Plato's allegory of the cave is one of the best-known, most insightful attempts to explain the nature of

reality. The cave represents the state of most human beings, and the tale of a dramatic exit from the
cave is the source of true understanding.

Plato's Philosophy of Reality

Everyone who has ever lived has asked some version of the same question, at some point in life:
Why are we here? What is the point of all this? What is 'reality,' and what am I supposed to do with
(or about) it?
Plato, a famous Greek philosopher who wrote the Allegory of the Cave, attempted to answer some
of these philosophical questions, most notably about the nature of reality. He tells the 'Allegory of the
Cave' as a conversation between his mentor, Socrates, who inspired many of Plato's philosophical
theories, and one of Socrates' students, Glaucon.

The Theory of Forms

One of Socrates' (and Plato's) chief ideas was that of forms, which explains that the world is made
up of reflections of more perfect and ideal forms. The material world, the one we can see, touch,
hear and smell, is really just half-seen images of the reality of the forms. Relying on your physical
senses alone - trusting what you see, for instance, is, to Socrates, making yourself effectively blind.
The world we see is only a reflection of the forms the world represents (and not even that
accurately). A form, whether it's a circle, or a table, or a tree or a dog, is, for Socrates, the answer to
the question, What is that? Only understanding forms can lead to true knowledge.
Plato uses a parable, a short informative story, to illustrate 'forms' and the 'cave,' in his main
work, The Republic(which first appeared around 380 BC).

The Allegory of the Cave

The dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon is probably fictitious and composed by Plato; whether
or not the allegory originated with Socrates, or if Plato is using his mentor as a stand-in for his own
idea, is unclear.
In the dialogue, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave, in which prisoners are kept. These
prisoners have been in the cave since their childhood, and each of them is held there in a peculiar
manner. They are all chained so that their legs and necks are immobile, forced to look at a wall in
front of them. Behind the prisoners is a fire and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised
walkway, on which people can walk.
These people are puppeteers, and they are carrying objects, in the shape of human and animal
figures, as well as everyday items. The prisoners could only see these flickering images on the wall,
since they could not move their heads; and so, naturally enough, they presumed the images to be
real, rather than just shadowy representations of what is actually real.
In fact, Socrates claimed, the images on the wall would be so real that the prisoners would assign
prestige among each other to the one who could recall the most detail about the shapes, the order in
which they appeared and which might typically be found together or in tandem. Of course, Socrates
would point out, this was hollow praise, since, in fact, the images were not real.
Then Socrates offered a twist in the plot - what if one of the prisoners were to be freed and made to
turn and look at the fire? The bright light would hurt his eyes, as accustomed as he was to the
shadows, and even in turning back to the wall and its flickering images (which would only be
natural), the prisoner couldn't help but notice that they weren't real at all, but only shadows of the
real items on the walkway behind him.
If the prisoner was then taken from the cave and brought into the open, the disorientation would be
even more severe; the light of the sun would be much more brilliant than the fire. But, as his eyes
adjusted, the newly freed prisoner would be able to see beyond only shadows; he would see
dimensions and reflections in the water (even of himself).
After learning of the reality of the world, the prisoner now sees how 'pitiable' his former colleagues in
the cave really are. If he returned to the cave and rejoined them, he would take no pleasure in their
accolades or praise for knowledge of the shadow-figures. For their own part, the prisoners would see
him as deranged, not really knowing what reality is and would say of him that he left the cave and
returned with corrupted eyes.
Socrates' (and Plato's) point is that, once we understand what reality is (the forms), it is the job of the
informed to lead the ignorant 'out of the cave' and into true knowledge. This means, of course, that
those who still are uninformed will resist, since, after all, the cave is all they've ever known. But, this
doesn't change the obligation of the enlightened philosopher to try (and keep trying) to help his
fellow citizens.

Discussion and Explanation

The allegory not only draws on the theory of forms, but it is connected both to the concept of forms
and Plato's theory of the stages of life.
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