Harrylle V.

Retardo December 3, 2018 BSPA-

III

A Reaction Paper on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Around 2400 years ago, Plato, one of the most famous philosophers from the ancient
times deducted how human behaviour, society, culture, politics, and religion affected the way
we behave. He presented it as an allegory, now widely known as “The Allegory of the Cave” in
his work Republic which envisioned an “ideal” society. He presented it seemingly as a
comparison to the effect of education and the lack of it in our nature.
Basically, the allegory starts with a group of people chained into a low stone wall deep
inside a dark cave since the day they were born. Not only are their hands and feet completely
immobilized by the chains, but their heads are also clamped so that their eyes are fixed to only
look forward. Behind them is a roaring fire, fed by their captors. These captors would then
fashion all kinds of materials to the likeness of people, things, and animals then let their
shadows be cast on the wall in front of the prisoners like a shadow puppet performance. The
activity of people passing on the road above the mouth of the cave would also be heard. The
prisoners would begin a “game” of guessing which shadow would appear next. If one of the
prisoners were to correctly guess, the others would praise him as clever and say that he were a
master of nature. These shadows and distant sounds are what the prisoners believe is the
reality, for they had never seen or heard anything all their lives.
Then one fated day, one of the prisoners escapes his bonds then wades through the
darkness of the cave and out into the light of a new world and realizes that the truth lies beyond
his chains. At first he was blinded by the sunlight, but after he has taken in everything about the
strange, alien world he has emerged to he felt the need to share it with his fellows from bellow.
He returns to the cave and again, his eyes were blinded from the darkness because he came
from the where there was light. He stumbles and injures himself on his way back. When he
arrived to where they were chained, he told the other prisoners about the wonders of the
outside world, but they dismissed his claims. They even said that the injury he has sustained was
because of the time he spent outside the cave. All they would rather want to believe were their
own realities, which are the makeshift shadows that are cast. They refused to believe him and
would harm him if he tries to drag them out of the cave.
In Plato’s theory, the cave and the darkness represents the people’s superficial view of
world. It represents the belief that knowledge only comes from what we see and hear, that
knowledge only comes from what we sense- or as one would put it, empirical evidence.
 The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a ‘cave’ of ignorance
and grave misunderstandings. The shadows that are cast from the likeness of things represent
the perceptions of those who believe empirical evidence ensures knowledge. If you believe that
what you see should be taken as truth, then according to Plato, you are merely seeing a shadow
of the truth. The guessing game that the prisoners play represents how people believe that one
person can be a ‘master’ when in truth, they only have knowledge of the empirical world. Plato
is demonstrating that this master does not actually know any truth, and is not worth any
admiration at all.
The escaped prisoner however, represents the philosopher. The one who freed himself
from his bonds and has endured to wade out of ignorance to seek knowledge outside of the
senses. The sun and the outside world is an analogy of philosophical truths and knowledge,
which is realized only when you go outside of the “cave”.
I think what we face today in the Philippines are trying times. We may be in a way
united in waging a war against crime, poverty, and injustice; but more than just that, what we
fail to realize is that we are also sometimes subconsciously waging wars with one another. We
fail to grasp that instead of fighting against a dysfunctional and chaotic society, it has become a
fight of the ignorant and the sensible in many fronts; a fight of the escaped prisoner against the
ones that were left chained in the darkness of the cave. Though I strongly disagree on Plato’s
suggestive implications that an ideal society is a thousand times better off being ruled
authoritatively by “philosopher kings” than the masses itself, I can see why he had deep,
passionate hatred on the Athenian-type democracy, which very much closely resembles our
type of government system today.
This internal conflict is unarguably evident more than ever in this era of social media
and the internet. Though at some point, it did get to involve the masses and made most from all
walks of life politically inclined like a brief flicker of Plato’s figurative sunlight. The more tragic
occurrence was that it also exposed us to Plato’s “puppet shadows” which are the unreliable
facts, misguided opinions, and fake articles from fake websites that people who only read the
headlines on shared links would never, ever dismiss as falsified claims. Steering clear off these
things everyday as an average internet user is impossible as it is like trying to navigate through a
German minefield unharmed while you’re aboard a bulldozer.
I believe this grim period of widespread anti-intellectualism will only be called to a halt
if the majority of our countrymen would open their minds to the possibility that what learn, no
matter how sincere will not always be the absolute truth. Obtaining standardized education is
nothing but sort of superficial now, as one can become a degree-holder yet a socially-unaware
being which only clings to his own conceited beliefs because he does not want his perception of
the world around him to change, like the prisoners who were left behind.
 What we can all take from this allegory is that the pursuit of knowledge beyond what
the senses can primarily and superficially interpret is the key in achieving a more livable society.
The challenge is placed not just on the ruling individuals, but also to the voting masses who are
as every bit as responsible to the well-being of the country as the ones who are governing it. We
must all break the illusion that the knowledge we have acquired now is adequate, pursue
greater knowledge and better ideals to liberate ourselves from the darkness of our own caves,
and achieve a better country than what we have right now.