Explain Plato’s analogy of the cave.
Plato, a famous Greek philosopher who wrote the ‘Allegory of the cave’ attempted to answer some philosophical questions (Why are we here? What is reality?). Plato tells the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ as a conversation between him and his teacher, Socrates, who inspired may of Plato’s philosophical theories.
The Analogy of the cave is one of the most famous passages in Plato’s republic. Imagine prisoners being chained up in a cave, since their childhood. Theses prisoners are chained up and forced to look at the wall in the cave. The only source of light in the cave comes from a fire. Behind these prisoners is the fire and between them is a raised walkway, which allows people to walk through the cave. As the people walk through the cave their shadows are reflected onto the wall and their voices are cast as echoes. The prisoners assume that the echoes come from the shadows cast on the wall. This makes that prisoners believe that the shadows on the wall are real, because they are unable to see what is really happening. This means that the prisoners are unable to see the true causes of the shadows, as they are unable to see behind them. Suppose one of the prisoners is finally freed. This prisoner is forced into the real world; he feels confused and doesn’t understand what is going on. He naturally wants to go back to his familiar surroundings of the cave, if the prisoner is prevented from going back to the cave. Gradually his eyes become accustomed to the sunlight and the prisoner will start to realise that the shadows are reflections from the sun. However, due to the prisoner’s new found wisdom about the world he naturally wants to go back to the cave and share his knowledge about the reality of the world. When the prisoner goes back into the cave his eyes adjust back to the darkness, meaning that once again he cannot clearly see. At first he sees nothing at all, due to the light. When the other prisoners hear his story the prisoners are confused and believe that it is better to stay in their natural and familiar surroundings of the cave.
The tied prisoners are an illustration of the world. What the prisoners believe to be reality, the shadows on the wall, is in fact not reality at all. The cave suggests the restraint on society and the prisoners are our own ignorance, as the prisoners are afraid to leave the cave to face the true reality of the world. Plato believes that people are like the chained prisoner’s because we are unable to see the Forms clearly; we only see the physical world. We need to be like the freed prisoners and break from the chains of the physical world, so that we can see the Forms. In this sense the physical world is imprisoning a person by stopping them from seeing the Forms. The people who walk along the walkway (statues) are images of Forms, but these Forms are copies of true reality of the Forms. The freed prisoner is forced to leave the cave. Plato believed that we need to be taught how to understand the Forms do that they could see clearly. It’s a bit like a child’s upbringing limits our abilities to see the world in any other way apart from the way that we have been taught. This is a bit like the prisoner being attracted to the shadows and fire rather than finding out about reality. Over time you adjust to different ways of seeing things. Gradually understanding of what is true. The world above the surface represents the Forms; the sun is the highest Forms and it represents the Form of the Good. The freed prisoner pities the other prisoners and believes that he should go back and educate them. When the prisoner goes back underground, he cannot clearly see. This illustrates that it difficult to see the Forms within this world. The other prisoners don’t want to believe the freed prisoner; this suggests that the people in the cave are trapped in their own ignorance. Once you have seen the reality of the Forms and how things are, you cannot easily go back to the state of ignorance, just like you cannot easily go back to believing in Santa after you have been educated and have a true understanding of the world.
Plato used the story of the cave to illustrate his theory of Forms. He believed that everything on the earth whether and object or an idea is just a name that has been invented to help people to describe their experiences of their own world. Plato also believed that there only exists only one of everything and everything else is just a copy. This one creation is called a Form. The world of Forms is the world of ideas. Plato believed that we have the world of Particulars (this world) and the world of Forms (reality), which is somewhere in the universe of which only our souls can visit. The world of Forms is unchanging and everlasting. This means that it’s immortal, whereas the world of Particulars has many Forms and is for ever changing. The world of Particulars shows the world in it imperfect Form and the world of forms shows life in its perfect Form. Overall, Plato believed that we only have one creation called a Form. Our soul visit the Form at the beginning and end of your life and this is how we know what a cat is. In the world of Particulars there are many copies of Forms, this is why we get different types of cats.
The meaning behind the analogy of the cave is that we cannot believe everything that we see. We are controlled by society and the government. We need to be like the freed prisoner and break free from the chains of society. The chains are the rules and laws within society. This is hard as we find it difficult to let go of our familiar surroundings. For example people find it hard to leave home for the first time, but we need to be able to move on find out the world for ourselves.