Western Civ. 1-20: The cave and God's light

 2. What was Plato's point in his allegory of the cave?

    How differently would we see our lives if we realized everything we knew about the world was only a shadow of the truth? This is precisely the question posed by Plato in his allegory of the cave. The cave is one of the most well-known allegories in all of philosophy. Its purpose is to describe the state of our enlightenment with respect to the true state of nature. The Cave teaches about what it truly means to love knowledge and to seek enlightenment. 

    The allegory goes something like this. A group of people is living in a cave, and the cave has an opening to the light but it cannot be seen from their position. The humans are chained against a wall unable to move, they can only see straight ahead against a wall. Above and behind them a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners, there is a stage for puppeteers who visit and put on shows with all manner of things in the whole world. These people think they know about the real world, after all, the shadows are everything they know, how could they see anything else? they are not told of anything except the noises of the puppeteers and their fellows. But from our perspective, they must seem supremely ignorant of the truth. 

    The allegory does not leave us in this grim place, however. One day, one of the prisoners breaks out of his chains and walks out of the cave. At first, he will be blinded by even the glare of the opening, but as he steps into the light things will gradually become clearer to him. Suppose he should meet other people and speak with them. They would tell him about the world and he would be amazed to learn everything he had previously seen was merely the absence of substance contrasted with light. One day he will find water and see his reflection. Upon this, he will realize his true identity and place in the world. And all at once, seeing the sun in the sky, the source of truth, the world as it really is, and his place in it he would be overturned with the novelty and splendor of it all. 

With this revelation, he would feel an enormous desire to return to his fellows and set them free to wander the earth, stooping over to their level to free them and tell them about the true world. He may try to tell them the true form of the world, but they will think he is lying or insane. He might attempt to loosen their chains, but they will beat him from fear of it. There is little he can do to free them, it would come only as a chance that one or two might follow him up to the light and towards the truth. The horror of the situation is that most of the prisoners will refuse to leave the cave of their ignorance behind. they have become complacent and fear knowledge. 

But what did he mean by all of this? Plato was not like a blind man stumbling into a cave, rather he was a man freed of the limited perceptions of this world. The cave is the dark place from whence we emerge upon escaping the bonds of our limited perceptions. All men are chained like prisoners in a dark and material world forced to know only the shadow of the truth. When we begin to philosophize we escape chains and move into the light of the sun. We will see the world as it really is in the light of knowledge, as we look around we will come to recognize all things as they really are and to name our place in the world. We will uncover the mysteries of unknown heavens and finally gaze into the source of all knowledge, what is truly good. It is then the mission of philosophers to return to the unenlightened and lead them out of bondage into the real world and the truth. 

    The true implications of the Cave stretch far deeper than even this. Plato means to say that the things we perceive in life are not as real as the immaterial and conceptual things we service through philosophy. This concept also applies to morality. When we begin to conceive of true justice and the nature of God the concept of justice is more real than the shadow of it we see around us. For Plato, The forms exist in an immaterial and spiritual realm and these forms are more important than the material. According to him each object partakes of the essence of the transcendent forms but is surpassed by it, but the forms are unchanging and eternal. And the form which allows us to see anything in the world at all is good, shining like a conceptual sun we all need its light to survive and know our place in the world, or anything else. That is the meaning of the cave according to Plato.