Commentary

Eine kleine Nachtmusik: Reflections of a Cave Dweller

Daniel Conway

Texas A&M University, USA

Conway, Daniel. 2026. “Eine kleine Nachtmusik: Reflections of a Cave Dweller.”

 Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 8, no. 2: 27-40. https://doi.org/10.33497/2026.latesummer.4. 

Abstract: I have organized my response to Night Vision as an integrated series of vignettes prompted (and inspired) by Mariana Alessandri’s insightful new book. As my overarching principle of organization, I have focused on the different forms and intensities of light that her defense of the practice of night vision either presupposes or suggests. The primary aim of my response, and of the principle of organization I have adopted, is to complement the author’s welcome attention to “dark moods” with an exploration of the forms of light that best enable the practice of “night vision” she recommends to her readers. 

Keywords: recollection, night vision, shame, Socrates, Light Brigade

Light am I; ah, that I were night! But this is my loneliness that I am girt with light. Ah, that I were dark and nocturnal! . . . I do not know the happiness of those who receive; and I have often dreamed that even stealing must be more blessed than receiving. 

—Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I’m going for recollection here.

—Mariana Alessandri, Night Vision

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Kudos to Mariana Alessandri for promoting to the foreground what Plato’s readers tend to overlook—namely, that nearly everything of value to mortal, striving human beings takes place in the cave. Professional philosophers may feel entitled to mock the poor, shadow-gazing saps described in Book VII of the Republic, but Socrates himself had a different lesson in mind. After hearing the initial description of the prisoners fettered in the cave, Glaucon remarked, “It’s a strange image you’re describing, and strange prisoners.” Without missing a beat, Socrates replied, “They’re like us” (Plato 1992, 187). The “us” to whom Socrates refers presumably includes him and his willing interlocutors, who, predictably, are struggling to attain clarity with respect to the essence or nature of justice. So how are the prisoners “like us,” especially if this “us” comprises serious, thoughtful philosophers? Socrates immediately clarifies (via a rhetorical question) that the prisoners in question see nothing but “the shadows the fire casts on the wall in front of them” (Plato 1992, 187). 

These cave-dwelling prisoners are thus introduced to us as simultaneously “strange” (Glaucon) and “like us” (Socrates). They are “strange,” we immediately understand, because they habitually mistake appearances for reality and make no genuine effort to escape what we clearly see as their fetters. For all we know, in fact, they are perfectly content with the virtual reality they mindlessly consume. But in what way(s) are the prisoners “like us”? Here things become productively awkward. Owing, perhaps, to Socrates’ oft-remarked penchant for irony, Plato’s readers tend to dismiss or misplace this latter characterization. The shadow-struck prisoners may be like everyone else, we may confidently assert, but they aren’t like us, for we see clearly (and understand) what they do not. (Socrates’ point, of course, is that we are every bit as oblivious to the chains that bind us as the prisoners whom we and Glaucon deem “strange.”) The temptation to exempt ourselves from this otherwise compelling account of the inertial quality of human nature is sufficiently strong, Socrates knew, that it nearly always overwhelms our (otherwise impressive) commitment to the truth. Our knowledge may be limited, we are willing to concede, but we are most assuredly not slaves to appearances in some dimly lit, foul-smelling cave. 

What Mariana accomplishes in Night Vision is to take seriously Socrates’ assertion that he, too, (mis)takes appearances for reality despite his understanding that this unfortunate feature of human nature is nearly universal. In other words, his insight into the diminished reality of others neither entails nor confirms the robust reality of his own experience. At best, as he concedes, he is able to assure himself that he knows that he does not know, but this insight neither vaults him beyond the environs of the cave nor exempts him from the all-too-human fondness for shadows, illusions, fables, and (merely) virtual realities. He thus leads this rambling discussion of justice not from the exalted, privileged position his interlocutors are suspiciously eager to grant him, but from within the cave itself, where we are all strangers to—and, so, estranged from—ourselves. No positive epistemic privilege distinguishes our position vis-à-vis that of the cave-dwellers whom we pity (and perhaps subject to casual ridicule). In other words, our correct diagnosis of the cave-dwellers does not exempt us from their fate, and our interest in philosophy affords us no secure route of egress from the cave. 

