Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 7:31 am
Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 2:49 am
It seems absurd until I remember nothing else is possible for those defending their life in imagination reacting to the darkness of Plato's Cave without questioning the human condition and why we are as we are.
I went to the trouble of finding out a bit more about what Plato was getting at. I could well be misinterpreting him, or just getting it plain wrong, but I don't see him as meaning what you take him to mean. In my understanding, Christianity would be one of the shadows on the cave wall. The Church, people like IC, and even Simone Weil are making those shadows. You are seeing the projections of other people's "realities", who are creating the shadows on your cave wall by reproducing the ones on their own walls. Leaving the cave and going out into the light is about seeing the true reality of the word, where men don't walk on water, or come back to life after they have died.
To understand European Christianity one must understand its origins. And European Christianity is Catholicism. To understand Catholicism one must understand that the religious viewpoint in which it was formed is not comparable to the existential viewpoint, so strongly determined by scientific revolutions, that we now have. The world was seen and interpreted, defined, according to very different criteria. Nick often refers to 'the great chain of being' which is itself an amalgamation of views of the world and also the cosmos.
The early Christians came from the Judaic world and were received into the Greek world. That is the first point of contact and the first historical and cultural scene of blending and amalgamation. The 1st century, under the aegis of the Roman imperialism, could be described as similar to our our own in some senses: It has been described as a 'confusion of peoples' who were brought together, and had to interact and interchange intellectually, conceptually, because they found themselves subsumed into a vast State. Catholicism, and Christianity, therefore became, and really is, a construct out of a wide variety of different ideas.
The myth of Plato's Cave is a rich metaphor for being captured, or enchained, in circumstances that require a 'liberating agent'. The circumstances of those beings, and the thrust of the metaphor, naturally would incline the early Christians to incorporate it certainly as a metaphor, but in fact as an actual diagram, a real description, of our reality here. That is, a soul trapped in a body that naturally enchained that soul, bound that soul down into matter and flesh, when the *real object* of that soul should be, or could be, of another order. All of the Sacraments can be seen as being, say, a response or an Rx to the enchained and darkened condition of an *ignorant soul*. [Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation (Confession or Penance), Anointing of the Sick, Matrimony, and Holy Orders.]
Obviously, it becomes plain that the 'liberating agent' is, ultimately, Jesus of Nazareth/God/Holy Spirit. All rituals of the church, but especially the ritual of the Mass, can be seen as symbolic enactments of both liberation and ascent. If you ever were to read the (original) Ordinary of the Mass it would, I think, become clear. In this sense then, the Mass and the finale as it were of taking the Eucharistic Sacrament is a way of acting out the myth and the metaphor of the situation of the soul in Plato's Cave.
But of course there are *levels*. Catholicism adapted itself to different conceptual aptitudes. It certainly recognized social and intellectual 'hierarchies' and, it can also be said, created institutions that supported or maintained those hierarchies. So within the System of Catholicism the notion of 'ascent' depends on knowledge and understanding. Epistemologically and ontologically one must grasp the WorldPicture that Catholicism describes, and one must accept and *believe in* the Liberating Agent. That agent is more variable or manifold I think than the simplistic Protestant picture. There are angelical beings that can interact with the practitioner; there are Saints who have surmounted the world and now reside in the world beyond (Heaven); there are advantages gainable through penitential acts as well as pilgrimage; and then there is another element which is the divinized figure of Mother Mary.
Yes, I guess you could say that all of these elements describe a *picture* projected onto the cave of the mind (the screen of our imagination) and that someone would not need the visual-conceptual in order to have a sufficient picture (of Reality) in order to act properly and constructively in this life (the Christian object). The very picture of Christianity
could be seen not as a helping concept but rather as an obstructing agent. But that would imply that you, Harbal, have some sort of sense of what man needs, what a soul needs, or what is more likely that you do not believe in any of that and, also likely, that you have not ever really sat yourself down to think these things through in any sense at all!
And if that is true (and that is what seems true from where I sit) then I think that you disqualify yourself from being capable of making nearly any judgments at all. And if that is true then you yourself can be examined as one of those beings chained in such a way that you cannot turn your head neither to the left nor to the right. You face a wall (your conceptual screen, the limit of your conceptual framework, etc.) but have no substantial idea *where you are* nor really any sense of what purpose or value life has. Simply put you do not seem to have bothered much with these questions. You yourself make that very plain so it is not that I am saying anything that you have not yourself said.
I am very interested in the fall and the descent from those former *conceptual orders* when people did take their religious and spiritual life seriously. Decadence is a notion that can be examined as a 'falling back into' those conditions of which Plato's Cave is a metaphor.
Irving Babbitt wrote in
“Interpreting India to the West” (1917):
"On the one hand is the ascending path of insight and discrimination. Those who take it may be termed the spiritual athletes. On the other hand is the descending path towards the subrational followed by those who court the confused reverie that comes from the breakdown of barriers and the blurring of distinctions and who are ready to forego purpose in favor of “spontaneity”; and these may be termed the cosmic loafers."
I can't say it was the most fun read I've ever had...and I've enjoyed reading other ancient texts. Reading the Koran is the most boring and intellectually bankrupt sort of reading experience a person can have. I think the book can only possibly get reverence because people don't read it.