The Allegory of the Cave-Plato

Let me put it this way - imagine you're in a cave, all chained up so you can't turn your body at all, and all you get to look at is this one wall. Some people behind you are making shadow puppets using the light from a fire and making echo noises and that's all you or anyone else chained up has seen or heard all your life. Sounds terrible, right? Except it's all you've ever known, shadows and echoes, and that's your whole world - there's no way you could know that, really.

"In fact, you get pretty good at understanding how the patterns in the show work, and everyone else chained up is like, 'come on, dude, how did you know that that tree was going to fall on that guy?' and you're like, 'It's because I pay attention and I'm smart.' You're the smartest of the chained, and they all revere you." 

Glaucon: "But Socrates, a tree didn't really hit a guy. It's all shadows." 

Socrates: "No, Glaucon, but you don't know that. You think the shadows are real things. Everyone does. but that is not the real thing.

"So eventually, someone comes and unchains you and drags you out of the cave. At first you'd say, 'Seriously, what the hell is going on?!' Well, actually, at first you'd say, 'Ahh.. MY EYES..They hurt' and you'd want to go back to the safe, familiar shadows. But even once your eyes worked you wouldn't believe them, because everything you ever thought was real is gone. You'd look at a tree, and say 'That's not a tree. I know trees. And you, sir, are no tree. THAT DOWN THERE is a tree.' But you're wrong. Down there is a shadow of a tree.

"Slowly, as your eyes got better, you'd see more and more shit. Eventually, you'd see the sun, and realize that it's the source of all light. You can't see anything without the sun. And eventually, you'd figure it out. Something would click in your brain: 'oh, that IS a tree. So... nothing in the cave was real? I feel like such a loser.' But it's not your fault, so don't be so hard on yourself.

"Finally you'd want to go down and tell everyone about everything you've discovered. Except, and here's the hilarious part, they think you've gone crazy. You'd say, 'Guys, real trees are green!' and they'd say, 'What the hell is green? THAT is a tree over there.' And you'd squint and look at the wall, but you know you're doomed because now you're used to having sunlight, and now you can't see this bullshit. So they'd laugh at you, and agree that wherever it was that you went, no one should go there because it turns people into losers.

The allegory of the cave has also allegorical meaning because so many symbolic suggestions are used in this writings. The dark cave symbolically suggests the contemporary world of ignorance and the chained people symbolize ignorant people in this ignorant world. The raised wall symbolizes the limitation of our thinking and the shadow symbolically suggest the world of sensory perception which Plato considers an illusion. In his opinion, the appearance is false and reality is somewhere, which we cannot see. Plato as an ideal philosopher says that the appearing world is just the imitation or photocopy of the real world. The shadows represent such photocopy and, the reality is possible to know with the spiritual knowledge. The chains symbolize our limitation in this material world so that we cannot know the reality to know reality; we have to break the material world. The outer world of the light symbolically suggests the world of spiritual reality, which we achieve by breaking the chains that are used to tie us. The dazzling of our eyes for the first time symbolizes difficulty of denies the material world. The second time dazzling of the eyes symbolizes our difficulty to accept ignorance after knowing the reality. Hence, in allegory of the cave Plato has given a criticism over our limited existence in the material world.

"Philosophy, same thing. The soul ascends and apprehends the forms, the nature of everything, and eventually the very Idea of Good that gives light to everything else. And then the philosopher has to go back to the cave and try to explain it to people who don't even know what Green is, to say nothing of the Good. But the philosopher didn't make up the Good, it was always there, and the only way to really make sense of it is to uncover it for yourself. You can't force knowledge into a dumbass any more than you can force sight into a blind man.

"So if you want to learn, be prepared for a difficult journey, and be prepared to make some mistakes. That's okay, it's all part of the process. True knowledge must be obtained the hard way, and some people just don't want to see the light."