Dreams and Other Fictions: The Representation of Representation in Republic 5 and 6

This article offers a close reading of the passages leading up to the myth of the cave and contends that the Republic frames this famous passage less as the illustration of a transcendental truth than as a problematic and self-referential meditation on the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of distinguishing between being and seeming. It contends that the myth when read in context not only asks us to distinguish between shadows on the wall and things themselves, it also forces us to interrogate this distinction. How does the world beyond appearance appear? What is it like? How does the truth seem?