Plato wrote The Republic, in which we find his perceptive allegory of the cave, in about 380 BC. More recently (2002 AD) the Portuguese Nobelist José Saramago presents a similar allegory in his sardonic and thoughtful novel The Cave. I commend it to you as a contemporary complement to Plato’s allegory. You’ll initially find Saramago’s style challenging, with strong overtones to my eye of both Proust and Joyce.
![[José Saramago, The Cave, Harcourt Inc., 2002]](https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1407991018l/574899.jpg)
And take another viewing of the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix. Or screen one of the many animated version of Plato’s cave available on YouTube,for example:
Comment
Last night our discussion focused on Socrates and we briefly discussed the possibility of reading philosophers from a modern age. Although I offered a few suggestions it only came to me on the drive home that we are not only light on modern philosophers but where have all the women gone? So here are a few to ponder and I hope, add to our explorations: Hannah Arendt; Ayn Rand; Susan Sontag; Virginia Wolf; and three men..Philip Salter (Pursuit of Loneliness; James p. Carse (Finite and INfinite Games) and anything by Alan Watts
ReplyDelete