Plato’s Allegory of the Cave Explained (With Examples)

Perhaps one of the most popular allegories in all of philosophy is Plato’s allegory of the cave. Many students and people in general often misunderstand it.

Most find the allegory fascinating, yet cannot fully get it.

The ancient Greek philosophers believed that philosophy was a tremendously useful skill that should be practiced by everyone. They thought we could learn to live the best life and die well.

Plato thought of philosophy as a therapy for the soul, and he dared to tackle some of the most profound philosophical problems with his allegory of the cave.

The Cave

In book seven of Plato’s The Republic, he tells us about some people chained in a cave, forced to watch shadows across a stone wall.

The group of prisoners has been living there in chains since their birth. They have never seen the outside world, only shadows of it. They have no knowledge of anything beyond their miserable lives in the cave.

The prisoners are chained facing a wall and can’t turn their heads. There’s a fire behind them which produces some light. Occasionally people pass by that fire with animals and objects or figures that are cast in the wall, and the prisoners can see their shadows.

All that the prisoners know are those shadows. They name them and believe they are real entities. They talk about the shadows with enthusiasm and are fascinated by them, thinking that if you pay attention, you can succeed in life.

One day, a prisoner manages to free himself from the chains and step outside the cave to see the outer world. At first, the sun burns his eyes, but then they adjust, and he finds everything so colorful, exciting, full of life. He sees the real forms of the things he knew as shadows, like rabbits, birds, flowers, people, objects, he even sees the sky and stars.

“Previously, he had been looking only at phantoms; now, he is nearer to the true nature of being.” – Plato

People explain to him that everything he sees is real, and the shadows are just mere reflections. Although he cannot understand this at first, he then adjusts and sees how the sun is responsible for light and producing the shadows.

The prisoner gets back to the cave and tells everyone what he had just witnessed, but no one believes him. His eyes had adjusted to the sun, and now he can’t see the shadows clearly as he did before. They tell him he’s crazy, and violently resist while he tries to free them.

The cave signifies ignorance.

Plato’s Analogy

Plato introduces this passage as an analogy of what it is like to be a philosopher trying to educate society.

People are comfortable in their ignorance and hostile to anyone who tries to free them from it. The prisoners plotted and killed the one who escaped and went back to help them, just like the Athenians sentenced Socrates to death for trying to enlighten them.

This is an allegory of the life of all enlightened and wise people who get rejected by ignorance when they try to enlighten others.

For Plato, most of us live like the prisoners in the cave. The masses are stubborn and ignorant and dedicate their lives to pursue shadows instead of the real thing. The shadows can be interpreted as status, wealth, among other things, as opposed to wisdom and knowledge.

So, what then is the solution to this problem?

The Socratic Method

It is not our fault to be in the caves; we all begin there (the system makes sure of that). From an early age, we take everything they say to us as absolute. When we have questions too complicated for adults to answer, they encourage us to stop asking questions, therefore killing our curiosity.

For some philosophers, ignorance is a sin, and Plato wanted to eradicate ignorance. But you can’t just go around telling people they are wrong, like in Plato’s story, they will just get offended and probably become hostile towards you (like Athens did to Socrates).

For Plato, the solution to this problem was to educate society carefully and philosophically. He thought the best way to do this was with the Socratic Method.

This is a very subtle process. You don’t force people to think, read some books, nor lecture them on any particular topic. You educate people without them realizing it. Plato believed that people could detect the errors in their reasoning with a little bit of help, you just need to give them a small clue, a push, so they realize where they are wrong.

You can’t teach anyone anything by making them feel stupid. According to Plato, we all start in the cave, but we have a way out, philosophy.

What Is The Theory (World) of Forms?

The allegory of the cave is also related to Plato’s theory of forms, one of the most important philosophical concepts in Plato’s writings. According to this theory, everything in the physical world is just a reflection of an ideal form (just like the shadows in the cave).

From here on, all sorts of questions arise, since the cave leads to questioning if we really know anything at all, a topic studied in detail in Epistemology. Another question is the nature of reality, which is an Ontological question. These are fundamental questions in philosophy, which are still studied today, and haven’t been answered yet.

Plato argues that you can find a true being of virtue or justice (you can find its form), and from here, Metaphysics comes to being. Metaphysics is concerned with the absolute or ultimate nature of reality, so Plato is, in some sense, the first metaphysical philosopher.

Everything is a reflection of a true world, like the shadows in the cave, or at least that’s what Plato believed. He thought that there should be an ideal world where everything is absolute, fixed, and unchanging. This is because we are in constant change; we are not the same person we were yesterday since we know more today and may even have a new philosophy of life.

In some sense, Plato believed in absolute truth, an ideal world with justice, honesty, virtues, and balance. It is perhaps a romantic idea, one that could’ve been born out of frustration for Socrates’ death. Maybe he felt impotence and wanted to believe there was something beyond this world, something that transcended everything we know and gave life an inherent meaning (but that’s just my opinion).

Here is an example of the theory of forms:

Everything is in constant change, as Plato says. Moreover, everything is in a state of decay, even our bodies, which are dying every second.

Imagine the cycle of life of an apple. First, the apple is formed, then it matures and falls from the tree, and finally, it rots (if no one eats it, of course). Plato says that the apple has only one form, one essence, an ideal form. The three stages of the apple are a variant of the absolute form, which is fixed and unchanging. The apple can only change in this world, whereas it has a fixed form in the ideal world.

The rotten apple is just an appearance of the true/ideal form of the apple, a variation. The different stages of the apple are just imperfect reflections of the perfect apple (which doesn’t exist in this material world).

This concept can be compared with eternity and God. Supposedly, God is omniscient, omnipotent. He doesn’t change because he is perfect (unlike us), at least that’s the concept of God and eternity. Something eternal has no beginning and no end, unlike infinity, which has a beginning, yet no end.

For Plato, we can recognize the apple because we come from the perfect world of forms, and we see the essence of the original form in the many stages of the apple’s life.

According to Plato, the world is divided into two: the intelligible world and the visible world. The intelligible is that which can be understood by the intellect but not by the senses, and the forms and the absolute comprise it. The senses grasp the visible, we see it and taste it, and is made possible by the world of forms.

Plato says that a part of us is permanent, it doesn’t change, and that is the soul. The soul, Plato says, is connected with the world of forms, that is why we can identify the objects in the visible world.

The world of forms is a very profound and interesting philosophical concept. For some, it is the world of the philosophers, which most people can’t see nor begin to conceive because they live in the world of the senses (the visible world). Philosophers can see beyond the visible world and into the world of forms because they can think for themselves and question everything, thinking independently of their senses.

Summarizing

To summarize, everything in the material world is in constant change, and towards a state of decay. They get their identity from the original object in the world of forms (which is permanent and fixed).

Just like the shadows of the cave, the material world (the one we live in) is a shadow of the world of forms. The philosopher’s job is to find the world of form and break free from the visible world.