PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAYS WORLD

PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAYS WORLD

Plato, is one of the most creative and influential thinkers in Western Philosophy. He was born around 428 BC and died around 347 BC. Building on the life and thought of Socrates, Plato developed a profound and wide-ranging system of Philosophy. His thought has bordered on logical, epistemological, and metaphysical aspects; but its underlying motivation is ethical. It sometimes relies upon conjectures and myth, and it is occasionally mystical in tone; but fundamentally Plato is a rationalist, devoted to the proposition that reason must be followed wherever it leads. Thus the core of Plato's Philosophy is a rationalistic ethics. For him, humans have knowledge, and this knowledge they must attain by transcending sense experience in order to discover unchanging objects through the exercise of reason. Of the many literary devices Plato used to illustrate his theories, one of the best known is the allegory of the cave, which appears in Book VII of the Republic.

The purpose of this write up is to come out with the various elements in the allegory of the cave, their meanings and finally the implication of this allegory to our modern world.

According to Plato, because of how we live, true reality is not obvious to most of us. Almost all the time we mistake what we hear and see for the reality and the truth. This is the basic premise for Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which a group of prisoners have been kept in a cave since childhood. These prisoners, according to Plato, are made to watch shadows of certain figures and objects cast on a wall in front of them. They watched these shadows for a very long period of time; to the extent that, it has become a normal occurrence for them and they in-turn believe in the shadows as real things.

In actual fact, the prisoners are not aware that behind them are some men who are holding figures and objects, with a fire serving as an illuminator from the background, hence the shadow on the walls. According to Plato, it happened by chance, that one of the prisoners had the singular opportunity to be taken out of the cave. Upon going out the prisoner did not want to believe what he was seeing outside the cave. But after seeing how bright the sun was shining and the other realities of nature, this prisoner came to believe that life inside the cave was an illusion. He realized that he and his colleagues back in the cave had been living a life of deception all this while.

The individual then makes the painful re-adjustment back into the darkness of the cave to free the prisoners. However, because he now seems mad -describing a new strange reality - they reject him to the point of threatening to kill him.

The allegory metaphorically describes our situation as human beings in the world today. In his allegory, Plato utilizes several key elements to portray his metaphor of the human condition.

     The Prisoners, watching life unfold on the cave wall in front of them, accepting what they see
as truth, as reality, are literally, people. People like you and me. Every average person in this world is a prisoner, who is chained down. These chains that bind the prisoners to the floor are beliefs. By beliefs, I am referring to those beliefs that are not reasonable, but because we are so used to them we still hold on to them.

      The shadows and figures on the wall that the prisoners are made to look at all the time refers to all those ideologies that we are made to believe in which later turn into our belief systems. It must be noted that this ideologies are more of negative than positive. To break free in this world, we must look at objects, individuals, cities, societies and even the universe as a whole, with reason. We must not simply rely on perceptions and senses to grasp concepts, because as Rene Descartes once said in his meditations “whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” [Meditations 1, 18].

        The people carrying figures of humans, animals, and plants crafted from wood or stone, which cast images on the wall for the prisoners to look at are the political, business, and educational leaders that feed the average person their own ideologies and beliefs about various things.

         We must not simply accept every ideology and belief system that is handed over to us; we must subject them to the judgment seat of reason. What is relevant, though, is that in questioning ideologies and belief systems, we will formulate our own opinion and belief on the subject, thus not simply buying into the views and beliefs being fed to us by our political, religious and educational leaders.

         A roadway is described as being behind the prisoners, and it is this roadway that the men walked on when carrying the figures. This roadway depicts the path used to deliver whatever message it is that the leaders previously mentioned want delivered. The print, electronic media and social networks are very profitable sources for these men.

            Above and behind the prisoners is a fire burning, which happens to be the power source of the shadows. This fire refers to the institutions and organizations that support the dubious acts of these leaders. The shadows on the wall are what the prisoner’s mistake for truth and reality. Finally the sun outside the cave represents the good. Out of the good come knowledge, reason, goodness and enlightenment.

ü  What then is the implication of Plato’s allegory of the cave to our modern world?

            First of all we should try to investigate and use our reason to digest issues and ideologies instead of just swallowing them anytime they are given to us by those in authority or leadership.

           Secondly when reading information from the print media or listening and watching information from the electronic media, let us be very objective in our listening. We should not accept information just like that, for these are some of the mediums that some of our corrupt leaders use to drum home their negative ideologies. And before we realize those ideas become so normal to us that they become our belief systems no matter how debased they are.

     

       Plato describes the Good as having power and energy, just as the sun has the power to warm
our skin. He sees the Good as the source of beauty, right, reason, and truth. The Good is
courage and strength, values that provide dependable ground for moral conduct. In this
world of shadows, the Good we experience is too a shadow of the true Good. We must
break free from the chains of this world to experience the true ideals of the Good.
      Plato's cave is an allegory of the human condition: each of us a prisoner, until we can
break free. We perceive reality through imperfect eyes, accepting this distorted illusion of
reality without question. Accordingly, to break free, we must open our eyes and see the
truth about the world around us.