Allegory of the cave
The Allegory of the Cave is an allegory used by the Greek
philosopher Plato in his work The Republic. The allegory of the
cave is told and then interpreted by the character Socrates at the
beginning of Book 7 (514a–520a). It is related to Plato's
metaphor of the sun (507b–509c) and the analogy of the divided
line (509d–513e) which immediately precede it at the end of
Book 6. Allegories are summarized in the viewpoint of dialectic
at the end of book VII and VIII (531d-534e). The allegory of the
cave is also commonly known as Myth of the Cave, Metaphor of
the Cave or the Parable of the Cave.
Imagine prisoners who have been chained since their childhood
deep inside a cave: not only are their arms and legs unmovable
because of chains; their heads are chained in one direction as
well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.
Allegory of the cave used in
Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire
William Blake's Visions of
and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which puppets of
the Daughters of Albion
(1793).
various animals, plants, and other things are moved along. The
puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these
shadows. Behind this cave there is a well-used road, and upon this road people are walking and
talking and generally making noise. The prisoners, then, believe that these noises are coming
directly from the shadows they are watching pass by on the cave wall.
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
objects. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly
naming the shapes and dislike those who play poorly.[citation needed]
Suppose a prisoner's chains break, and he is able to get up and walk about (a process which takes
some time, as he has never done it before). Eventually he will be compelled to explore; he walks
up and out of the cave, whereby he is instantly blinded by the sun. He turns then to the shadows
on the floor, in the lakes, slowly working his way out of his deluded mind, and he is eventually
able to glimpse the sun. In time, he would learn to see it as the object that 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 relates to Plato's metaphor of the sun which
occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.)[1]
Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free his
fellow prisoners, but would be compelled to do so. 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 acclimated. He might
stumble, Plato asserts, and the prisoners would conclude that his experience had ruined him. He
would not be able to identify the shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it
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seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. (The Republic bk. VII,
516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).[2]
Interpretation
Plato believed that truth was gained from looking at universals in order to gain understanding of
experience Humans had to travel from the visible realm of image-making and objects of sense, to
the intelligible, or invisible, realm of reasoning and understanding. "The Allegory of the Cave"
symbolizes this trek and how it would look to those still in a lower realm. Plato is saying that
humans are all prisoners and that the tangible world is our cave. The things which we perceive
as real are actually just shadows on a wall. Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into the light of
the sun, we amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality: where ideas in our minds
can help us understand the form of 'The Good'.
Socrates himself 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., the preceding analogy of the
divided line and metaphor of the sun.
It has been up to scholarly debate in 20th century how exactly these three sequential comparisons
can be coherently bound together. The main problems arise from the allegory of the cave having
three cognitive stages and the divided line having four of them, where the first division
(shadows, reflections) seems not to be needed to apply to the cave and is hard to be interpreted
ontologically, i.e. in the manner of the cave at all. The metaphor of the sun seems to assert that
from seeing things in the light of the sun we can raise to seeing ideas in the light of the Good,
while in the cave it is not evident that it can not be done without helping and forcing prisoners to
look at the light.
Plato's own remarks on the allegory
In particular, Plato likens "the region revealed through sight"—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... My 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 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 l the author of light and itself
in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason..." (517b-c). 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?" (527d-e)
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Movements between stages
Since the allegory is by Socrates' words about education, it should be interpreted from the
viewpoint of conditions for taking steps toward higher stages, i.e., conditions for education.
There are four steps described: (1) prisoners who think that shadows are reality; (2) prisoners
who are freed and forced to look at the things that are used to cast shadows on the wall and do
not recognize these as sources for shadows; (3) prisoners who are freed and dragged along to the
outside of cave; (4) free men returning to the cave to former fellow-prisoners.
Step (3) has also four sub-steps of looking at (a) shadows, (b) things that cast shadows, (c)
heavenly bodies, (d) sun as the source and guarantee of all the things outside cave.
Substeps beneath step (3) cohere notably with analogy of the divided line. Confrontation
between cave and outside can be explained by metaphor of sun, but there is one major
difference: in the cave one cannot deduce from whatever position that burning artificial light and
things that are carried are the source for shadows. Metaphor of the sun argues but that this kind
of deduction is possible.
All the steps have their proper interpretation from the ontological, epistemological and ethical
points of view to any one who understands this basic idea of knowledge.
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References
1. ^ Plato, & Jowett, B. (1941). Plato's The Republic. New York: The Modern library.
OCLC: 964319
2. ^ Plato, & Shorey, P. (1930). The Republic. London: W. Heinemann, ltd. Error!
Hyperlink reference not valid.
External links
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Video interpretation of the Cave by students at American University on YouTube
Plato: The Allegory of the Cave, from The Republic at Washington State University
Plato: The Republic at Project Gutenberg
Plato: The Allegory of the Cave, from The Republic at University of Washington Faculty
Plato: Book VII of The Republic, Allegory of the Cave at Shippensburg University
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