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Alanna Burchett

Wilson

Western Civilizations

19 September, 2019

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and What it Means

Plato was one of the first philosophers of Greece. A student of Socrates, Plato was known

for writing a great deal on the questions of reality. Plato believes that there was “a higher world

of eternal, unchanging Ideals or Forms [that had] always existed”(Speilvogel 66). These

unchanging Forms were thought to be the basis of all things, and that the objects seen are just a

reflection of these forms, and philosophy is the training necessary to understand the ideal Forms

that make up the world. These Forms would be a leading piece of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

The Cave that is written about is an allegory, or a story with a hidden meaning, for the teaching

and understanding of how most people perceive the world, a description of how knowledge

affects this understanding, and what to do with this knowledge and how it affects a person.

In the Allegory of the Cave, in order to explain how people perceive the world, Plato

creates a world. The world of outside, and inside the Cave. With the inside of the cave meaning

ignorance and the sunlight/outside the Cave meaning knowledge and understanding. When

people are born they are strapped down and forced to view a puppet show of forms and shapes,

and through this, grow up thinking that “reality [is] nothing else thank the shadow of the

artificial objects”(Plato). This ties back to Plato’s view on reality and the true ideal Forms. These

forms are reflected upon a cave wall and the people there see them as reality. This puppet show

is also caused by the light of a fire behind the puppets, imitating sunlight which is used as a
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metaphor for truth, meaning that the puppet show is supposed to display that the reality we see as

truth is merely the constructs of reality filtered through false knowledge. The fact that people are

also held down and forced to view this puppet show is ment to display that from birth, we are fed

that the reality we see is all that there is in this world and that there is nothing but the caves. But

Plato states that if we turn around and see the true forms of these puppets and then turned to see

the puppet show displayed upon the wall of the cave we would “regard what [we] formerly saw

as far more real than the things now pointed out to [us]”(Plato). Meaning that upon seeing the

true forms of reality, the reality we once saw becomes different as our view point changes with

information. This was a very new thought in ancient Greece, as before this there were no

thoughts on if the reality viewed was truly meaningful, or if reality itself is only a construct that

is open to change.

The second part of Plato’s Allegory is the idea of what freedom does to you and your

system of beliefs. In the Cave, Plato speaks on how if one of the strange peoples chains were

broken and he was given the freedom to turn around and see the world / freely think, that he

would “flee to those things which he is able to discern and regard”(Plato). Meaning that once the

man had seen the Forms of the puppets himself, he would gravitate towards them because he

would find them more understandable and real than the puppet show had become to him. Plato

then explains that the man, if so strangely compelled, would turn around and face the Forms

themselves, and through that, soon find the sunlight that leads into the world outside the cave.

Plato also states that there is a hesitation to this. Plato uses this allegory to display the hesitation

in learning about the unknown, which, unlike most literary pieces, uses darkness as a form of

comfort and ignorance and light as a source of pain and knowledge. Plato also talks about how

the man would not move towards the sunlight without being dragged along meaning that men
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don’t try to seek knowledge that they would find painful. Plato states that even if the man where

to be dragged up into the sunlight that “his eyes would be filled with its beams so that he would

not be able to see even one of the things we call real”(Plato). Often times the man would rather

return back to the puppet show, and look back at the shadows. These shadows can also be a

metaphor for how the Greek men turn back towards plays and dramas instead of facing the real

issues in society and how they could effect them. These plays were often dramas, meant to

entertain and to point fingers about how society was flawed. These dramas could be considered

shadows of ideal Forms, shadows that entertain and soon become realities to the people

watching. But by turning away from these shadows and ideals your able to realize that there is a

world of truth outside of the cave of the theatre

The last thing Plato spoke on about the Allegory of the Cave was on how knowledge

changes your understanding of the world. Plato talks about the difficulties of learning by giving

us the image of a man being forcefully dragged out of a cave while still being blinded by light.

This is supposed to imply that Plato is dragging people into understanding forcefully through

teaching them, and while doing so, the learners are blinded by truth. Plato also states that as the

strange people become so used to the light that he could “be able to look upon the sun itself and

see its true nature”(Plato), meaning that he would be able to see the worlds greatest knowledge

(the sun) and understand it (see it). Plato also goes on about how that if the man that can view the

sun were to go back into the cave he would be unable to see the shadows anymore. Meaning that

he would be unable to view the dramas and futile entertainment that he watched before he

became enlightened.

Plato’s allegory of the Cave was on of the first looks into how people perceive

knowledge and understanding as well as enlightenment. These thoughts reflected through the rest
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of history, and caused many people to be able to better understand what it means to understand.

This Allegory also helped people to turn away from frivolous entertainments and false truths told

to them at birth, and face the light that had always been behind them.

Bibliography

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization. Australia: Cengage Learning, 2017.

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Plato: The Allegory of the Cave, P. Shorey trans. From Plato: Collected Dialogues, ed.

Hamilton & Cairns Random House, 1963