My Thoughts

Have you ever heard of the Allegory of the Cave? I suppose your answer may well rest upon what the meaning of an allegory is to you. An allegory is a literary device, typically a story or narrative used to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible, to make the difficult easier to understand; sort of like comic books with fewer pictures.

The Allegory of the Cave is, in this case, told by Socrates in Plato’s Republic. It is an interesting tale and, as with many ancient tales, one that continues to be relevant no matter the intervening ages.

Plato begins by having Socrates ask Glaucon to imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned from childhood, but not from birth. These prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not to look around at the cave, each other, or themselves. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, behind which people walk carrying objects or puppets “of men and other living things”. The prisoners cannot see any of what is happening behind them, they are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. The sounds of the people talking echo off the walls, and the prisoners believe these sounds come from the shadows.

Socrates suggests that the shadows are reality for the prisoners because they have never seen anything else; they do not realize that what they see are shadows of objects in front of a fire, much less that these objects are inspired by real things outside the cave which they do not see. The fire, or human made light, and the puppets, used to make shadows, are done by the artists or in modern parlance, image makers or media. Plato, however, indicates that the fire is also the political doctrine that is taught in a nation state. The artists use light and shadows to teach the dominant doctrines of a time and place.

Plato then supposes that one prisoner is freed. This prisoner would look around and see the fire. The light would hurt his eyes and make it difficult for him to see the objects casting the shadows. If he were told that what he is seeing is real instead of the other version of reality he sees on the wall, he would not believe it. In his pain, Plato continues, the freed prisoner would turn away and run back to what he is accustomed to (that is, the shadows of the carried objects). He writes “… it would hurt his eyes, and he would escape by turning away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him.”

Plato continues: “Suppose… that someone should drag him… by force, up the rough ascent, the steep way up, and never stop until he could drag him out into the light of the sun.” The prisoner would be angry and in pain, and this would only worsen when the radiant light of the sun overwhelms his eyes and blinds him.

“Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can see only shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself.” Only after he can look straight at the sun “is he able to reason about it” and what it is.

Plato continues, saying that the freed prisoner would think that the world outside the cave was superior to the world he experienced in the cave and attempt to share this with the prisoners remaining in the cave attempting to bring them onto the journey he had just endured; “he would bless himself for the change, and pity [the other prisoners]” and would want to bring his fellow cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight.

The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, would be blind when he re-enters the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun. The prisoners, according to Plato, would infer from the returning man’s blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Plato concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave.

The cave represents superficial physical reality. It also represents ignorance, as those in the cave live accepting what they see at face value. Ignorance is further represented by the darkness that engulfs them because they cannot know the true objects that form the shadows, leading them to believe the shadows are the true forms of the objects. The chains that prevent the prisoners from leaving the cave represent that they are trapped in ignorance, as the chains are stopping them from learning the truth. The shadows cast on the walls of the cave represent the superficial truth, which is the illusion that the prisoners see in the cave. The freed prisoner represents those who understand that the physical world is only a shadow of the truth, and the sun that is glaring the eyes of the prisoners represents the higher truth of ideas. The light further represents wisdom, as even the paltry light that makes it into the cave allows the prisoners to know shapes.

We should ask ourselves, what are the chains that bind us, keeping us from seeing things as they are, from seeing reality? What are those chains that prevent us from looking at the truth of things? Why do we believe the shadow casters, the image makers instead of what we can see with the eyes and discern with the intellect and reason? Vanity, fear, pride, undue attachment—so many things in our nature that attach us to the things that we think we know are true and prevent us from making the turn. Socrates describes education as a breaking of the chains and a turning of the soul; education[1] is turning, it is not putting knowledge into a brain that’s not there, it’s turning the interior of the soul so that it can see correctly.

Who are the image makers in our culture? Think about commercials. How do they work? Image makers cast images: nice car, nice clothing, nice television, nice computer. Casting images into our souls, to do what? To help us reimagine reality, and to then desire those things that are being cast. How about musicians and their songs? The movies we watch? Think at a deeper level about the very language we use. And then think just how deeply our contact with reality is mediated by all the images we have received. It is not too great a stretch to begin to wonder whether all that we “know” are but shadows, pure manipulation of reality by those who are casting shadows on the wall.  

Wakeup America.

Just my thoughts for a Friday, for what it is worth.

[1] Education, derived from the Greek educare, “to lead out”, used in Plato’s Republic, to lead out from the cave.