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« Perhaps universal history is nothing more than the history of a few metaphors.
The oldest and most famous is that of Plato’s cave. Men, chained since childhood in a cave, see on the wall shadows projected by a fire burning behind them; they take these shadows for the things themselves. One of them is freed, leaves the cave, sees the real objects and finally the sun. When he returns to tell what he has seen, the others do not believe him and think he has lost his sight.

This metaphor has served for centuries to represent our situation in the world. We see appearances and take them for reality; we confuse images with things. Perhaps it is also true that these images are all that we possess. Perhaps the visible universe is nothing but a system of symbols of which we perceive only the projections.»

Inquiries (Otras inquisiciones), Jorge Luis Borges

Images are almost never innocent, and the word cave carries a very precise philosophical resonance that almost inevitably refers to Plato’s famous cave in The Republic.

– What would happen if we reversed the function of this cave?
– What do you mean by reversing it?
– In Plato, the cave is the place of illusion. The prisoners see shadows projected on the wall and take these appearances for reality. Philosophical work then consists in leaving the cave in order to reach the true world, the world of ideas and intelligible truth, illuminated by the sun of the Good.
– What would these shadows be?
– In that case, the shadow is the symbol of a lack of reality. It refers to a truth located elsewhere, outside the cave. With this reversal, we can almost completely invert this scheme.
– How?
– One may imagine, as Nietzsche did, that for millennia there will still be caves where the shadow of God will be shown. He suggests that humanity will continue to live in symbolic places where projections of a vanished absolute are displayed. But the decisive difference is this: in Nietzsche, there is no longer any metaphysical “sun” outside the cave. There is no intelligible world that would guarantee the ultimate truth of things.
– In other words, the Platonic image remains, but the metaphysical architecture that gave it meaning has collapsed.
– One could almost say that Nietzsche radicalizes the Platonic diagnosis while removing the Platonic solution.
– What did Plato say?
– In essence, he said: men live among shadows, but there exists a higher reality that it is possible to reach.
– And we?
– That men continue to show shadows, but the source to which those shadows once referred no longer exists.
– The cave then becomes a theater of survivals.
– Exactly. The shadows persist even though the body that produced them is no longer there.
– That is also why Nietzsche speaks of “overcoming the shadow of God.”
– The problem is not only the existence of God…
– The problem is the persistence of mental structures inherited from Platonic and Christian metaphysics. Nietzsche often calls this tradition “Platonism for the people,” that is, the religious transposition of the Platonic structure: an imperfect sensible world and above it a true, perfect, absolute world.
– But without God…
– When God disappears, this architecture does not vanish immediately. People often continue to think as if a true world must exist somewhere, an absolute truth…
– These would be so many shadows projected onto the walls of new caves.
– Thus the link with Plato becomes almost ironic.
– Why?
– In the Platonic allegory, leaving the cave means gaining access to the truth.
– And for the philosopher?
– For Nietzsche, the situation becomes more vertiginous: one must learn to live after the collapse of the “sun” that guaranteed ultimate truth.
– So, if I understand correctly… it is no longer a matter of leaving the cave to reach a higher world, but of recognizing that this higher world was itself a projection.
– Exactly… which is why Nietzsche can appear as one of the great critics of Platonism. He even writes that the whole Western tradition is structured by this opposition between apparent world and true world…
– … and he attempts to overturn it.
– If we push the image a little further, we could say this: in Plato, the shadows are false…
– Because they are only copies…
– A little like us…