Plato, Language, and Definition

According to Plato himself, the contrast between shadows on a cave wall and real objects, presented in the Republic, is a metaphor for the relation between sensory objects and intellectual objects. But, another dimension of the imagery of that passage is that the shadows are deliberately produced by controllers within the cave. Hence, another interpretation of them, consistent with most, if not all, of Plato's work, is as Rhetoric, which would entail not merely sophistry and superstition, but language in general. On that basis, the metaphorical contrast is between language and thought, which Plato often asserts is a relation between copy and original. So, if that imagery is applied to Plato's writings themselves, they would have to be understood as no more than inessential, lending credence to the interpretation of his dialogues not merely as being inconclusive, but as shadows of conclusions that can only be extramural, i. e. non-verbal insights occurring to the participants. Furthermore, on such an understanding, the function of Definition in the course of a dialogue is not merely to fix terminology, but to break the chains of linguistic illusion. For, a definition, at minimum, objectifies a word, thereby exposing it as a mere shadow. Definition is thus the Sun of language--it not merely illuminates the meaning of words, but, furthermore, by revealing that they have meanings, it points to a realm beyond language, to 'reality', according to the metaphor.