If Only Plato Could See Us Now
On Truth, Caves + Sunlight
The search for truth, much like the human instinct to create, is eternal and ever-existent. Since time began, people have sought out truth - while at the same time trying to capture and explore the world through art, literature, and other representative art forms. During Plato’s time, representative art was in its earliest stages as epic poetry and tragic plays were the main forms of literature.
Plato could’ve never imagined the modern plethora of representative art - as contemporary mankind is surrounded by media, art, literature, content, and representations of reality rather than reality itself (and he would’ve gone absolutely ballistic if he could’ve imagined it). Literal news- real-life events - are brought to us through screens, pixels, and platforms. And if COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that our senses of reality are only a few clicks away from being entirely different than reality itself.
The modern world has almost trapped us in Plato’s cave, as it’s so easy to be glued to one’s phone, television, or computer screen, experiencing the world through the shadows on the backlit wall rather than through one’s senses or lived memories. In fact, it’s more likely that one’s experience with animals, plants, events, and people will take place through these shadows than in real life. It’s now more possible than ever for one to figuratively try to crawl out of Plato’s cave, to escape a world surrounded by media and narratives, and perhaps “regard those things he saw formerly as more real than the things now being shown to him” (Plato 76). In other words, to believe in reality as it’s been represented and constructed by someone else over reality as it actually is, to believe that the Earth is flat when science says it is round.
Plato would look at these circumstances and weep. He would lament that “reality for the prisoners would be nothing but shadows cast by artifacts” as mankind wound up in the cave he so desperately feared (Plato 75). The modern philosopher is held hostage as puppet-masters in the form of producers, writers, and content creators pull the strings, lulling us into believing that these shadows are what’s true, rather than one’s lived and sensory experiences.
He would look at modern media just as he looked at Greek tragedies, arguing that they are borderline pointless - distracting mankind from wisdom and truth. As audiences experience emotions and process the events on the stage or onscreen, Plato would find these emotions unreasonable and as bizarre as the games his cave-dwellers might play as they find meaning in shadows. He believed that representation and memesis are like shadow puppets - a simple, removed, and one-dimensional version of reality.
Plato made it quite clear in his classic book, The Republic, that he believed that memesis, or imitation of reality in art or poetry, is the lowest of the forms. It is the furthest removed from truth, the least valuable, and the least useful way to discover truth. He would be adamant that representation cannot lead to truth and should be functional and instructional over anything else. Plato’s allegory of the cave is perhaps the most philosophical version of the anti-television and screen time debate. He was an ancient proponent of the “go outside and play” theory, believing that truth and wisdom could only be found through lived experience, through seeing the actual sun rather than an image of it.
But, Aristotle valued representation, believing that it could highlight and explore truths. In Poetics, Aristotle analyzes the value, uses, and elements of tragedies and epic poetry. Much of his discussion can apply to representative art today, and responds to many of Plato’s ideas about art and literature during a similar time period. Aristotle’s version of Plato’s cave may involve people who can sit down, watch an incredible shadow puppet show, be moved by the experience, and then leave the cave with greater truths to grapple with. Aristotle, in his analytical approach to tragedy, highlights how one can experience representation and be greatly influenced by it, using it as a means to explore and represent truth in a dramatic and intense way.
Aristotle’s idea of catharsis, or the relieving and healthy release of strong emotions in response to dramatic representative art, stands as testament to how his version of the representation versus truth relationship is starkly different from Plato’s. Plato believed truth must be intellectual, factual, and objective, while Aristotle believes the emotions can contain truth. One can experience the pain of Oedipus and have a way to release their own pain, or find words to express it. One can find truth in representation, bringing what they’ve experienced in representative art into the real world and applying it. Representation is a way to explore universal truths common to all mankind such as love, pain, betrayal, growing up, war, or spirituality, which is why Aristotle values poetry over history, believing that poetry speaks on these universal truths and experiences more clearly.
For both Plato and Aristotle, representation did not fully mirror reality though. While representation or memesis was the lowest of the forms to Plato, Aristotle also recognizes the limits of representation when he discusses characters in Greek plays. He makes clear that the characters in tragedies and comedies are either far better or far worse than the average person and that the point is for the plot to be larger than life. Representation is not a mirror to truth, it is an expression and response to it. Drama is still drama, it’s still not quite reality. Both Aristotle and Plato desire an audience to eventually leave the cave, realizing the shadow puppets were just shadows- not remain there and believe that this is all there is. They also both are viewing representation from a similar time period, when representative art took the form of pottery, epic poetry, and classical plays. It would be interesting to see their thoughts as they looked at modern versions of representative art; if any of their philosophies would change as they scrolled TikTok or discovered the endless labrinyth of Netflix.
I find Aristotle's view more compelling because there is value to be found in representation. There’s truth and wisdom in our lived experiences - and that matters deeply. It can be far more profound and impactful than the truth one gleans from representations, but the truth in representative art still matters. If there weren’t any truths to be found in art and literature- why would people bother to study it? If art and literature was truly like shadows on a cave wall, manipulated by some unseen dark force and trapping us in blind darkness, then why would people change their lives over lines of poetry or connect artwork to their relationship to the cosmos? English majors are not just cave people who ask more questions than their fellow cave dwellers, but people who seek to connect these shadows to the sun.
I know that any truth embedded in a representation must hold against lived reality. Even the most sacred of literature, the books and pieces that claim to embody ultimate truths, must remain and apply to the real, experienced world. Literature and art are not a cheaper truth that blinds us from a better, experienced version of truth, but avenues to better understanding and a vocabulary as one navigates reality and experiences.
Of course there are people who do blindly listen and follow media or representations of false truths rather than real truth. There’s an epidemic of fake news and conspiracy theories, as people are glued to false narratives- worhsipping shadows of reality, carefully constructed to trap and manipulate an audience. In those scenarios, Plato's cave allegory is fitting because representative art is being used to imprison people away from truth. There are puppet-masters. However, this is not always the case. Every person who is devoted to, in love with, or interested in literature, art, or cinema is not stuck in a cave and needs to escape in order to find truth, they just must be willing to apply their devotion to the real world.
Us modern humans are surrounding by shadow puppets, but we just must keep holding them up to the sun- and not forgetting that there is both a world to be experienced and a world to be represented, responded to, and felt beyond our own.
