Oldal 63 [63]
OCR
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 everyone 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 difficult, 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.
