After the fall of ancient Rome an age of darkness fell upon Europe. This period was known as the dark ages. It was a time filled with superstition and devoid of the higher thinking found in the world of ancient Greece. Only after 1000 years of this darkness did the people begin to revisit the ancient ideas of Greece and bring themselves out of the superstition to see the light, and thus began the renaissance. The cave analogy by Plato reflects the enlightenment experienced in Europe during the 15th century; however there are several key differences that separate them.
In the analogy of the cave Plato describes people being chained up all their lives facing a blank stone wall. Behind them was the opening to the cave and from that the sun shone in. On the wall, shadows danced as objects moved in front of the sun. The people, having only ever seen these shadows, grew to believe that the shadows were the truth and nothing else existed. Much in the same way that the chains restrict the people from seeing the truth, the Catholic Church took control of all knowledge and enforced their truth across all of Europe, they permitted only their way of thinking and any “heretics” were dealt with harshly. Another part to the cave analogy is when someone is freed from the chains; they will walk towards the light and discover the truth; the truth being the renaissance. During this period the old ways of thought from ancient Greece began to re-emerge and people once again began to think freely. They were no longer constrained by the shackles of the Catholic Church and started to look past the shadows to see the real truth. Despite the ominous similarities between the dark ages and Plato’s cave, there are still many differences.
One key concept in Plato’s cave is that those that have exited the cave and seen the light will re-enter the cave in an attempt to bring others out, however in doing so they stumble and fall and are ridiculed by those that are still chained. This is a fundamental difference between the cave and the renaissance because those that have entered the light make no attempt to re-enter the cave. They choose instead to indulge themselves in their own realizations, as which we can see because the renaissance is almost entirely localized to the cities of Florence and Rome and does not rapidly spread across Europe. Also upon returning to the cave, the enlightened trip, fall and are ridiculed, this does not happen in the same sense; those that try and question the church are suppressed but the general enlightenments are not. Lastly, one of Plato’s key concepts of the cave is the idea of one truth, that all those that step into the light will realize one truth. This is not present in the renaissance, because we see very different interpretations of the same thing in the paintings and sculptures of the era. For example, Donatello sculpted a David that looks entirely different to the one sculpted by Michelangelo, contradicting Plato’s idea of one truth.
The revival of knowledge during the renaissance has many key similarities with Plato’s analogy of the cave, but there are still several differences. However, in a way, the exiting from the cave still continues today and the human race will never stop in our pursuit of the light.
