Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

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Plato sees the phenomenal world as a copy of the reality. The original one is in the world of forms. This interpretation would add a different meaning to life. They always watched these shadows as real. For them, the shadows represent the reality. They have not exposed to the outside of the cave. Nevertheless, one person was able to escape from the cave and to see the sun (the real Forms).

Plato presents the allegory of the cave in The Republic. It was written as a dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates. It has described that a group of people have lived in a cave chained to one of the wall in the cave. The wall was totally blank. There was a fire behind them and those people only saw the shadows projected from the objects passing by on the blank wall. They knew only about the shadows and identified the shadows seem to appear. The reality for those prisoners were the shadows they seen in the blank wall. Nevertheless, they were not real. According to Plato, there are three higher levels. They are, 

Natural sciences (Mathematics, Geometry)

Deductive logic

Theory of Forms

There is one person who escapes from the cave and that one person is a philosopher. The philosopher escapes from the cave because only a philosopher could understand the shadows as unreal phenomena. However, the other prisoners in the cave do not need to escape from the cave for the reason that they believe the shadows as real. 

These people have been kept in the cave from their childhood. They were chained to get their legs and necks fixed, so that they cannot look around the cave. They cannot even look at each other. The prisoners have not seen anything other than the shadows. Therefore, the shadows are the only reality for them. There is a walkway divided from a low wall between the prisoners and the fire. People walk through the walking way carrying objects (imagine a puppet show and the puppet show men). Artists make the shadows. The artists work can be understood if it is connected with Plato’s idea of the Republic. It has mentioned that Plato banished artists the city. Plato did not banish artists just because they were poets and just because they are far from the truth. He wanted to strictly censor the artworks to make sure that they do not destroy the values of the republic. To connect it to the allegory of the cave, it can be said that the artists were creating shadows that deviates humans from the truth. Escaping the cave is not an easy task. Only a dedicative few people would escape from the cave and only few people could understand the reality. The rest of the people would stay imprisonment merely believing the unreality of shadows as real. There is a hidden symbolism behind the allegory of the cave of Plato.

Cave – Superficial physical reality 

Chains- trapped in the ignorance 

Shadows – Illusion/ superficial truth

Freed prisoner – The Philosopher

Light – Wisdom 

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