Pages

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Shadow As Reality

Construction workers, Seattle

The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this photo was something philosophical.

That's right; construction workers standing behind a construction curtain reminded me of philosophy's golden age of Plato, and a story called Allegory of the Cave. In the story, a group of prisoners have been chained their entire lives inside a cave facing a wall. Behind them, life moves back and forth in the form of people on a walkway. Beyond that there is a large fire. The shadows of life are projected onto the wall in front of the prisoners. Because they are unable to see the actual figures making the shadows, the prisoners consider the shadows themselves to be the reality.

Plato went on to say that being released from the chains and having the ability to turn around was similar to being a philosopher.

He felt that reality revealed itself once the brain was stretched. Probably right.

---------------------------
WSU Study Article
Allegory of the Cave - On Wikipedia



Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

No comments:

Post a Comment