Above is an illustration of the cave in Plato’s Republic. (Source: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/an-open-letter-to-platos-allegory-of-the-cave ) Although of course there are many other illustrations on the Internet, I thought this one was particularly striking.
I think that it is worth considering Plato’s allegory in the context of our recent discussions of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and kitsch. One aspect of kitsch is that it is collective; I believe that the people in the cave fulfill this trait, as they are all chained to the same wall and watch the same shadows. The other aspect of kitsch that we focused on was that it obscures the truth: “on the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth,” as Sabina points out. Don’t the shadows function in a way similar to kitsch? The people believe that those shadows are real, while in reality what they show is far less complex than the truth of the world outside. Of course, there are certainly also differences between the concepts of the shadows and of kitsch as defined by Kundera. (For one, we don’t know exactly what those shadows show; can we really be sure that they only portray happy images?)
1 comment:
I really like that illustration too. And I think that your comment is definitely worth considering. Shadows are so easily manipulated, which adds another element to what you're saying. What the people in the cave see is what the "puppet masters" want them to see, which functions similarly to how Kundera points out that the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia seems to put on a face of ideal socialism, everyone working together and uniting, etc., while simultaneously oppressing those with differing opinions and spying on the citizens. Apparently the method is so effective that many are "blinded" by these falsehoods, which is one of the points that Tomas makes in his Oedipus article. It's also interesting because the "puppet" objects are illuminated by a fire, which presumably was ignited by a person, rather than what Plato says is the "truest" source of the light, the sun (a completely natural phenomenon).
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