[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your excellent post!!!

In other words, Plato associates the Light with the truth of reality; he maintains that truth is accessible to human reason, but not solely by means of sensuous experience. In short, it appears Plato thinks man knows a great deal about reality from purely “internal” resources. And this is especially so in cases, not so much of knowledge acquisition per se, where intentionalist consciousness/sense perception are the proper “tools”; but in cases regarding reflections of the great (we might say perennial) questions of human existence, the human condition, our place in the world, our history, our destiny, and so forth, luminous consciousness seems to be the proper method or “tool.” This seems to be a source of knowledge acquisition, too -- of "non-phenomenal" aspects of reality that truthfully bear on human existence, and what we call wisdom (in contradistinction to knowledge). Such experiences are "events" in consciousness only.

I much appreciate this further explanation of Plato's metaphor - it makes perfect sense to me. The Light was the object of his metaphor and did not represent merely a phenomenon with some other temporal meaning behind it.

[betty boop]

The Light was the object of his metaphor and did not represent merely a phenomenon with some other temporal meaning behind it.

Thanks so much for your kind words, A-G! The Light is not "phenomenal." I've recently been struck by how closely Einstein's remark regarding reality as we experience it -- i.e., it is a "persistent illusion" -- tracks with the meaning of Plato's Myth of the Cave.... In the past you've observed that Einstein really was a Platonist, an unconscious one perhaps, even though he took the "Aristotelian side of the argument" with his friend Godel. I'm pretty sure you are right about this! :^)