Allegory of the cave

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Allegory of the cave

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is perhaps the best known of his many allegories, metaphors, and parables. The allegory is told and interpreted at the beginning of Book 7 of Republic (514A–520A).

The allegory is best presented as a story, and then interpreted, as Plato himself does.

1 Plot
2 Interpretation
3 Symbolism
4 Current significance
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Imagine prisoners who have been chained since childhood deep inside a cave. Not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained as well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which shapes of various animals, plants, and other things are carried. The shapes cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the shape-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game - naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who begin to play poorly.

Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around.

His eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows.

Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything. At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects.

The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

(This part of the allegory, incidentally, closely matches Plato's metaphor of the sun which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.)

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen". Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimatized. Therefore, he would not be able to identify shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. The other prisoners would then not go to the surface, in fear of losing their eyesight. If someone were to try and force a prisoner to come to the surface, the prisoner would become murderous, and kill whoever tried to force him to come to the surface. (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).

[edit] Interpretation

In the simplest sense, Plato is talking about waking up to the truth of reality about us. He is questioning the very nature of reality and playing the ultimate "what if" game. Not content with mere suggestion, Plato interprets the allegory (beginning at 517b): "This image then [the allegory of the cave] we must apply as a whole to all that has been said" —i.e., it can be used to interpret the preceding several pages, which concern the metaphor of the sun and the divided line. In particular, Plato likens "the region revealed through sight", i.e., the ordinary objects we see around us:to the habitation of the prison, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the sun. And if you assume the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise...[M]y dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good, and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason...(517b-c)

The brilliant sun outside the cave represents the Form of the Good, and this passage among others can easily give the impression that Plato regarded this as a creative, independent god. Moreover, after "returning from divine contemplations to the petty miseries of men", one is apt to cut "a sorry figure" if,

while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate about the notions of these things in the minds of those who have never seen justice itself? (517d-e)

Plato could, perhaps, be thinking (or subtly reminding the reader) of the trial of Socrates here.

It might appear strange that, while acknowledging the political ineptness of one "returning from divine contemplations", Plato has all the while been describing the ideal state, ruled by philosopher-kings, a qualification of which is that they are in regular intercourse with the Form of the Good.

Another more simplistic interpretation of the Allegory is the process and consequence of enlightenment. First one has to awaken from the dream we call life (breaking the bonds); then we become aware of the webs that influence and move us (shadows on the wall); and finally we see the truth for what it truly is (the sun and world outside the cave). Our instinct and natural desire is to free others and awaken them to the truth, but doing so is futile for they cannot see past the illusions and will only attack the truth bearer.

The Allegory becomes a metaphor for the life of Socrates. Awakened to the truth and killed for trying to bring that truth to the chained.

Yet another interpretation is that of the Idealists. As in the philosophy of George Berkeley, it is understood that we do not directly and immediately know real external objects. We only directly know the effect that reality has on our minds. In other words, we immediately know only shadowy inner mental images of real external objects. The real external objects themselves cannot be immediately and directly known. In the Appendix to his main work, Schopenhauer expressed it as follows:

This world that appears to the senses has no true being, but only a ceaseless becoming; it is, and it also is not; and its comprehension is not so much a knowledge as an illusion. This is what he expresses in a myth at the beginning of the seventh book of the Republic, the most important passage in all his works … . He says that men, firmly chained in a dark cave, see neither the genuine original light nor actual things, but only the inadequate light of the fire in the cave, and the shadows of actual things passing by the fire behind their backs. Yet they imagine that the shadows are the reality, and that determining the succession of these shadows is true wisdom.
—The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, Appendix

[edit] Symbolism

Each aspect of the allegory has its own symbolism. Plato had a great interest in politics and sociology, which are reflected in the allegory. The symbolism of the aspects are explored below:

First, Plato establishes the sun as the source of true knowledge. He then says that the prisoners who sit in the cave represent much of humanity. We sit not knowing the truth; however, as Plato relates, philosophers (freed men) will begin to attempt to loosen our chains.

Plato then explains that the chains are representatives of our society and our outside influences. They serve to stop us from questioning and help divert our attention onto different aspects of our lives. In order to maintain power the authoritarians cannot have the prisoners (us) turning around, so they have us concern ourselves with trivial matters instead.

In the analogy we can see that the guards are also representing authority figures that want us to see only the reflections of reality. We can consider them as the government for example. They are people in power who want to stay there; they want the prisoners to remain exactly how they are. They keep us fixed in the state of eikasia.

The cave in which the prisoners sit is our bodies. Our bodies stop us from seeing true reality as they concentrate us on matter. True knowledge which would shine on everything would come from the sun in this analogy, but our caves stop it from reaching us. Plato believes that the soul is trapped in the body, and if we can travel with our soul to the exit of the cave, we can see true reality.

Plato goes on to say that if a prisoner were to break out of his chains and turn around, he would be dazzled by the fire initially, but he would be able to see what was going on and exit the cave. He says that this is a difficult and scary process. He would be defying the guards, his parents, his social influences and his normal way of life. Plato also states that normal prisoners simply do not want to break free. It is too difficult and too scary. They are satisfied with their empirical comfort and do not want to leave.

Upon exiting the cave, the philosopher-prisoner sees the world’s true reality thanks to the sun. His words however cannot describe what he sees and when he returns to the prisoners he has the difficult challenge of explaining it to them. Very few listen to him. How can the philosopher explain what he has seen when the prisoners’ language only describes what is seen in the cave?

Plato says that we cannot describe the divine as our language is also based entirely on experience. Every word stems from an aspect of human experience. However, despite being far off from breaking out of the cave, we can attempt to loosen the chains by questioning what we are told.

[edit] Current significance

Much like Pandora's Box has come to represent the unintended impact of modern technology, Plato's Cave has resonance for modern times as a metaphor for the way mass media dominate public discourse and understanding, standing between the individual and the event and providing the "meaning". It can also be seen as a critique of people living by their society's status quo, in ways they have always known, without wondering if those approaches are valid, and refusing to be open to new or different ideas.