Journey to An Ghrian: Plato's Cave Allegory Reconceived

By Níall Lambkin

Journey to An Ghrian: Plato's Cave Allegory Reconceived, Vol. 1:  Ruchbah, Bruegel, Meaning and the Whale - Consciousness, Bioengineering, and Existential Questions takes one of the oldest forms in philosophy - the dialogue - and employs it to explore one of the most urgent questions of our age: what do we owe to a being we have brought into consciousness?

At the centre of the book is Ksora Ruchbah, a bioengineered entity in profound existential crisis, and Delta Cephei, a phenomenologist and analytic philosopher of mind. Their conversations - probing, ironic, and at moments deeply unsettling - enact a sustained argument: that Heideggerian existential analysis and analytic philosophy of mind are not rival traditions but complementary approaches, each incomplete without the other. Together they illuminate what consciousness requires to flourish - embodiment, community, heritage, temporal continuity - and why creating a conscious being without these conditions is an ethical failure of the first order.

The book also advances an original theory of art. In Bruegel's The Harvesters and the counterpoint of Bach, temporality is not backdrop but argument: genuine aesthetic comprehension demands that the perceiver inhabits time, not merely observes it.

Rigorous, formally inventive, and compellingly readable, Journey to An Ghrian is a serious work of philosophical fiction for readers willing to follow ideas to their conclusions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 183584166X
• ISBN13: 9781835841662
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Rowanvale Books Ltd
• Length: 594 Pages
• Weight: 1.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"