Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: A Journey to Enlightenment
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
Prisoners and Shadows
In this cave dwelling, or prison, some foreign prisoners are chained by their feet, necks, and hands, forced to always look at the back wall of the cave. Behind them is a kind of screen, behind which porters walk carrying various objects. Next to this wall, on a higher plane, the light of a fire projects the shadows of these objects onto the bottom of the wall facing the prisoners. This mysterious prison opens to another light, the sun, which illuminates the real world, the world of truth. The prisoners can only see shadows and images of objects.
This cave and the prisoners that dwell within represent the state of human beings in a state of ignorance (lack of education) and deception (lack of science). Plato describes a forced release of a prisoner, forced to stand and look at the fire, which blinds him, and then forced out on a rough and arduous journey out of the cave. Thus, the path of knowledge, which is release, requires a guide, a teacher, and is a painful adjustment process. Without education and a proper method of release, it is impossible to possess the truth that will allow us true happiness.
The World Above and the Sun
The ascent relates to the prisoner released from his chains, seeing the light of the fire, and forced first to perceive manufactured objects and then transported to the same fire, before being dragged along the steep path leading to the exit of the cave. The upper world is valued as more real than the inside of the cave. The ascent is assimilated to the process of conversion or anámnesis.
First, the prisoner uses the knowledge of mathematical entities that facilitate learning in deductive reasoning and then contemplates the Ideas, which are immaterial objects, pure forms, essences, eternal, permanent, fixed, immutable, and outstanding. They are the true causes of the formal sensitive objects. Ideas or Forms are the contents of the intelligible world, known only by the intellect or rational soul (noetic). They are conceived but not seen. But the ascent can be interpreted as the acquisition of mathematical knowledge, which is the last exercise to be done to achieve true science: the dialectic or direct contemplation of the Ideas, or it can be interpreted as reminiscence.
The Return to the Cave and the Darkness
The darkness represents an existence in which importance is only attached to the sensible, which is a copy of what is truly real, and thus undervalued. The Sophists taught rhetoric and oratory. They did not accept the distinction between what things are and what they seem. There is no more reality than appearances.
Plato believes that the worst form of government is tyranny, which is characterized by cruelty and arbitrariness. Then he directs his criticism towards democracy. It is apparently an ideal state, but it also gives an account of vices and virtues.
Differences disappear among the citizens, and this is how a dangerous anarchy is established. In a democracy, every assertion is reduced to mere opinion; any statement can be canceled by its opposite. The Sophists believe that no one can claim a truth that is valid for other men, but the truth is valid for the one who speaks.
The philosopher who has ascended to the Ideas comes down to the cave to help men out of their slumber and bring meaning and truth to life. In Book VI, Plato speaks of the great paradox of the perfect state: it must be constituted by the perfectly wise, and this, in turn, cannot be more than the perfect state. There you have it, with the emergence of a philosopher-king to carry out the project.
Monarchy and Aristocracy are perfect schemes for Plato’s ideal city ruled by philosophers. There is a correlation between the tripartite division of the soul and the polis. The Platonic state is divided into three classes: philosophers (the rulers), the warriors (who defend society), and craftsmen (who work). When each of these classes performs the task assigned to it, justice is achieved, which is the culmination of the other virtues.
The maintenance of the established order is the focus of the rulers. The ruler must be vigilant that the City is kept within moderate margins, without letting it be taken over by neither wealth nor poverty. He should monitor that the City does not grow too much and that individuals pursue their duties more in line with the kind of soul that prevails in them. He must monitor, in short, the education system so that no changes occur.
Synthesis
In the text, Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates some ontological and epistemological theses that are traditionally known by the name of the theory of Ideas or Forms. The text is an example of a dialogue in Plato’s teaching that recognizes the staging as more understandable to the philosophical system he wants to expose.
This piece is a fine example of what constitutes the core of Platonic philosophy: the theory of Ideas or Forms.
In support of this theory, Plato perfects in this dialogue the doctrine of the soul of Orphic-Pythagorean influence. The soul is not only conceived as a principle of life, but following his ontological dualism, it extends to his anthropology: man is a composite of two substances, a material body and an immaterial soul. The soul is opposed to embodiment, an engine that moves itself and is composed of three forces or powers. Human beings have a soul with three functions: the rational soul or noetic (knowledge and understanding, which governs), the moving soul or will (what you want), and the appetitive, sensitive soul (what you want and feel). His utopian state also reflects the hierarchy of ideas and establishes three orders or classes that correspond to the tripartite soul: the philosopher-magistrates or archons (whose function is to legislate and govern with wisdom and prudence), the guardians or warriors (whose role is to defend the city with courage), and the producers (whose role is to work with moderation for the support and wealth of the City). This hierarchy is indicated in the text by the different degrees of reality that man can meet and the effort he makes to convert his soul.
The role of the soul in the theory of Ideas is indispensable. Man is a microcosm of the intelligible order, but he also participates in physical reality, so he is a divided being.
Context
The text belongs to Plato, a philosopher who developed his thinking from the late 5th century until the middle of the 4th century BC. He was an Athenian aristocrat belonging to the Attic or classical philosophy. Attic philosophy takes a turn with respect to the previous philosophy, reflecting on man as an individual with all his strength and social being, and considering all the themes and critical issues that will shape the course of the history of philosophy.
The fragment is part of his work Republic, or On Justice, a work of maturity that, along with Phaedo, Symposium, and Phaedrus, makes up the writings of this period. Plato has already made several trips and founded a school: the Academy. It is in full swing during this period, mainly investigating mathematics. The dialogues of this period developed his most original thought: the theory of Ideas, which is present in the text.
Plato proposed to explain who is to rule in the Model City: first, he presents the allegory of the cave, then he applies the allegory to the philosopher-rulers.
In 404 BC, Athens was defeated in the Peloponnesian Wars (431 to 404) by Sparta. This defeat and the socio-political crisis, coupled with the death of Socrates (condemned to drink hemlock by the recently established democracy after the oligarchic rule of the Thirty Tyrants), influenced Plato’s thought.
With the theory of Ideas, there is only one way to begin to philosophize: to search for the definition of general concepts through inductive reasoning. Knowledge is virtue. Plato wanted to answer the philosophical crisis of the moment: the sophists had brought to light the convention of all cultural values and laws, and this relativism had spread to the field of knowledge and morality, avoiding the search for truth and focusing on useful knowledge for life and human coexistence. Therefore, they applied themselves to the investigation of pedagogy and language arts.
In his philosophy, Plato gives coherence to and systematizes the various intuitions suggested by Socrates. He bases his philosophy on the mathematics developed with Theodorus in Cyrene and Archytas in Tarentum, the doctrine of the soul and the Orphic-Pythagorean community of insiders, and the political elite in his idea of the philosopher-ruler, in addition to the theories of Parmenides.
But the alacrity with which the theory of Ideas was built led him to criticize it in the Timaeus dialogue, which introduces new elements: the Demiurge (or ordering intelligence) modeling chaotic matter, moving and existing in the order of the Idea (influence of the late Presocratics or pluralists, essentially the Nous of Anaxagoras as Demiurge or ordering intelligence of chaotic matter). The report is modeled considering the hierarchy of Ideas, the kinetic atoms of Democritus, and the four elements of Empedocles.