FIRELIGHT 

What happens in the cave? As Mariana correctly points out, recollection takes place in the cave, and recollection is the philosophical analogue to the practice of night vision that she is keen to endorse. The cave is where we learn, if we learn, to see in the dark. As Socrates explained, the cave is the site in which our native eros is activated. By flickering firelight we see (what we later learn to be) shadows dancing on the wall, and, reminded thereby of something we only dimly recall, we ask after the provenance of these shadows. Or we don’t. Some people never

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ask that first question, and their lives are not necessarily impoverished as a result, especially if they have the good fortune of residing in an imperfectly just city. Others ask that first question but soon grow discouraged when no satisfying answer is forthcoming. Still others persist, and they endeavor to turn their heads toward the fire that illuminates the cave. Does their achievement somehow dissolve the fetters that bind them? Socrates does not say. All we know is that at some point, for reasons unknown to us and perhaps simply unknown, one among us is dragged away from the cave-wall theatre we call home. This is the only reality we have ever known, and it may be the only reality that is accessible by us. For all practical purposes, that is, this realm of shadows is the only reality that is relevant to our experience.

Prompted by Socrates, readers of the Republic, including Mariana, interpret the cave allegory as an expression of the need for education and the perils attendant to any good-faith effort to address this need. The cave is not just a repository for chumps, slackers, finance bros, and other light-sensitive, virtuality-besotted slaves. The cave is where every human journey begins, even if many or most journeys do not lead beyond its firelit walls.

Although the cave is devoid of direct sunlight, it is illuminated nonetheless by the indirect firelight that affords its fettered residents a glimpse of the shadows dancing on its walls. And although firelight is not to be confused with the blinding radiance of the sun—that is, of Plato’s sun—the fire that lights the cave is sufficient to launch and propel the journeys of those curious souls whose native endowments of eros lead them upward. My point: the fire may not be an optimal source of illumination, but it radiates heat and light. It is furthermore developmentally appropriate to the current condition of the fettered residents of the cave. In short, firelight potentially enables night vision.  

SUNLIGHT

Plato’s sun is not the enemy of the cave dwellers for whom Mariana bravely writes— far from it. Our appreciation of firelight does (and need) not oblige us to suspect or denigrate the value of sunlight as it is described and allegorized by Socrates. Plato’s sun draws us all upward, as far as our respective stores of eros and our labors of anamnesis will allow. Some of us will be content to remain in the cave, while others will be inspired to hazard the blinding brilliance of the illuminated world outside the cave. Still others will dare to gaze directly at the sun, hoping thereby to make sense of the cosmos and the rightful place of human beings within it. As they do so, they may be granted a mystical experience of “The Good,” or they may arrive, more modestly, at an appreciation of the perfect essences toward which their recollections have escorted them. In either event, these sun worshippers will be uniquely qualified to rule over the rest of us, and we may expect them to refrain from shaming those cave dwellers whose resident darkness inclines them toward the practice of night vision. 

Plato’s avowed interest in designing the ideal “city in speech” accounts for his emphasis on education—hence the cave allegory—and his ultimately crucial distinction between knowledge and belief—hence the divided line and the outrageous prospect of a city governed by philosopher-kings. In other words, Plato needs to account for a program of education that would draw a few select souls toward the sun itself, such that these exemplary human beings would come to recollect the knowledge that alone qualifies them to rule over others. Were Plato not primarily concerned to account for the conditions under which a city and its constituent souls might attain justice, he presumably would not have relied so exclusively on the aggressively vertical articulation of his most memorable figures and metaphors. (The “aggressively vertical articulation” I have in mind here derives not only

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from the cave allegory itself, but also from the figure of the “divided line,” of which the cave allegory is offered as an illustration.) If Plato were primarily concerned to explore the imperfect enactments of virtue that occupy Socrates in other dialogues (e.g., Meno, Euthyphro), he might have applied his fertile imagination to an equally compelling elaboration of the horizontal dimensions of the cave, wherein all but a select few of us will endeavor to make or find a home for ourselves. 

