The Myth of the Cave is an allegory Plato uses to show how far our natures can be enlightened. It is one of the most convincing and original metaphors for idealism.
Plato imagines a group of people who live in a cave, chained to an underground wall so that they cannot see the light of the sun. Behind them a fire burns and lights up various statues that others carry back and forth. The shadows of those statues fall on the wall of the cave in front of the chained people.
When the prisoners see the shadows, they interpret them in a subjective way and build philosophies around them that they believe without question. The interesting part comes when Plato tells us that one of the prisoners is freed and turns his eyes toward the fire. At first the bright light hurts his eyes because he is not used to it. If he were taken outside the cave, he would be even more disoriented, since the light of the sun is brighter still than the fire.
Once the prisoner can see how the real world looks, he feels only pity for the prisoners who still do not understand the shadows. Plato’s main point is that once someone has understood how reality looks, it is his duty to enlighten the others. (P.2017).
The whole story rests on his theory of forms, which reflects Plato’s belief that the material world around us is not the real one but only a shadow of a real world we are not familiar with. He holds that there are two forms of reality: the visible one that we can understand, and the intelligible world of forms, which is above the one we know. The myth of the cave is built on several symbols.
The cave itself represents the sensible world, what we take to be apparent reality. The darkness is the ignorance of a limited person, while the chains are the feelings that limit us. The fire stands for the light of knowledge, and the shadows are the random opinions that carry an artificial and confusing value. The statues carried in front of the fire represent the actual truth, the physical reality, while the sun is a symbol of perfection and of ultimate knowledge. (Perry, Bratman, Fischer, 2016)
In Plato’s view, the whole way we see the world rests on two perceptions. One is spiritual, the other sensory. The sensory perception is the side of the world we interpret through our sense organs. For that reason it is a world of illusion, and in the Myth of the Cave it is represented by the shadows. The spiritual perception, on the other hand, is the symbol of enlightenment. The only way we can reach it is to set the sensory one aside and be ready to break the chains that tie us in the cave.
Plato also supports the doctrine of recollection, and so he thinks that all our knowledge of the universe comes from recollection. On this doctrine, we are born knowing everything but then forget it. To reach that level of knowledge again, we have to acquire those things back during our lifetime. (Edwards, 1976)
I don’t fully agree with his idea that our knowledge of universals must be innate. To me that would mean we are all geniuses who just need the right experience to recover those truths. In my view, when we are born we are like the canvas of a painter. We have no knowledge of anything, and it is our job to paint that canvas. The only way we can do that is by exploring, experimenting, and being willing to finish the painting. I find it hard to believe that someone who is not interested in finding the truth can be placed at almost the same level as someone who wants to know more.
So the metaphor in Plato’s Myth of the Cave is an allusion to the duty of those who gain knowledge to share it with others, though I don’t agree that we were all born with that knowledge. The more public meaning of Plato’s allegory is this: we, as humanity, know only what our eyes can see, which, put another way, means what our mind can comprehend. What Plato suggests is the idea of infinite knowledge and a clear line between what we could know and what we actually know. It is of course more comfortable to stay stuck with what we already know, and that is why the man who managed to return was killed in the end.
References
- P.(2017), Allegory of the cave, S.1:LULU.com.
- Perry, J., Bratman, M., & Fischer, J. M. (2016). Introduction to philosophy: classical and contemporary readings. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Edwards, P., & Pap, A. (1976). A modern introduction to philosophy: readings from classical and contemporary sources. New York.
Tips:
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