cave-2
Explanation
This comic takes Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave and undermines it by examining the actual philosophical positions Plato held in his dialogues, particularly in "The Republic" and "Timaeus."
The comic opens with Plato describing the Allegory of the Cave to a modern interlocutor: prisoners chained in a cave mistake shadows on the wall for reality, and if one were to break free and ascend, he would see the truth. The listener interrupts to ask what "truths" regular people supposedly fail to see.
Plato then enthusiastically lists his actual philosophical positions: that there are four elements arranged as regular polyhedra (from the "Timaeus"), that knowledge of geometry proves reincarnation (from the "Meno"), that poets should be expelled from the ideal city (from "The Republic"), that society needs a rigid class structure sustained by eugenics (also from "The Republic"), and that being female is a punishment for men who were insufficiently virtuous in a previous life (from the "Timaeus").
The listener, horrified, says "Nevermind, please stick with the allegory" -- preferring the vague metaphor about enlightenment to the specific and deeply objectionable content Plato actually believed constituted "truth." The final panel shows Plato happily returning to the allegory, saying the point is that "the dummies in the cave don't realize they're dumb."
The joke works on multiple levels. First, it punctures the popular reverence for the Cave Allegory by pointing out that Plato's conception of what people are "blind" to includes ideas that are now considered pseudoscientific, authoritarian, or misogynistic. Second, it satirizes how people cherry-pick from historical philosophers, embracing the palatable metaphors while ignoring the uncomfortable specifics. The implication is that maybe the allegory works better when you do not look too closely at what the philosopher thought was outside the cave.