Enter Mariana Alessandri, who, despite admiring the vertical organization of Plato’s cave-based program of education, is concerned, first, to survey its horizontal organization, and second, to recommend to the rest of us a salutary practice of night vision. (Here I should confirm, gratefully, that her wisdom is a welcome gift not only to the post-COVID twenty-somethings who have cycled through her classrooms, but also to anxious cave-dwellers more generally.)  What the vertical and horizontal axes of Plato’s cave share in common is the process of recollection, which Mariana helpfully de-mystifies in her demonstrations of the practice of night vision. Indeed, this point is often overlooked by well-intentioned readers and scholars of Plato’s Republic: all of us participate in recollection, even if only a very few of us ever manage thereby to behold the sun. Mariana thus recommends recollection as a process worth practicing and perfecting even (or especially) by those who harbor no realistic expectations of leaving the cave. In her demonstrations of the practice of night vision, she thus resembles more closely the Socrates of the agora, who happily discussed with his fellow Athenians the imperfect virtues practiced imperfectly by the imperfect citizens of an imperfect city. 

Plato performed a regrettable disservice to his readers when he authorized Socrates to describe the environs of the cave by way of an ill-advised analogy: “Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets” (Plato 1992, 187). The unfortunate implication here is that the denizens of the cave, whom we already know to be prisoners, are in fact victimized by puppet-masters who feed them a steady diet of shadows and echoes. My objection to this interpretation is that it tends to misplace the prisoners’ own complicity in their ongoing confusion between reality and appearance, which accounts, as I understand it, for their resistance to good-faith efforts at liberation. The fetters that bind the prisoners and enforce the positive value they subsequently attach to the familiarity of their environs are indicative not of a nefarious plot or conspiracy, but of a baseline experience of unevolved perception and encumbered agency. (In this respect, the fetters that bind are not unlike the car seats, cribs, and bassinets that secure the youngest members of a cave-bound populace.) 

The other cave dwellers whom Socrates mentions, e.g., those who carry the objects whose projected shadows the prisoners mistake for reality, need not be understood as malicious puppet-masters, especially if their unknown endeavors are similarly oriented to shadows and the unconfirmed beliefs they inspire. These unnamed others are simply going about their lives, reliant on beliefs for which they cannot vouch, hoping to happen upon a configuration of shadows they might call home. They may have slipped their original bonds, but they do not possess the knowledge that Socrates insists would distinguish the philosopher-kings from the rest of us. 

Although sunlight is demonstrably damaging and perhaps fatal to those who reside deep within the bowels of the dimly illuminated cave, we need not feel obliged to subject Plato’s sun to the suspicions and criticisms that Plato’s readers, including Mariana, have learned to entertain. While her doubts and suspicions are well founded (Alessandri 2023, 178), they are more appropriately directed toward what I prefer to call light lite, which is what

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her real enemies, the contemporary sophists who collectively constitute what I will call the Light Brigade, cheerfully peddle to unsuspecting cave dwellers. 

The light of Plato’s sun is blinding for all those who are unprepared to behold its radiance, including those whose native eros no longer compels their ascent. For those who can live and thrive in the light of Plato’s sun, the illumination it bestows is potentially transformative of human cognition. Plato’s sun will afford them access to the “superhuman wisdom” that Socrates mockingly attributes to the sophists (Plato 2002, 25). The rest of us must and will thrive on the strength of the (merely) “human wisdom” that Socrates claims for himself (Plato 2002, 25). Wherein lies this (merely) “human wisdom”? According to Socrates, he is the wisest among mortals because he knows that he knows nothing of value. He has not escaped the cave, but he has acknowledged the cave for what it is: a site of optimized self-deception, wherein dancing shadows may activate one’s eros and spur one’s recollection. So, too, for us: On our best days, some of us aspire to see clearly that our ongoing residence in the cave is due in part to our own complicity. The value for us of recollection (and, so, of night vision) thus lies in the imperfect homecoming we may undertake when disabused of our bogus claims to expertise. (And, yes, I am implying that Socrates was put to death for reminding his fellow Athenians that they have not yet made their peace with the imperfect setting in which they reside. It was easier to get rid of him than to mount a sincere homecoming in the realm of shadows.) 

My point: the light of Plato’s sun is not what the Light Brigade peddles under the threat of a debilitating campaign of shame. What the Light Brigade so successfully normalizes is not an alternative source of light, but a particular configuration of firelit shadows that “everyone” has agreed is somehow emblematic of reality and/or truth. The Light Brigade does not liberate enchained prisoners so much as it coerces their acceptance of the chains their eros enjoins them to escape. Preying upon vulnerable, troubled, confused, wearied cave-dwellers, the Light Brigade cleverly turns striving prisoners against themselves, limiting their ascent, poisoning their eros, and mocking their temporarily stalled efforts at recollection. Night vision is thus recommended to us as a practice, constitutive of a sustainably imperfect way of life, which allows striving cave dwellers to reclaim and activate their eros. 

