Is Plato’s cave still (virtually) with us?

Bert Olivier

As an undergraduate student, Bert Olivier discovered Philosophy more or less by accident, but has never regretted it. (Read on!)Because Bert knew very little, Philosophy turned out to be just up his street, as it were, because of Socrates's teaching, that the only thing we know with certainty is how little we know. Armed with this 'docta ignorantia', Bert set out to teach students the value of questioning, and even found out that one could write cogently about it, which he did during the 1980s and '90s in opposition to apartheid. Since then, he has been teaching and writing on Philosophy and his other great loves, namely, the arts, architecture and literature. In the face of the many irrational actions on the part of people, and wanting to understand these, later on he branched out into Psychoanalysis and Social Theory as well, and because Philosophy cultivates in one a strong sense of justice, he has more recently been harnessing what little knowledge he has in intellectual opposition to the injustices brought about by the dominant economic system today, to wit, neoliberal capitalism. His motto is taken from Immanuel Kant's work: 'Sapere aude!'. Bert Olivier is Professor of Philosophy at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He holds an M.A. and D.Phil in Philosophy, has held Postdoctoral Fellowships in Philosophy at Yale University in the USA on more than one occasion, and has held a Research Fellowship at The University of Wales, Cardiff. At NMMU he teaches various sub-disciplines of philosophy, as well as film studies, media and architectural theory, and psychoanalytic theory.

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