We are Plato's Cave Men and Cave Women

A student asked me to write this up, so here goes.

Plato’s allegory of the cave is just that, an allegory. We mistake it, then, if we try to identify ourselves or others as, say, prisoners. We are all prisoners, but we are also all, to some extent, those who have freed themselves.

For those not familiar with this allegory, I’ll review it. You can find it in Book VII of Plato’s Republic.* Find a contemporary translation. The language should sound fresh, immediate, direct. Plato did not write or speak in archaic or stuffy language. (Grube’s translation is good.)

Imagine that we are prisoners in a cave, chained so that we can see only the rear wall. We cannot see our neighbors, or even our own bodies. Reality, for us, consists of the shadows on and echoes from the cave wall. If we push the allegory, we could say that even our own thoughts, while we are thus chained, are only the shadows and echoes of true thoughts. We have been chained since before we can remember, and we believe that reality consists of the shadows and echoes that we perceive.

If we are able to free ourselves, however, we notice that there is a fire behind us on an elevated platform. Between the fire and us is a low wall that disguises beings who carry objects back and forth, holding them aloft so that the fire casts their shadows on the back of the cave. The prisoners take these to be real.

But, recognizing our mistake, although we are now free, we have not yet seen reality. We need to make our way up a path and out of the cave, into the real world, to recognize the source for the objects of which we had previously seen only the shadows. To be clear—because many who refer to this allegory leave out the middle portion, referring only to prisoners and then their apprehension of the world outside the cave—when we were prisoners, we saw the shadows of images of the things that are real. And, to take common experience, the sun that we see in the sky, the brightest thing in common experience, it is, by this allegory, only the shadow of the image of the true sun.

Emerging from the cave, having spent a lifetime in darkness, we are blinded by the light. It takes time for our vision to adjust, to be able to see in this new, true world.

Then, when we embrace the task of returning to the cave to free those still imprisoned, we are blinded a second time as we pass from light to darkness. To the perception of the prisoners, then, we appear to be blind and to have lost our minds, unable to see the shadows and babbling about a world of which they have no conception. They see no value in our attempts to free them, and may, Plato tells us, turn on us and try to kill us if we persist in attempts to free them.

Also, having seen the world outside the cave, we have lost interest in the now meaningless shadows of images. When we see prisoners competing over shadows, we withdraw, we decline to join this fruitless activity.

Our task, then, becomes a task of education, of gradually turning the prisoners’ minds and sight—these are inextricably linked—to the light of the real.

I don’t want to argue about whether or not this is a good allegory—it has survived more than 2000 years—or whether or not it promotes authoritarianism—those who know leading those who don’t. I want to argue that, as an allegory, it applies in all its parts to each of us.

Each of us is, in some respects, deluded, a prisoner who takes shadows for reality.

Each of us, too, is somewhat free, has turned at least slightly to see the fire and the objects that cast the shadows, has begun to recognize his or her imprisonment.

Each of us has, if only in rare, powerful dreams or fleeting, high ideals, glimpsed the world outside the cave.

Each of us has been blinded by light and blinded by darkness.

Each has returned to others in the cave to help them.

Each has benefited from the work of others to bring us closer to freedom and reality.

Can we say it’s not so?


*Plato, in his humility and in order to indulge a powerful rhetorical device, claims not to record his own thoughts and words, but those of his teacher, Socrates. This is why Plato is the author of the Socratic dialogues. In Book VII of the Republic, Socrates speaks to Glaucon, Plato’s older brother, whose name means “bright eyed” or “owl eyed,” an apt and symbolic name for the allegory laid out in the dialogue.