By normalizing the power of positive thinking, the Light Brigade bullies adults into maintaining a fantasy that befits the children they once were. Only a child believes in the magical power of positive thinking, of wishing upon a star, of placing trust in a cosmos in which cheaters never prosper, and so on. As we have seen, the Light Brigade enforces the normalization of this fantasy by threatening contrarian cave dwellers with the surplus suffering of shame. As a society or culture, that is, we are to some extent complicit in this arrangement, which serves to ensure our protracted infantilization. Whence this compulsion to remain blissfully oblivious to the obvious limitations of positive thinking? Why do we agree to deny the formative power of the darkness that falls all around us? 

I hesitate to blame those victims whom I have already acknowledged as burdened by the surplus suffering of shame, but what other options are available to us? Here, too, I am reminded of Socrates, who identified himself as wise on the strength of his success in making a home for himself in the cave he never claimed to have escaped. Having made a home for himself in Athens, notwithstanding what he understood to be its incipient decay, its imperfect justice, and its poor treatment of its divinely appointed benefactors, he doubled down on his cave-dwelling when his friends, earnest but clueless, arranged for him to escape to another cave (Plato 2002

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47-48). Growing up, seeing (and calling out) the Light Brigade for the swindle that it is, does not require us to leave the cave, which Socrates could not have done in any event.

Rather, we need to follow his lead and redouble our efforts to make our home there. 

ARTIFICIAL LIGHT 

The problem with the Light Brigade is not that it promotes the value of a life lived in the light, but that the light it shines is artificial. Eros does not respond to artificial light, and that is precisely the point of the Light Brigade’s efforts to normalize the uncritical, unearned, unreal happiness they peddle. The Light Brigade knows that eros is problematic, that the artificially-sustained status quo is threatened by those who learn to see in the dark, which is why its spokespersons reinforce their chipper blather by punishing all those who refuse (or even question) its platitudes with humiliation, self-doubt, self-recrimination, and self-imposed ostracism.

What the Light Brigade understands, in fact, is that the upward surge of eros is sufficiently powerful that it can be controlled and contained only by an equally powerful countervailing force—that of shame. The enabling secret of the Light Brigade is that its members moonlight as gleeful shame-throwers. The power of positive thinking isn’t suggested as a possibly useful strategy for managing selected moods on particular occasions, i.e., as a strategy that the depressed, alienated, and enraged may elect, modify, or decline as they see fit, but as a mandated, hegemonic, one-size-fits-all, quasi-totalitarian ideology. If one persists in one’s darkness—or, more precisely, if one continues to enact or express one’s darkness—one may expect to feel ashamed for having done so. Double and triple jeopardy await those intrepid cave dwellers who defy the wisdom and toxic benevolence of the Light Brigade. 

While reading Night Vision, I was especially impressed by Mariana’s consistent attention to (what I will call) the multiplier effect of shame. As she remarks in each of her chapters, the acquisition and practice of night vision are complicated for us— however this us is defined—by our understanding that any concession to the wisdom that resides in our darkness is bound to cause us shame. After all, any effort on our part to see in the dark will oblige us to deviate from the coerced normalization of the power of positive thinking. As it turns out, in fact, the opportunity cost of practicing night vision is the shame we initially feel as we indulge the darkness we have learned, under the threat of abjection, to hide from view.  

If a sequel to Night Vision is in the offing, I would encourage Mariana to elevate her consideration of shame to the surface text of her manuscript. As I recall the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, Eeyore was consistently forlorn and pessimistic, but he nevertheless remained a welcome and valued member of the Pooh-centered friend group. As far as I know, he was not subjected to the surplus suffering of shame, and he was not expected (much less obliged) to match the moods of his friends. That would not have been the case if the Light Brigade had infiltrated the Hundred Acre Wood. Eeyore would have been shamed for his resident darkness, and Tigger would have been peer pressured to prescribe to him the happiness pills he apparently consumed by the fistful.

