The Allegory Of The Cave In Plato's The Republic

Because of its status as one of the most famous and influential works in philosophy, Plato’s The Republic has had an astounding impact upon modern philosophy and thought. In The Republic, Plato presents the Allegory of the Cave. The Allegory of the Cave poses “the degrees in which our nature may be enlightened or unenlightened” (227). The allegory also serves as an insight into the life of a philosopher, and it proposes the place of philosophy in the world. The allegory illustrates the conflicts that philosophers may face while they attempt to determine the truth about the world and its nature. The Allegory of the Cave begins with Plato asking the reader to “imagine the condition of men living in a sort of cavernous chamber underground”
(227) where they have been kept all their life. Because they have been chained by their necks, they are unable to move their heads and must face the blank wall of the cave. Behind the prisoners, a fire is lit behind “a track with a parapet built along it, like the screen at a puppet-show” (228). The fire and the track are then used to project the shadows humans, animals, and other objects onto the blank cave wall. These prisoners begin to give names to the passing shadows and when the “people crossing behind them spoke, they could only suppose that the sound came from the shadow passing before their eyes” (228). These prisoners consider the shadows to be reality due to their ignorance of the shadow’s origins.
One day prisoner is set free from his chains and sees the fire and the objects used to cast shadows. Upon exiting, the prisoner begins to experience the world outside of the cave. This prisoner is blinded by the light of the sun after exiting the cave and resorts to looking reflections in the water to observe the world. The freed prisoner learns that “what he had formerly seen [were] meaningless illusions” (229). Afterwards, the prisoner “looks to the source of illumination, the sun” (Silverman) and contemplates its nature.
With his new discoveries, the freed prisoner then returns to the cave to share his knowledge with the other prisoners, but because he has spent time in the sunlight, he can no longer see around the dark cave. The other prisoners laugh and mock him for his inability to see in the darkness of the cave. The freed prisoner attempts to tell the other prisoners about the outside world, but they cannot accept it because the cave is all that they have known. Because the enlightened prisoner challenges their view of the world, the group of prisoners become so enraged at the freed prisoner’s ideas that they plot to murder him. The prisoners in the cave would rather live in ignorance of the outside world rather than have their reality questioned. The Allegory of the Cave is commonly interpreted as Plato’s attempt to shed light upon the life of a philosopher or other enlightened.
The freed prisoner is often interpreted as a direct representation of a philosopher. After the freed prisoner escapes from the darkness of the cave, he witnesses the sun, which is seen as a notion of knowledge and enlightenment (Meinwald). Like a philosopher, the prisoner learns to set aside their prior beliefs in order to contemplate their new version of reality. After becoming fully acclimated with the nature of the sun, the freed prisoner reaches the conclusion that the sun controls everything in the visible world. The prisoners who reject the ideas of the enlightened prisoner are a representation of the society as a whole. The prisoners are “only referred to as a group, rather than as individuals” (Godowski) which reinforces their role as a society. Plato implies that the freed prison’s ultimate fate is either humiliation or death. When the prisoner returns to the cave to tells the other, they mock him and planned to kill him. In an allusion Socrates‘s fate Plato
insists:
They would laugh at him and say that he had gone up only to come back with his sight ruined; it was worth no one’s while even to attempt the ascent. If they could lay hands on the man who was trying to set them free and lead them up they would kill him(231).
The prisoner’s lack of sight in the cave indicates that he is no longer content with false reality that he once believed after learning the truth.
The hostile reaction of prisoners reveals Plato’s opinion on society. Plato believed that the majority of the population was content with remaining ignorant about the world and would violently retaliate if their ideas about reality were brought into question (Brickhouse and Smith). The Allegory of the Cave suggests that all people are born into ignorance, but can be brought out of their ignorance through philosophy. Plato advocates the use of philosophy as a method of educating the population in how to rationalize the world and truths that it
holds. The works of Plato have inspired and influenced many philosophers throughout the course of history. While his work may seem to have little to no influence on modern society, many of the core concepts within in the Allegory of the Cave can be found in society. Modern philosopher’s have been able to connect the conflicts within the allegory and relate them to the modern world. Modern media, such as the news, the Internet, and television, may present and instill different versions of the truth. According to Anne Manera, the twenty first century media is uncannily similar to Plato’s allegory. She asks:
Is 21st Century media a modern-day version of Plato’s cave, in which media represents the cave and the information presented to society represents the shadows on the cave wall? Are we, as a society, the prisoners in the cave, presented with images, the shadows, which are not reality at all, but an illusion of reality, an appearance? As new media enables a majority of the members of society to embrace technology in their everyday lives, the quantity of images presented increases constantly, and as a result becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between what is reality and what is an illusion (Manera).
This idea suggests that modern society is more absorbed with their interpretation of reality that the media portrays and reinforces rather than the truth. Because human existence is dependent upon the information that is received, the the information that the modern media relays has a large influence on everyday life. The reality that is presented through these mediums, such as television and the Internet, often go unquestioned and are treated as infallible truths. The members of society who do not question the information that they are presented are comparable to the group of prisoners who blindly accept their perception of reality as the only possible explanation. Despite the Allegory of the Cave predating the modern era, its primary components can easily be compared with today’s society. Through Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, subjects, such as the struggles of an enlightened person, the purpose and place of philosophy in the world, and society’s aversion to the truth, are expressed. The allegory has inspired philosophers and forms of thought for centuries due to its explanation and portray of an enlightened individual. The allegory provides a criticism of society’s content in ignorance, blind faith, and refusal to accept the truth because it opposes their current views of the world. The overwhelming presence and relevance of the allegory in present society shows the impact that it has made in history.