Platos allegory of the cave
Socrates used light as a metaphor for our understanding and our ability to conceive of the truth, and the prisoners in the cave represent people in society that only look at the small fraction of information they know and are familiar with. However, after the freed prisoner’s eyes finally adjust to the firelight after a period of great pain, they are forced to progress out of the cave and into the sunlight, which is once again another painful process. Socrates explains that the prisoner is tempted to turn away from the light, flee from the unfamiliar world around them, and go back to the comfort of their chains, ultimately resisting the progress in the way he sees things, and his understanding of reality.
PLATOS ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE FREE
He proposes a situation where a prisoner breaks free of their chains and immediately looks behind them, towards the walking men holding objects and the fire. Socrates describes how the prisoners come up with names for the objects in association with the shape of the shadows, for they are interpreting their world in a way that is intelligible and real to them, when in reality, it is merely a phantom of the actual men and objects behind them. There is no natural light in the cave, and the damp wall they stare at is painted by the moving shadows of other men carrying objects behind them, which are projected on the back wall of the cave by a wall of fire. The purpose of the allegory was to compare the “effect of education and the lack of it on our nature.” In the allegory, Socrates proposes a picture of a group of people living imprisoned in an ill lit cave to his student, Glaucon, where the people have lived all their life unable to move their hands, feet, and head, and forced to stare at the back wall of a cave.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” presents an intellectual dialogue between Plato and his student, Glaucon, when Glaucon questions his mentor’s teaching methods.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and happiness