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MOONLIGHT

Prior to departing his forest solitude, Zarathustra greeted the sun and celebrated their supposed kinship as autarkic, self-sufficient generators of light and heat (Nietzsche 1968, 9). Much like the sun, Zarathustra insisted, he needs others only to receive his overflowing radiance, which he identifies as the surfeit of wisdom that burdens him. Zarathustra thus resolves, like the sun, to “go under,” i.e., to offload his wisdom and die the authentic death he has abstractly romanticized (Nietzsche 1968, 10). But his subsequent return to the community of all-too-human mortals does not go well. Try as he might to offload his wisdom, he finds no takers. Rather than tarry with his unexpected disappointment and humiliation, i.e., donning the night vision goggles that Mariana recommends as standard equipment for cave dwellers everywhere, Zarathustra apportions to his would-be audiences the full measure of responsibility (and blame) for his pedagogical failures (Nietzsche 1968, 16-17). This pretense continues for several speeches until he unaccountably finds himself singing what is known as “The Night Song,” wherein the darkness within him finds its voice and celebrates its insufficiency, its vulnerability, its need for the recognition of wounded others (Nietzsche 1968, 105-07). Like the moon, this Zarathustra longs to shine not as a sun in his own right, but with the light bestowed by another. 

Here Zarathustra channels Socrates: the ideal recognitive companion may be another person, preferably Mariana or someone of her advanced emotional intelligence. More often, however, the other who is available for moonlit companionship is a grumpy, dissatisfied internal dialogical partner. Although Zarathustra continues to seek worthy companions, the important takeaway here is that he first needs to set things right with himself. The hectoring, humiliating voice he fears is in fact his own. Independent of the jeers of his unappreciative audiences, he is ashamed of himself for needing to bask in the light cast by another.

This development is crucial not only for Zarathustra’s ongoing Bildungsgang, but also for Mariana’s characterization of night vision as a dialogic practice. In Chapter Four, Mariana wisely conjectures that dignity may be “easier to see in the moonlight” (Alessandri 2023, 106), and her conjecture is especially apposite to the compromised dignity of one’s fellow cave dwellers. According to Nietzsche and Mariana, the light of the moon implies companionship: we sit not only with and in our inward darkness but also with a companion—present or remembered or conjured or idealized—whose steady, welcoming gaze transmits no shame. The moon’s light is not its own; the night vision in which we behold our inward darkness is not only our own. As Zarathustra discovered to his chagrin, fellow cave dwellers need others not (necessarily) for advice, criticism, cheerleading, or any of the feelgood interventions endorsed by the Light Brigade. Cave dwellers need to sit with those who will witness them in their dark glory under the reflected light of the moon. Silent, judgment-free witness is all that is required, even if, as Mariana correctly reports, it is usually a bridge too far for those who claim to be our friends and benefactors. 

BONFIRE LIGHT

People used to ask What Would Jesus Do?, but they rarely consulted Dostoyevsky for the answer to this seemingly important question. Dostoyevsky is an especially perceptive expert to consult when considering what Jesus would do in the company of those who rage in the dark. Embedded in his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, is a “poem” (or “parable”) composed by Ivan Karamazov, ostensibly as a gift to his younger brother Alyosha. In this “poem,” the Grand Inquisitor orders the construction of a heretic bonfire that lights up the

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night and, thereby, faithfully conveys his overt defiance of the God who left him with no choice but to send to heaven the heroes among his people. Immediately following this brazen show of defiance, the Grand Inquisitor is greeted by an unnamed, miracle-performing stranger, whom he and other Sevillians take to be the returned Jesus. The Grand Inquisitor orders the arrest of the stranger and threatens him with the heretic’s reward. 

First, however, he has a few thoughts to share with his Prisoner. In the intimate setting of a private audience, the Grand Inquisitor vents the full fury of his abundant darkness. How could the risen Jesus abandon His flock and deprive the needy of His miracles? How could He expect the most feral among us to stay the course of righteousness without the benefit of in-person, real-time guidance? Although the Grand Inquisitor explicitly asks these questions (and levels these implied accusations) on behalf of those whose lives now rest in his undersized hands, he is really asking about his own predicament. How could the risen Jesus expect the Grand Inquisitor (and other merely human political leaders) to tend His flock throughout the duration of His extended absence? In order to care for this flock with the imperfect love that even the best of human beings can muster, the Grand Inquisitor explains, he has taken his cues from Satan, who, unlike the Prisoner, has not abandoned humankind. Following the playbook of Satan when he tempted Jesus in the desert/wilderness (Matthew 4: 1-11), the Grand Inquisitor grants his people earthly bread, forgives their earthly sins, and surreptitiously relieves them of their burdensome freedom to choose the path of earthly righteousness. As the Grand Inquisitor delivers this potentially shocking revelation, he vacillates between proudly detailing his transgressive alliance with Satan and desperately begging Jesus to resume the miracles His flock so desperately needs.

