Study Questions: Plato's Allegory of the Cave
1. According to Socrates, what does the Allegory of the Cave
represent?
2. What are the key elements in the imagery used in the allegory?
3. What are some things the allegory suggests about the process of
enlightenment or education?
4. What do the imagery of "shackles" and the "cave" suggest about
the perspective of the cave dwellers or prisoners?
5. In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle
the mind?
6. Compare the perspective of the freed prisoner with the cave
prisoners?
7. According to the allegory, lack of clarity or intellectual
confusion can occur in two distinct ways or contexts. What are
they?
8. According to the allegory, how do cave prisoners get free? What
does this suggest about intellectual freedom?
9. The allegory presupposes that there is a distinction between
appearances and reality.
Do you agree? Why or why not?
10. If Socrates is incorrect in his assumption that there is a
distinction between reality and appearances, what are the two
alternative metaphysical assumptions?
Introduction:
Lecture or Handouts: What famous teacher/philosopher did Plato follow? How
did that teacher die? What famous philosopher was a student of Plato's?
Identify the following folks:
Plato, Glaucon, Socrates, the Sophists
Reading Questions:
Describe how the people in the cave are situated in Plato's parable. Why can't
they move their legs or necks to take a look around? What is the only thing
they are capable of seeing? What is their only source of light?
What do these prisoners trapped in the cavern believe is real?
How do the prisoners react when they first see sunlight?
Why will the prisoner need time to adjust to the world outside the cave?
According to Plato, how would the people in the cave react to an escapee who
tried to explain the truth to them, or who came down and broke their chains
to set them free?
What is the name of the main speaker in this tale according to the introductory
notes? Is it Plato?
What is the name of the person Plato addresses? (Read page 59 closely)
Why, in the concluding paragraph, does Plato say it is impossible for professors
of education to put knowledge in the soul which was not there before?
Explain how Plato creates the parable of the cave in a way that makes it connect
with Socrates, Plato's former teacher.
Explain the idea of a Platonic Form. Provide examples.
Passages for Identification and Discussion: Be able to identify from what work
these passages come, the author, who (if any one) is speaking, and briefly explain
in two to three sentences the significance, context, or importance of the passage in
the larger work.
A."And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or
unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a
mouth open toward the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been
from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot
move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning
round their heads."
B. " . . . And if any one tried to loose another and lead him
up to the light, let them [the prisoners] only catch the offender, and they would put
him to death."
C. "And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplation
to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his
eyes and blinking and before he has become accostumed to the surrounding
darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the
images or the shadows of the images of justice?"