PLATO'S CAVE MYTH: DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION - PHILOSOPHY - 2025

The myth of Plato's cave or allegory of the cave, also known as the metaphor of the cave is one of the most remarkable and commented in the history of philosophy allegories. Due to its important meaning, this dialogue has been interpreted many times from different perspectives, highlighting the epistemological and political.

While it is true that the allegory refers to the important role of education in the search for the truth of man, Plato's main objective was to create an extremely simple metaphor through which everyone understood that reason is the source of everything true knowledge.

Origin

The allegory of the cave appeared for the first time at the beginning of Book VII of the Republic and it is calculated that it was written approximately in the year 380 a. C.

This allegory is presented through a dialectical exercise between Socrates, Plato's mentor, and his brother Glaucón.

Description of Plato's Allegory of the Cave

The dialogue begins with Socrates describing to his companion a scene inside a cave where some prisoners are held by their feet, hands and neck against a wall. Prisoners cannot see each other; the only thing you can see is the opposite wall at the bottom of the cave.

Behind them, several men walk down a corridor holding objects of different shapes above their heads. The shadows of these objects are reflected on the wall at the back of the cavern due to a bonfire that is a little further behind the corridor.

The prisoners have been forced to only see the shadows and listen to the sounds that men make when they walk. This is the only thing these prisoners have ever seen, so they believe that this is the reality of the world: nothing but silhouettes and echoes.

Prisoner release

The allegory continues with Socrates proposing that a prisoner be released. What would happen in that case? The prisoner would first turn around the fire causing the shadows and be temporarily blinded and sore due to its luminosity: after all, his eyes have never seen fire before.

Once said prisoner gets used to the light, he discovers the true cause of the shadows he took for absolute. He sees men for the first time and understands that the silhouettes he saw are projections of real objects.

However, the prisoner is forced to go further. Climb a steep incline out of the open-air cave and, once again, are blinded by the glare of the Sun.

When your eyes adapt to this new luminosity, you begin to see the trees, lakes, and animals that we see daily thanks to the light that the sun illuminates all things.

Return to the cavern

After a while, the prisoner must return to the cave where he will try to explain to the rest of the prisoners what he has seen. However, the darkness of the cavern blinds him again: his eyes, already accustomed to the sunlight, do not identify anything in the shadows.

The prisoners don't believe him and dismiss him mockingly: a blind man who doesn't know what he's saying. If the man who released the first prisoner wanted to free the rest, they could even kill him in an attempt to stay away from the place that caused the blindness of the first released prisoner.

Explanation and interpretation

With the history of the cave, Plato tries to explain how man reaches the highest planes of knowledge the closer he gets to the true source of light, in this case, the Sun.

In search of the truth

Interpreters and scholars of philosophy have analyzed the allegory of the cave from its political and epistemological aspects, and although this dialogue has a bit of both, the history of the cave is mainly an example of the hard journey that every man must undertake if he really wants to. see reality as it is.

Regarding the epistemological interpretation, the origin of knowledge could not be represented more clearly: for the Greek philosopher, we all live as prisoners freed inside the cave.

Fire represents the true Sun. From where we are, we can see the men, the figures that they raise over their heads and the shadows they project.

For Plato, the true path to wisdom is to go out of the cave to the outside world and see with a higher illumination that which illuminates everything. This path is only accessible to those who use reason.

This world that we would access would be incomprehensible in its beginnings, and it would blind us as the Sun blinded the prisoner the first time it saw him. It's about looking at things in a new light so that they show their purest essence.

Political aspect

Finally, the political aspect is evident, taking as a context that the work The Republic is Plato's greatest political work.

The allegory begins by talking about the need for man to educate himself in order to get closer to the truth. This need is not limited to education, but also implies returning to the cave, as the prisoner did, with the intention of directing his companions towards the highest degrees of knowledge.

Plato firmly maintained that the government of a people should be temporary, rotating and exclusive to those who have most accessed the intelligible world, and not just the shadows of things.

The cavern today

A large number of contemporary authors and philosophers assure that the allegory of the cave can be applied at all times and at all times, and that its timelessness makes it valid even today.

The world presents itself to each human being in a different way. This personal interpretation is defined through the biological load and cultural beliefs that are so specific to each person.

However, such representations do not really capture the essence of things, and most people live in a world of relative ignorance. This ignorance is comfortable and we could respond violently to someone who, as in the allegory, tries to free us and show us with reason the true essence of things.

At present, the political aspect of the allegory is accentuated due to the role that marketing - and above all, misinformation - has in the generalized blindness of the human being.

According to Plato's allegory of the cave, the human being must face the fear of being blinded, leave the cave and see the world with reason, in order to finally free himself from the prison that has been imposed on him.

References

1. Shorey, P. (1963) Plato: "The Allegory of the Cave" translated from Plato: Collected Dialogues of Hamilton & Cairns. Random House.
2. Cohen, S. Marc. (2006). The Allegory of the Cave. 2018, from University of Washington Website: faculty.washington.edu
3. Ferguson AS (1922). Plato's Simile of Light. Part II. The Allegory of the Cave (Continued). The Classical Quarterly, 16 no.1, 15-28.
4. Huard, Roger L. (2007). Plato's Political Philosophy. The Cave. New York: Algora Publishing.
5. Plate. Book VII of the Republic. The Allegory of the Cave, translated from Chinese by Liu Yu. 2018, from Shippensburg University Website: webspace.ship.edu