The Grand Inquisitor’s litany of complaints proceeds for quite a while, leavened by Ivan’s signature wit, without any pushback, interruption, or criticism from the Prisoner, who listens patiently and intently. When the Grand Inquisitor finally concludes his peroration, the Prisoner says nothing, contests nothing, and mounts no defense or interference. He simply kisses the Grand Inquisitor and walks off into the night. What Would Jesus Do when faced in the moonlight by the inward darkness of another? According to Dostoyevsky, He would not run away, change the subject, blame the victim, normalize happiness, nor elect any of the other evasions endorsed by the Light Brigade. According to Dostoyevsky, Jesus would witness the other in his darkness and grant him the recognition that he deserves as an imperfect human being desperate to do the right thing. 

Here it bears noting that Dostoyevsky’s Jesus was no stranger to the darkness— consider, for example, his existential crisis in the garden of Gethsemane or the chronicle of his childhood in the (Gnostic) Gospel of Thomas. He knew from experience what it was like to be abandoned (by sleepy disciples) in His darkest hour. Dostoyevsky’s Jesus thus chooses to witness the Grand Inquisitor, thereby granting his resident darkness the recognition that is its due as a legitimate source of nocturnal insight and wisdom. He issues no call for a fix, cure, penance, sacrament, therapy, anger-management, or institutionalization; he engages in no finger-wagging, downspeaking, judging, or shame-throwing; nor does he essay a nitpicking criticism of the Grand Inquisitor’s argument, his rule over his flock, or his penchant for pyromania. 

What Would Jesus Do? Just ask Dostoyevsky. Or Mariana. Both acknowledge the religious and existential obligation to acknowledge the darkness expressed by others and, in doing so, to afford others the opportunity to perfect their night vision. It is just that simple and, as cave dwellers everywhere know from experience, it is exceedingly rare.

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BIOLUMINESCENCE

When my older daughter was five years old, she became fascinated by the concept and occurrence of bioluminescence. Together we visited websites and turned pages in search of those uncanny creatures who naturally metabolize their own light. Whereas I was partial to the terrifying deep-sea creatures (e.g., anglerfish) we learned about, she was partial to the bioluminescent amphibians. (As I recall, she also was enchanted by the fireflies that lit up the front yard of our neighbor’s home in Pennsylvania.) Our research together naturally led us to inquire after the possibility of human bioluminescence, which a biologist friend confirmed to be the case. (As I have since learned, this case is not altogether settled.) The caveat, this friend volunteered, is that the light produced by our metabolic processes is too dim for our feeble human eyes to behold. For other eyes, however, especially those eyes that have grown accustomed to the discipline and practice of night vision, the bioluminescence of some rare human beings might be understood to illuminate a new path forward.  

Those who practice and perfect their night vision may sit fitfully in the dark, but they too are reliant on light in order to see their darkness for what it really is and what it actually means for them. As I was assembling my taxonomy of forms of light, it occurred to me that Mariana and those for whom she speaks are bioluminescent. Rather than rely on the coercive light of common sense or reason, they produce their own light so that they may process what can only be experienced in the dark. If this metaphor bears extending, we might say that their darkness responds only or primarily to the light they themselves produce, much as Mariana darkly enlightens her readers as they progress through the lessons she provides. 

Indeed, this may be the most rewarding takeaway from Mariana’s remarkable book: rather than simply cheerlead her fellow cave dwellers, which, as she knows, would have led them down the path of shame, she patiently demonstrates the practice of night vision by modeling it to them, i.e., sharing her bioluminescence with them until they generate—and trust—their own. Nor does she insist that they disavow the Light Brigade and its underwriters among the pharmaceutical industry. The “Plato and Prozac” combo meal may be exactly what they need.   

