Plato’s Cave

Plato’s Cave is one of the most famous philosophical allegories. Plato uses it to show the difference between superficial appearances and knowledge. Essentially Plato seems to be summing up his Theory of Forms in the “Allegory of the Cave” . In the allegory, the character Socrates gives his brother Glaucon a description of people  sitting in a cave, chained with their heads turned away from the mouth of the cave that they sit in. They sit so they cannot move their heads to look around, and look at the back of the cave. There is a wall behind them, then a trench and behind that there is a fire. They can see flickering shadows on the wall as people move likenesses of animals and plants above the wall, so they silhouette is shown on the wall of the cave. “This truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images”. These Prisoners would take the shadows for the truth, for reality. Socrates also suggests that the prisoners would hold competitions to see who could identify the shadows fastest, or predict them, and win prizes.

Socrates imagines if one prisoner were set free into the real world, outside the cave. He would be suddenly blinded by the light of the sun and confronted with reality. This would be a traumatic experience, however, gradually he would be able to see things like they are . Eventually after seeing the Sun, the metaphor for universal understanding, the philosopher returns to the cave. He then tries to tell the other prisoners the truth. However, Socrates suggests that the prisoners would see how his night vision was ruined his experience, a terrible thing, in an existence that needed it. Socrates concludes that when he tried to get others to come out with him, they would kill him, because of his “wrong” view of the world .

The prisoners in the cave seem to represent the ordinary people of the world, who are looking only at a fragment of the real world, the shadows. Whilst they are doing this, there is a great deal of other, and Plato tells us, more wonderful things outside the cave. The shadows, although they are similar to the real world, are not as genuine. They are described by Socrates as “artificial”, created by another human construct, a fire. This is something very disconnected from the real world, as Plato intends it to be. The chains that imprison the people, representing the soul. Plato believes the soul to truly know that there is something else, something, for lack of a better word, better, but is constrained by the body from being aware of it.

Plato distinguishes between the “philosopher” and the “prisoners”, mere sight seers and the educated, enlightened one. Like an American watching a cricket match. The match appears to be chaos to him, without any rhyme or reason, a flurry of movement. Why is that man trying to catch a ball falling from the sky? But to those that know the rules, it is ordered. Obviously this is a limited analogy, but  for someone in the know, things appear to be more ordered, than people who are not.

Plato seems to be drawing on an ideal “utopia”, he thinks that the philosopher should be listened to, and be a philosopher king. He believes that those who have it, the knowledge, the understanding, should rule. But Plato is realistic, and tells us that it is likely that rather than allow the Philosopher King to rule them, they would kill him.

However, to a degree, I can empathise with the other unenlightened prisoners. If the shadows are the workings of the real world, being enlightened would form no real advantage over anyone else. It would be a hindrance. However, Plato believes that this one truth is so important that he would want to know it at all costs.

I also think that it is in human nature to question, and although the prisoners could not move due to the chains, they would know that they could, but were being forced not to. I also think that puppeteers would have explored, rather than sticking to their allotted task, clearly none of them had, as if they had known of the better world, they would have left. This also leaves us with the question of where they puppeteers got the artificial models, they haven’t left the cave, and yet they have representations of it. The puppeteers also represent a step closer to enlightenment. The prisoners are twice removed from reality , where as the Puppeteers are only once, perhaps associating them with the educated upper class, being closer to the ideal.

Plato believed that change is an illusion, much like his master . The forms don’t change, but the physical world does. From the cave allegory Plato is saying that true knowledge was abandoning the world of the senses and seeking to discover truths in you own mind and discovering his “forms”. Plato believed that once you had got to grips with the forms, it would lead to true knowledge, then goodness.  He believed that while mathematics could be understood, only the forms could be known and the physical world could never truly be known.

The analogy of the cave is good at summing up Plato’s view on the world, and Plato’s famous “theory of knowledge”. Believing that as senses are illusions, they are unreliable. Plato thought that because of this, we could never know the truth of the physical world, or true knowledge about the world. However, he believed that we could form opinions about it.

One of the main problems that I had with Plato’s cave on my first reading is the reaction of the “prisoners”, why do they resist being educated? They symbolise normal people, why don’t they want intellectual advancement? Why would they not value education? I realised that Plato had accounted for some of this.  The people did like to learn, and like all things, rewarded the most intelligent. The people were knowledgeable on the shadows of the cave walls, on what would come next, and what the shadow was. However, they don’t want to embark on the dangerous and painful trek to the overworld. To justify their laziness they dismiss his claims. This is perhaps where I object slightly, I would be in favour of believing that at least one member of the group would be inquisitive enough to follow him.

Another item that may not make the cave seem as convincing, is the fact that one person’s truth may not be another’s and enlightenment is subjective. One person may undergo an experience that enlightens him, and another may not. I believe this is the case with the cave allegory.

Ignorance is bliss? Perhaps the Prisoners would have been happy if they were left alone, without enlightenment. They seemed content as they were, why spoil it? Although I believe this point to be valid, Plato tells us that the knowledge of enlightenment far outweighs the bliss of ignorance. The problem is, how do you know until it’s too late?

Plato thought that true knowledge could be gained through our minds, in ascension to the metaphysical, and away from the false physical. So through the powers of logical thought, we can know real knowledge. He thought that true knowledge lay beyond the senses, and at the heart of reality is the concept of the forms. I find Plato’s allegory quite a convincing piece, due to the sound logic and concepts that he has put across. Although there are some aspects I would dispute to be necessary, I believe it to be a good metaphor for the effect of education on how you perceive the world.

I feel that Plato’s Cave analogy makes a convincing point. That education is necessary to have a wider view on the world. If we had no knowledge, certainly a far smaller section of the tapestry of the world would be revealed, something that, according to Plato, would detract from our lives.