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man cannot control hímself. He must know the truth. Although
even one-day-old souls know exactly that they need to drink from
the water of the Lethe, (Plato 1970. 614.a-621.b.) which causes every¬
one who drinks from it to be fortunate enough to forget the truth,
to forget fate and their own destiny. He pulls the veil aside. The
next day he is found half-conscious in the church. He never talks
about what he saw. All he says is: ,Weh Dem, der zu der Wahrheit
geht durch Schuld: Sie wird ihm nimmermehr erfreulich sein.”
Which is to say, “Woe—for she never shall delight him more!
Woe,—woe to him who treads through guilt to Truth!” (Schiller
1876-79. 85.) On every level, this means that one cannot reach the
truth easily, simply, or without hard work.” If one does this, truth
punishes the desecrator of its sanctity. Plato’s cave dweller must
be made to know that the road leading upwards is tiring and diffi¬
cult, and the cave dweller must be brought along it by force. “And
if, I said’, someone dragged him away from there by force along
the rough, steep, upward way and didn’t let him go before he had
dragged him out into the light of the sun, wouldn't he be distressed
and a annoyed at being so dragged? And when he came to the
light, wouldn’t he have his eyes full of its beam and be unable to
see even one of the things now said to be true?” (Plato 1970, 516.a,
517.4.) This is universal: there is no freedom without knowledge,
and the reverse also holds true. For Plato’s cave-dweller knowledge
comes with the yearning for freedom, and then with the feeling
that all the other “eternal slaves” who are sitting chained in the
cave must be freed, and that can be accomplished with knowledge.
But knowledge requires work—as we have seen—and the slaves
are perfectly happy among the others in the warm and dim cave.
29 Hegel argues the same, writing, “this is so because the subject matter is not
exhausted in its aims; rather, it is exhaustively treated when it is worked out.
Nor is the result which is reached the actual whole itself; rather, the whole is
the result together with the way the result comes to be.” PoS. p.5.