If I’m not mistaken, bioluminescence lies at the center of Mariana’s thoughtful appreciation of the life and legacy of Gloria Anzaldúa, who quite literally wrote herself into and out of a debilitating complex of shame, humiliation, self-doubt, and self-recrimination. In order to do so, as Mariana tells the story, Anzaldúa was obliged to generate—and, crucially, to trust—the alternative light that would guide her efforts to escape the double jeopardies that afflicted her colonized consciousness. This is not to say, of course, that the light Anzaldúa metabolized for herself was pure, untainted, or unrefracted. Unlike the filtered artificial light in which the Light Brigade urges us to bask, the light Anzaldúa produced for herself illuminated (and even magnified) the various faults, deficiencies, vices, and limitations that had been imputed to her under the aegis of the colonial patriarchy. Her triumph lay not in escaping the harsh light that confirmed her status as a failed human being—this is not a fairy tale, after all— but in collecting this light and redirecting it along an unfamiliar vector toward the supposed purity and privilege of its generative source. The glare of the rogue sun of colonialism is brutal, to be sure, but it is also clarifying, which is the quality that Anzaldúa successfully harnessed to her advantage, albeit at immense personal sacrifice.  

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When the colonial patriarchy was obliged by her colonized consciousness to train its withering gaze on itself, the epistemic privilege it claimed for itself shriveled before her very eyes. Yes, she had failed in all the ways that a woman of her age and station could be said to have failed. She did not fit in, she was not ideally demure, energetic, productive, or hetero-normative, and her various illnesses defied immediate diagnosis, lazy prescription, and swift recovery. As she perfected her night vision, however, turning her colonized soul inside out, she came to understand that she had been set up to fail and, according to Mariana, that her abject status uniquely positioned her, qua outsider inside, to take the full measure of her formerly debilitating depression. Anzaldúa “did not befriend her depression,” Mariana notes, “but she renamed it…[and] gave depression a job in her knowledge production” (Alessandri 2023, 175). As such, Anzaldúa stands forth in Night Vision as an inspiration for all those who are “excruciatingly alive to the world” (Alessandri 2023, v), i.e., those who dare to see in the dark by the light they produce for themselves. As Mariana instructively confirms, “A new vocabulary can win us self-respect, and it can also help us identify the external sources of our anguish” (Alessandri 2023, 175).

AFTERGLOW

When Socrates claimed that he had no worthwhile teachings to impart, which is why it would never occur to him to charge a fee, or that he was wise only in the limited, privative sense that he knew that he knew nothing, no one believed him. Those who paid attention understood that he probably had no access to knowledge of the eternal Forms, much less of the Good itself, but they remained steadfast in their conviction that they became in his presence improved versions of themselves. Even if his teachings (or “teachings”) defied strict translation into propositional content, they believed, he was nevertheless successful in turning their souls, tweaking their beliefs, and activating their eros. As it turns out, or so they learned, bravely facing up to what (and how much) one does not know is a surprisingly reliable approach to cultivating a humanly authentic existence. Indeed, no less an authority than Phaedo himself concluded his moving account of the death of Socrates by invoking the memory of “a man who, we would say, was of all those we have known the best, and also the wisest and the most upright” (Plato 1977, 118).  

In her conclusion to Night Vision, Mariana reveals that she tells her students—whose company now presumably includes her grateful readers—“not to believe [her]…and not [to] take [her] word for [what the philosophers say]” (Alessandri 2023, 172). She also “remind[s] them that [she is] a storyteller and there are many ways to tell a story” (Alessandri 2023, 172). Sound advice, this, and hardly controversial. After all, her students and readers must make their own decisions, take responsibility for their own journeys, tell their own stories, and disavow those stories that threaten to detain them against their will in an unhealthy configuration of shadows. Although she does not instruct them, as Zarathustra bade his disciples (Nietzsche 1968, 78), to disavow her authority and renounce her teachings, she apparently cautions them against finding something inhumanly special in the “stories” she tells.  

I am familiar, of course, with the professional convention that directs conscientious teachers to attest to their own limitations as purveyors of truth, guardians of the future, and minders of impressionable souls. Even at the conclusion of a wildly successful course of study, we are supposed to encourage our students to outgrow our tutelage, to develop their own ideas, and, in doing so, to “pluck the wreaths” we metaphorically wear, as Zarathustra so eloquently (and disingenuously) described the ideal outcome of a pedagogical encounter

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(Nietzsche 1968, 78). As professional conventions go, in fact, this one is probably harmless. But why, I ask, is it necessary? 

