Heidegger divide a alegoria (da caverna) em quatro fases: (i) o reino das sombras, (ii) o reino do fogo, (iii) o reino da luz, e (iv) o regresso às sombras. O que mais importa na alegoria, insiste ele, não são as fases em si mas as transições entre elas, que nos mostram como o homem chega a ter um mundo e a existir ontologicamente, isto é, como um ente para quem o seu ser é uma questão, ao mesmo tempo que representa o processo em virtude do qual a experiência que o homem tem de si próprio e do seu mundo é fundamentalmente transformada (PDT 167-8). Heidegger pensa que a alegoria como um todo “dá precisamente a história em que o homem chega a si próprio como um ente em meio a entes”, ilustrando a essência do homem, que é Existenz (Ek-sistenz), a ser “posta na verdade” (ET 55), “entregue aos entes na sua totalidade … não fechada em si mesma como as plantas, nem restrita como os animais … nem simplesmente ocorrendo como uma pedra” (ET 56).
Este é mesmo o caso na fase inicial da alegoria, que Heidegger considera ser uma ilustração do Dasein no seu quotidiano, no seu ser pré-teórico — ao lado do mundo das suas preocupações, onde se sente em casa (PDT 164). Nesta fase, os prisioneiros medem o “real” e o “verdadeiro” a partir do seu ambiente imediato. “O que os rodeia e os preocupa é, para eles, ‘o real’, ou seja, aquilo que é” (PDT 164). Em certo aspecto, os prisioneiros não estão errados. Estão em contato com o não encoberto (unhidden). Embora as sombras projetadas na parede da caverna não sejam tão significativas como as realidades exteriores, elas são, no entanto, como Platão as descreve, to alethes, o não encoberto. Heidegger considera que este fato é significativo porque mostra que, mesmo na caverna, o homem se comporta perante o não encoberto (ET 20). No entanto, esta não é a história completa. Os prisioneiros são mantidos em cativeiro pelas sombras porque não as veem como sombras, ou seja, como os vestígios mais evidentes do que realmente são. “Os prisioneiros veem de fato as sombras, mas não como sombras de alguma coisa” (ET 20).
Heidegger divides the allegory into four stages: (i) the realm of shadows, (ii) the realm of fire, (iii) the realm of light, and (iv) the return to the shadows. What matters most in the allegory, he insists, is not the stages in their own right but the transitions between them, which show us how man comes to have a world and exist ontologically, that is, as a being for whom its being is an issue, while also representing the process in virtue of which man’s experience of himself and his world is fundamentally transformed (PDT 167–8). Heidegger thinks the allegory as a whole “gives precisely the history in which man comes to himself as a being in the midst of beings” by illustrating the essence of man, which is Existenz (Ek-sistenz), to be “set out into the truth” (ET 55), “given over to beings in their totality . . . not closed in upon itself like plants, nor restricted like animals . . . nor simply occurring like a stone” (ET 56).
This is the case even in the earliest stage of the allegory, which Heidegger thinks is an illustration of Dasein in its everydayness, its pre-theoretical being-alongside the world of its concerns where it is at home (PDT 164). At this stage, the prisoners take their measure of “the real” and “the true” from their immediate environment. “What surrounds and concerns them there is for them, ‘the real,’ i.e., that which is” (PDT 164).3 In one respect, the prisoners are not wrong. They are in contact with the unhidden. While the shadows cast on the wall of the cave are not as beingful as the realities outside, they are nevertheless, as Plato describes them, to alethês, the unhidden. Heidegger thinks this is significant because it shows that, even in the cave, man comports himself to the unhidden (ET 20). This is not the full story, however. The prisoners are held captive by the shadows because they do not see them as shadows, that is, as the barest traces of what they really are. “The prisoners do indeed see the shadows but not as shadows of something” (ET 20).
When Glaucon interrupts Socrates to describe the condition of the prisoners as atopon, as out of place or “extra-ordinary” (ET 22), Socrates assures him that it does not appear that way to man in his everydayness, who has no standard other than his everyday situation with which to compare it (ET 21–2). This is why, in addition to observing that being human “means . . . to comport oneself to the unhidden” (ET 20), it is equally important to say that “being human also means . . . to stand within the hidden, to be surrounded by the hidden . . . so much so . . . that the unhidden is not at all understood as such” (ET 21). Because the prisoners are entirely given over to and ensnared by what they “immediately encounter” (ET 20), and therefore lack self-knowledge (ET 21), they fail to imagine that the shadows, and they themselves, could be understood and revealed differently. This is represented by their ignorance of the fire, the “man-made” (PDT 169) light in whose luminosity the world of their concerns appears to them and becomes meaningful in the first place.
(T)hey do not know anything about a fire which gives off a glow, and in whose luminosity something like shadows can first of all be cast. Thus, when . . . we said it could be asked “what that is” which is unhidden there, this is not a question the prisoners themselves could raise. For the essence of their being is such that, to them, precisely this unhidden before them suffices—so much so indeed that they also do not know that it suffices. (ET 20)
From the perspective of the shadows, the concepts of “the real” and “that which is” are so foreign to the prisoners that the Being of the shadows is not, and cannot be, a question for them (ET 20). They stand out into the truth, but they have yet to take a stand toward it. In the language of Being and Time, they live in a meaningful and intelligible world that matters to them, but they have not yet asked what it is that makes their world meaningful and intelligible, and they do not wonder why things matter to them as they do. Their lives are entirely “pre-ontological.” They live in an understanding of Being without knowing it.