in front of the fire’s light, like puppets, projecting shapes on the wall that the shackled cave dwellers are forced to watch. For these people — you, and I — that is everything there is. That is reality. “[S]uch captives would consider the truth to be nothing but the shadows of the carved objects,” the character of Socrates tells his interlocutor, Glaucon.
As we gain education, our shackles are broken and we turn towards the back of the cave, where we can see that the shadows are but an illusion. This moment is not one of ecstasy or even excitement. It conjures a sense of existential fear in the cave dweller.
What do you think his reaction would be if someone informed him that everything he had formerly known was illusion and delusion, but that now he was a few steps closer to reality, oriented now toward things that were more authentic, and able to see more truly?
Plato goes further: education not only shatters the shackles of illusion, but then drags man out of the cave and up towards the light of the outside world, towards true reality. This ascent is never easy:
Now, let’s say that he is forcibly dragged up the steep climb out of the cavern, and firmly held until finally he stands in the light of the sun. Don’t you think that he would be agitated and even begin to complain?
Plato gestures towards a truth that is hard to deny. That is, education allows us to dispense with faux simplicity and the supposed “truths” we would otherwise take at face value. Education enables us to seek truth with a capital “T”. It, and its proponents — educators — drag us up towards the light of reality.
Abstractly, I think this metaphor makes sense. It’s a good road map for how we should imagine education’s real role in liberating a person from falsehood, and leading them towards truth.
A poignant example that comes to mind is the education of black Americans during the antebellum era. Plantation owners and other supporters of slavery treated education as a threat to their power because it might lead to revolt. Enslaved black people may — God forbid — read the Book of Exodus, and take it seriously. They might read the Declaration of Independence and have the audacity to read that “all men are created equal,” and include themselves among “all men.” They might learn a trade, and be better at it than the local white blacksmith.
The education of black American leaders like Frederick Douglass was a step towards the liberation of the victims of chattel slavery.
Marxists would take this line even further, arguing that the reason certain books are banned by state prisons is because they might lead prisoners to revolt against an alleged system of oppression. And it’s not an unfounded assertion: prison riots do occur, and I’m sure they’re often led by prisoners who read Marxist, communist, and anarchist texts. I do not hold the Marxist view here (I hope that’s clear), but leave it to Commies to take an idea to its extreme. Their radical view serves as a dramatic extension of the cave analogy that I hope sufficiently illustrates the concept for you (or perhaps its another shadow on the wall!).
While this metaphor points towards truth, it simply does not meet the moment. The notion that education can be a liberatory force is about as doctrinaire now than ever before. Who today hasn’t heard that “Knowledge is power?” Our moment, one inundated by deconstructionism — haunted by the ghosts of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Foucault — requires a more vivid description of the nature of education, and how education is pursued by the individual. It requires an understanding of education that points to the reality of the world as it is, one in which fallen man will never escape the cave; one in which the best of us will struggle towards the light, but not reach it in its entirety (at least on this side of eternity). In short, we need an understanding of education that lends itself to the struggle of acquiring knowledge. Navy SEALS call this “embracing the suck.”
Plato gives us topography, but what does the acquisition of knowledge look like in daily experience? What does education actually consist of? What is its substance? We need another analogy to explain how one navigates the topography of knowledge.
And Plato knows this.
“The soul must learn, by degrees, to endure the contemplation of Being and the luminous realms.” That process of learning, which Plato rightly believes requires endurance, is where the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel emerges from stage right.
This is part one of a two-part series.