First of all, Mariana’s students don’t need to be reminded that they will encounter an endless procession of wannabe storytellers. They have arrived in her classroom, on the advice of angelic guardians, weary of this procession and prepared to recollect the nocturnal wisdom that will sustain them. 

Second, her students are already used to telling their own stories, and they are understandably dissatisfied with the stories they have managed thus far to tell. Aware that their best stories only ever yield uninspiring variations on tired stereotypical themes, they seek the alternative stories delivered by storytellers unaffiliated with the Light Brigade. Prompted by their native stores of eros, they converge upon Mariana’s classroom to hear the better stories available to them there. They leave her classroom confident of becoming better storytellers in their own right. 

Third, the virtuality-saturated worlds her students navigate are overrun with hucksters, politicians, cultists, thought leaders, gurus, and influencers, each of whom has a breathless get-happy-quick story to tell. Whether her students know it or not, however, they are not primarily interested in hearing another entertaining account of the power of positive thinking. Like all cave-dwelling strivers, their eros leads them to seek those stories wherein they may glimpse the fleeting truth that will nourish their souls and draw them upward. What Socrates does not say, perhaps because he does not need to say it, is that the eros of cave-dwellers will prompt them to seek out persons of disarming integrity who will guide them on their journey, much as Socrates himself guides Glaucon, Adeimantus, and even Thrasymachus on the journey his cave allegory is meant to further. 

Fourth, Mariana’s students aren’t fooled by the professional humility expressed in her final chapter. They know that she “gets” them and that she has provisioned them with some powerful spelunking tools, which they may put to immediate use in making themselves at home in the cave. They also know that she has accompanied them on a journey of self-discovery that would appall or discomfit their self-appointed mentors and supposed friends. Not just anyone will witness them as they practice and perfect their night vision, but she does. They know as much, and I am certain that they are grateful not only for the education they have received, but also for the judgment-free recognition that transformed their education into something more than a desultory credentialing exercise. For the rest of their lives, whenever they disarm their phones and sit still in the dark, waiting anxiously to receive the night vision that may or may not arrive, they will think of her and gratefully acknowledge the legitimacy of her authentic storytelling. 

Those who knew Socrates understood that his quixotic campaign to isolate the unchanging essences of the virtues was destined to fail. At the same time, however, they also understood (or intuited) that he was preternaturally adept at negotiating the shadows projected via firelight onto the walls of the cave he shared with them. His (merely) “human wisdom” may have seemed puny and insignificant when compared to the “extra-human” wisdom he esteemed but did not possess, but it served him well in his preparations for the afterlife. Whereas he was at home (and at peace) in the cave, they remained persistently estranged from themselves and their imperfect environs. 

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I suspect that something similar is true of Mariana and her students. Although they understand that she is but one “storyteller” among many, and that her wisdom is merely human in provenance, they nevertheless prefer her “stories” to the countless alternatives available to them. They do so, I further suspect, because no other “storyteller” has managed (or bothered) to meet them, on an equal footing, where they actually live. No other “storyteller” has seen them for who they are, much less seen them for who they are in their resident darkness. I would be surprised if they did not regard and cherish her as the poet laureate of the cave. 

Let me turn, finally, to the philosophical question with which I will conclude my appreciation of Night Vision: Does this final chapter betoken an as-yet-unseen corner of the darkened cave that Mariana is keen to survey? Does her “storyteller” persona betray a stubborn residuum of self-doubt, as if the life lessons she dispenses are mere “stories” told to pass the time? If we wish to flip the script written for us by the Light Brigade, might we not begin by noting that some stories—most notably, the stories shared with us in Night Vision—are simply better than others? And that these better stories are better by virtue of the authenticity and self-directed honesty of their author? And if Mariana is reluctant to describe the “stories” she tells as demonstrably superior to the just-so stories circulated by the Light Brigade, is it not incumbent upon the rest of us to celebrate her nocturnal wisdom and share it with others?

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Kayleigh Timmer and two anonymous reviewers for their instructive comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

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References

1. Alessandri, Mariana. 2023. Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking Penguin. 

3. Plato. 1977. Phaedo, translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

4. Plato. 1992. Republic, translated by G.M.A. Grube, revised by C.D.C Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

5. Plato. 2002. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, translated by G.M.A. Grube, revised by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

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Daniel Conway © 2026

Author email: conway[at]tamu[dot]edu