"I spend a lot of time watching children's movies, being the parent of two of them. And among the movies that I've seen recently with my younger child is Narnia. And among the movies that I've seen recently with my older child is Inception. And we've also watched The Matrix, and we've also watched The Truman Show.
All of these are movies that make Plato's point.
The gambit in each of these films is that the reality which you take to be genuine and most profound — this earthly realm, in the case of Narnia, the experience that you're having right now, in the case of The Matrix, and so on — is in fact, but a shadow of that which truly lies beyond.
And this theme is, in fact, a central theme of almost every religious tradition. That the domain of the secular, the domain of the mundane, the domain of the worldly, is in some sense unreal, and there is, in addition, a domain of the beyond, interaction with which provides a kind of good that is so immeasurably better than goods of interacting with the world, that there's almost no comparison between them.
(...)
And Plato's Socrates, when he says, the person with the well-regulated soul spends his or her time contemplating the forms, is making exactly the same kind of claim that, for example, a religious Christian would make in saying that in giving up the earthly goods and focusing instead on what is spiritually valuable, one gains a kind of possibility for flourishing that is incomparable to that which you can get in the earthly domain."
© Tamar Gendler
Yale Lectures on Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature, 2011
[link]
All of these are movies that make Plato's point.
The gambit in each of these films is that the reality which you take to be genuine and most profound — this earthly realm, in the case of Narnia, the experience that you're having right now, in the case of The Matrix, and so on — is in fact, but a shadow of that which truly lies beyond.
And this theme is, in fact, a central theme of almost every religious tradition. That the domain of the secular, the domain of the mundane, the domain of the worldly, is in some sense unreal, and there is, in addition, a domain of the beyond, interaction with which provides a kind of good that is so immeasurably better than goods of interacting with the world, that there's almost no comparison between them.
(...)
And Plato's Socrates, when he says, the person with the well-regulated soul spends his or her time contemplating the forms, is making exactly the same kind of claim that, for example, a religious Christian would make in saying that in giving up the earthly goods and focusing instead on what is spiritually valuable, one gains a kind of possibility for flourishing that is incomparable to that which you can get in the earthly domain."
© Tamar Gendler
Yale Lectures on Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature, 2011
[link]
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