Key Arguments

• Prisoners are chained from childhood, facing forward, seeing only shadows cast by a fire behind them, so their 'truth' is merely images and echoes.
• They would name and discuss shadows as if they were real things, mistaking appearances for realities.
• Release is painful: turning toward the light initially produces sharp pains and incapacity to see the real objects; thus education entails distress and confusion.
• Acclimatization is progressive: first shadows, then reflections, then things, then lunar and stellar lights, and last of all the sun itself.
• Returning to the cave produces darkness and ridicule; the liberated one would perform poorly at 'measuring the shadows' and could be persecuted for attempting to free others.

Source Quotes

Part 7 And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:—Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

No question, he replied. To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. That is certain.

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,—what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them,—will he not be perplexed?

Not all in a moment, he said. He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day? Certainly.

Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner. Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness? To be sure, he said.

And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable), would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death. No question, he said.

Key Concepts

• Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move
• they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave
• To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
• at first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains
• He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves
• Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?
• and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

Context

Socrates introduces the Cave as a 'figure' to show enlightenment vs. unenlightenment and the natural effects of release and ascent.

Perspectives

Plato

Endorses the allegory as a comprehensive model of human cognition, miseducation, and the arduous ascent to truth; it integrates ontology, epistemology, and pedagogy.

Socrates

Uses a vivid image to make the dialectical point: education is reorientation from deceptive appearances to reality, explaining resistance and persecution.