The Sun and The Allegory of the Cave

Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. His eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows.Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything.

At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects. The last object he would be able to see is The Sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).

This part of the allegory, incidentally, closely matches Plato's metaphor of the sun which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would no doubt want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen". The problem, however, lies in the other prisoners' not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the identifying shapes on the wall. This would make his fellow prisoners murderous toward anyone who attempted to free them.

Plato's The Allegory of the Cave tells us lot of thing!!!If prisoners doesnt want to know the meaning of the sun, then how could We ( Astrologers )explain prisoners to understand a Horoscope chart or Astrology.

Writen by Can Milar

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17.05.2008. 05:02