On Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Drawing on guidance from Heidegger and Kenny, and a direct reading of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, this essay contends that the Allegory has had such an enduring and influential effect on philosophy, history, and western culture at large, due to its successful synthesis of so many of his ideas into a single narrative. In support of this contention, three parallels will be explored:

1. the Divided Line
2. the Forms
3. the importance of philosophical education

A complete and comprehensive evaluation of Plato’s cosmology is far beyond the scope of this essay; therefore I will limit the focus to Plato’s theory of knowledge and how it connects to the Allegory of the Cave. This will be done in two ways: first, by describing Plato’s other well known epistemological model, The Divided Line, and using it as a guiding principle for this discussion; and second, by connecting sections of the Divided Line to key features within the Allegory of the Cave.

The key to understanding Plato’s views on all subjects resides within his metaphysical outlook, which he outlines in the Divided Line (fig 1), his grand theory of knowledge which is split into four distinct and unequal parts. It is first divided into two sections, opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme,) each containing two sub-parts.

In short, the divided line illustrates degrees of knowing, from the lowest opaque knowledge (imagination) to the clearest and highest ideal knowledge (understanding of the Forms, Ideas themselves) which Plato illustrates in the Allegory of the Cave, where categories of the divided line correspond to specific features within the narrative.

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes a cave where three prisoners have been shackled since birth, with their backs to the entrance, unable to move and forced to stare at a single spot on the wall. Behind them is a walkway where objects can be paraded and behind that a fire, which casts shadows of the objects on to the wall in front of the prisoners. Every waking hour the prisoners watch the shadows flicker across the wall. Knowing only the world of these shadows, they play games, competing with each other to see who best knows the shadows.

One prisoner is then unshackled and dragged out past the walkway, past the fire, and out beyond the entrance to the world outside. Here he is left, his eyes struggling to adjust to the brightness of the Sun. Though, eventually his eyes do adjust and he is finally able to see the deeper reality which has been hidden from him his entire life, the world outside the cave. He then briefly looks upon the Sun itself, the source that illuminates all things, before having to look away due to its brightness. He is then dragged back into the cave and reshackled in his original position next to his two fellow cave prisoners.

As his eyes readjust back to the dim light of the cave, he struggles to see what the other prisoners find so easy, that of the shadows on the wall. He attempts to tell the others of the bright world outside and to the true nature of the shadows, but because his eyes aren’t as comfortable in the dim light, they don’t believe him capable of understanding even the simplest of shapes (ideas) and admonish him, calling him at best stupid, at worst insane. Finally, they turn on him, seeing his ideas as a threat to their cave harmony and kill him to prevent further discord to the group.

Plato constructed the narrative of the cave very specifically and with great care, emphasising key concepts of his cosmological outlook. Specifically, how “education in the liberal arts of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmony is to release the prisoners from their chains, and to lead them, past the puppets and the fire in the shadow-world of becoming [opinion], into the open sunlight of the world of being [knowledge].” (Kenny, 2006, p. 50) For Plato, it is education, specifically philosophical education, which frees us from error and allows us to understand the world on its most fundamental, metaphysical level; the cave representing the journey towards first principles (archai). (Groarke, 2016) And, furthermore, that the philosophically uninitiated, lacking the ability to comprehend those that are, feel alienated and respond defensively in an attempt to re-establish their worth in relation to the perceived difference between themselves and the philosophically educated.

At the beginning of the story, the prisoners can only see reflections and shadows cast on the cave walls by the fire behind them. This directly represents empirical observation. While the game the prisoners play, competing to see who knows the shadows best, represents the belief that a person knowledgeable of the empirical world is an intellectual authority, holding reliable true knowledge of the world. According to Plato, those who hold ‘that seeing is believing’ are, at most, only able of perceiving a shadow of the truth; and, moreover, that admiration bestowed upon these “authorities” is misplaced, as “[t]o them…the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows.” (Plato n.d., p. 393)

Next the prisoner is unshackled and turned around. He is now able to see the fire as the source of light, which he has only ever seen reflected off the cave wall; the walkway that lies between the fire and the prisoners; and the objects whence the shadows come. He is now able to see the elements that make up the empirical world. The objects and the fire represent the underlying principles of the empirical. And while the prisoner can now see an “unhidden” (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 257-258) principle to what he previously thought was true knowledge (the shadows), for Plato, this is too is merely just a shadow of a deeper reality. In short, they are “images” of the Forms. (Plato n.d., p. 194)

In the Republic, Plato uses mathematical education as a means to explain these levels of knowledge further.

