Discovering the Lie

As he continues his allegory, Plato poses a hypothesis: what if one of the prisoners is freed? What would he do? Plato says that if he is forced to look at the objects that cast off the shadows, the prisoner will consider them less pleasing to his eyes than the shadows he is accustomed to see. He will have to strain his eyes to be able to see the brightness of the objects illumined by the fire. How much more would his eyes hurt if he were required to directly look at the fire that creates the shadows? Plato says that surely, the prisoner would rather go back to his seat and be chained to it once again because he prefers to see the shadows that appear clearer to him. By doing so, he passes up on his chance to know the truth.
As one attempts to get the most out of life, one eventually experiences alterity – otherness. In these experiences, one becomes conscious of the difference between the self and the non-self. Such an experience is important for in the Hegelian dialectic between the self and non-self, one gets to know himself better. One must remember though that what is other than himself cannot be totally reconciled to the self. There are experiences with an other where the self is able to exercise control over it. There are encounters however where what is other puts into question the supremacy and freedom of the self. Levinas particularizes such an experience through the encounter with the Other. The Other is not simply the other in the sense that the self (which Levinas also calls the Same) cannot subsume the Other for it resists such violence. The Other resists being absorbed into the egotistical world of the self by putting into question the very foundation of his jouissance – his supremacy and freedom.

Levinas further theorizes that there is an ethical bond between the Same and the Other because the latter reminds him that what is other than himself is not wholly his and can never be totally his. The Other reminds the Same that he shares the world, which he has claimed as his home, with many Others. Thus, he is not supremely and totally free to partake of the world according to his whims. The individual therefore realizes that he is not on top of the world after all, as he originally thought.

The encounter with this Other may take different forms. It may take the form of a loved one that refuses to be treated as a mere trophy or an object of his interest. The Other may be a quadriplegic that lay motionless in bed, yet unwilling to be looked upon as a mere body for he too is an embodied soul. The poor can also be an Other that refuses to be considered as an unproductive and therefore useless member of a highly materialistic society. And yes, the laborers in a factory can be an Other too when they reject being valued as a mere cog in a wheel that can be disposed of anytime when they do not meet the demands of efficiency and effectivity. Indeed, many Others can put the Same’s desire to lord it over the world on hold. It may not be a palatable experience for one who has been conditioned to control the world and use it according to his desires. At this point, his worldview is put into question and is shaken by the threat of collapse. He therefore starts to wonder if the maxims his father told him are mere lies.

This is where philosophy steps in. We discover a lie when we uncover a truth. The truth however does not lie in the mind alone or in being alone. Truth lies in the conformity between the mind and being, when epistemological truth matches ontological truth. W. Norris Clarke says that “[t]he first great conclusion of our metaphysical inquiry [is that] mind and being are correlative to each other, made for each other, open by nature to each other … .”[i] Being (small “b”) cannot be straightjacketed into the constructs of our minds because it was not conceived in our minds. Thus, if we are to aim at the acquiescence between mind and being, our minds will have to know being in itself as it reveals itself through its action on us.

Clarke also claims that man possesses the drive to know and the drive to will. The mind, though not consciously, aims to know being through and through. Thus, in the quest for the intelligibility of being, metaphysics plays a key role in that it helps bring the process of searching for the truth of being (which is assumed to be intelligible) into our consciousness. Epistemology is indispensable as well since it calls our attention to the process of knowing needed to arrive at a true justified belief. It helps us know what is true and how we are to arrive at it.

The conscious being who allows metaphysics and epistemology to guide his thoughts and reflection will arrive at what is true about being. The heart of the matter though is how he chooses to address the truth he uncovers.

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[i] W. Norris Clarke, SJ, The One and the Many, A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 17.