What Is Plato's Allegory of the Cave? & Why Is It so Important to 1899?
Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is one of the most well-known philosophical concepts in history, and it seems to be the basis of which Netflix's 1899 is filmed. It is so essential that numerous filmmakers have tried to incorporate this philosophy into their films. But what exactly is it? And why did it work so well in 1899?
PLATO'S CAVE EXPLAINED
Entering Plato's Allegorical cave, we are made to see prisoners who have lived their entire lives in a cave facing a wall. They could not move their hands, legs, and necks as all they could do was look at the wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows on the opposite wall. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality as they've known nothing else.
Plato posits that one prisoner could become free. He finally sees the fire and realizes the shadows are fake. This prisoner could escape from the cave and discover a new world outside that they were unaware of.
This prisoner would believe the outside world is so much more accurate than that in the cave. He would try to return to free the other prisoners. Upon his return, he is blinded because his eyes are not accustomed to actual sunlight. The chained prisoners would see this blindness and believe they would be harmed if they tried to leave the cave.
With this, Plato presented the Theory of Forms in which he believed that human beings only see things the way we perceive them and not in their actual forms. Thus he contemplates the nature of belief versus knowledge.
Why Is The Allegory Of The Cave Important To 1899?
The Allegory of the Cave is central to the entire plot of 1899 because it allows us to see the mindset of Maura, the main character and the one who creates the simulation.
In "1899" Episode 7, when Maura finds the simulation of her and Daniel's house, as well as the photos of her along with Daniel and Elliot (their son), Daniel says she has done all this to get rid of her pain. He doesn't specify what kind of pain he's talking about. But we can assume that he's talking about Elliot's real-life situation, where he's probably dying (or dead). Maura says she knows that none of what she's experiencing is real. Daniel says that they are indeed trapped in a simulation. He repeats Maura's theory that we never know if the stimuli in our brains are caused by reality or simply by a construct of one. That's when he brings up the topic of Plato's cave allegory to explain that they are watching images projected into their minds. And he emphasizes the importance of waking up from this state of perpetual dreaming because if she doesn't, she will lose her mind inside the simulation as her brain will start perceiving it as reality.
In "1899" Episode 8, while educating Elliot about the fact that he's trapped in a simulation created by Maura so that she can keep him alive, Henry starts talking about Maura's childhood days. He says she found a paper on Plato's cave allegory in his study. Even though she was too young to understand such an abstract concept, she read it repeatedly. Once she was done, her whole existence was engulfed in this one idea: that our knowledge has limitations and that we never know whether the things we see are real. So, in an attempt to get some answers, she asked Henry if Plato's argument is "true," then how is anyone supposed to know anything is real? And that the actual reality is beyond the life one is living. Henry tried to insert the concept of God into his answer and credit God for creating reality. Maura responded to it by saying that then God is the only thing that's real, and humanity is the entity's doll house. However, she brought up a counter question: who created God, and whether this series of creating something and treating it as a plaything goes on endlessly.
As the truth is uncovered, we find out that the ship simulation was created by Henry, who was also trapped in a simulation created by Maura before they were all trapped. And the entire simulation was created by Maura's brother Ciaran who is outside the real world.
It would be interesting to see if Ciaran is actually in the real world, and it could be another simulation that Maura and the rest need to peel through to understand what is going on.
Thus, this is where Plato's Allegory comes in as it questions what is real because the world is merely a perception of reality. There is a distinction between opinion and knowledge. Knowledge is a perception tied to the material world and is supported by false belief and therefore is simply ignorance supported by the knowledge they always had. The prisoner knew before reaching the intelligible world, however, and they understood the names of objects which shows they knew of them to begin with but referred to them with ignorance.
Knowledge is ultimately society's downfall. The cave is the prison for individuals who support their knowledge based on ideologies and opinions. The masses are stubborn and ignorant and dedicate their lives to pursuing shadows instead of the real thing. We intend to traverse out of ignorance into the right field of knowledge. We must break the chains of ignorance and witness the sun. We must seek what is true, not what we think we know!
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