Abstract

Jacques Brunschwig was the first to emphasize the importance of a detail of Plato’s Cave escaped the attention of the interpreters: all that the chained prisoners see at the bottom of the cave are the shadows cast by a fire behind them. Two different kinds of shadows: those of the artifacts carried behind them by invisible «puppeteers» (A-shadows), but first (proton) the shadow of one’s own body and that of their fellow prisoners (B-shadows). The importance of this detail is undeniable, because it concerns the key element of the allegory, the shadows, which the similarity between prisoners and us human beings is based on. Its fleeting appearance must therefore be explained in a more convincing way than that proposed by Brunschwig, that is, taking into account the general meaning of the image. In a wise reversal of the Homeric tradition, Plato represented the embodied human soul as a shadow of itself. The B-shadows therefore allude to the condition of deep ignorance (amathia) typical of our mind from birth and which, if nothing happens, imprisons us in the illusion of a daylong dream.