1

Firstly, when someone reads a story about a mathematician, this is an exercise of the imagination.

2

Secondly, when someone counts objects, such as people or chariots, or any other physical object, this will be an exercise in mathematical belief.

3

Thirdly, higher examination of arithmetic will lead the student from the world of becoming (opinion) all together, and teach him the study of abstract numbers, which can be multiplied but cannot change.

4

And lastly, by using dialectic and questioning the foundations of mathematics it will give him a true understanding of the number. (Kenny, 2006, p. 50)

Within the Allegory, these last two educational levels correspond to the world beyond the cave.

Once outside the cave, the prisoner is exposed to the world beyond the sensible, the intelligible world. This further turning, from the sensible to the intelligible reveals deeper underlying principles that were hidden from him whilst only relying on his senses to know the world. He can now grasp the interconnecting principles that give rise to the everyday empirical world. In this sense, the outside world that is seen to him in the Suns light is the world of abstract numbers. Where arithmetic is riddled with multiples, such as adding two to two creates four, the world of abstract numbers is concerned with the Idea of Two. This Idea is singular and possesses internal unchangability, and like all objects of knowledge (the divided line) belongs to the world of being (knowledge), not of becoming (opinion). (Kenny, 2006, p. 49) For Plato, though, to truly understand the world there is still further to go.

The final turn towards truth is a glance towards the Sun. The Sun, like the fire in the cave is the source that makes all things visible. Though, where the fire is in the sensible realm of visible objects, the Sun is in the supersensible realm of pure intelligible knowing. According to Plato, the fire is an image of the Sun, a mere shadow of its brilliance. For Plato, the Sun represents the Form that allows us to know all Forms; it is the form for which all Forms aim. According to Plato, it is this understanding of the Forms as “the author of knowledge to all things known” which is the ultimate truth; for it is both the most fundamental cause and the ultimate aim of all things, the Form of the Good. (Plato, n.d., p. 193) For Plato, truth and education are essentially interconnected into man’s being; and, moreover, that it is revelatory, leaving man forever changed by his understanding of the true nature of things. (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 256-257)

Upon his return, the prisoner now changed by his education of the Forms, struggles to share this knowledge with his fellow prisoners. They can’t understand, nor see any valid reason to believe his wild stories of a ‘deeper reality’ beyond world of known things (the shadows). This is due to “[t]he man of the cave, [being] so obsessed with his own “opinion,” [that he] cannot even surmise the possibility that what he considers real is only real in a shadowy sense.” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 255) Moreover, they feel justified in this position because of his inability to see the shadows as clearly as they do, as his eyes (representing the intellect) have become attuned to the Sun (The Form of the Good). For Plato this return of the philosopher holds personal importance. He saw first-hand the fear people have towards philosophical knowledge during the trial of his friend and mentor, Socrates. Whose philosophical questioning led to a death sentence on charges of impiety and corruption of the youth. It is this attack on knowledge which Plato is drawing attention to; ultimately representing how society values knowledge.

In sum, the strength of Plato’s Allegory is its ability to touch on so many distinct areas of thought. Using knowledge as an example we can see he touches on ideas such as: what is knowledge and how we come to know it; how society views and values knowledge; the limitation of the senses and the potential scope of the intellect. The fact that his allegory has remained relevant to this day is incredible when considering the developments throughout the history of western philosophy. The story underscores the intuitive position that we all find ourselves in regarding the world which we inhabit, of knowing what is real and what is illusory. Plato’s solution of the Forms may be limited by modern evidential reasoning, but it still finds a home in areas of modern metaphysical logic, and, not least, society as a whole. We intuitively find ourselves within Plato’s cave and for this reason the problems raised by it have endured and will continue to.

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