Shooting From The Hip - 22 - Allegory of Plato's Cave

Presence of mind, To Be In The Moment, To Pay Attention is the best weapon to guard oneself in every aspect of life!

Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, written around 380 BCE, is one of the most important & influential passages of The Republic.
one of the most significant pieces of work in literary history
illustrates the concept of Idealism as it was taught in the Platonic Academy, & provides a metaphor which philosophers have used for millennia to help us overcome superficiality & materialism.

In this dialogue, Socrates (the main speaker) explains to Plato’s brother, Glaukon, that we all resemble captives who are chained deep within a cavern, who do not yet realize that there is more to reality than the shadows they see against the wall.

The son of a wealthy & noble family, Plato (427-347 B.C.) was preparing for a career in politics when the trial & eventual execution of Socrates (399 B.C.) changed the course of his life. He abandoned his political career & turned to philosophy, opening a school on the outskirts of Athens dedicated to the Socratic search for wisdom.

Plato's school, then known as the Academy, was the first university in western history & operated from 387 B.C.E until C.E. 529
unlike his mentor Socrates, Plato was both a writer & teacher- he wrote in the form of dialogues, Socrates was his principal speaker.
Allegory of the Cave, Plato described symbolically the predicament in which mankind finds itself & proposes a way of salvation

The Allegory presents, in brief form, most of Plato's major philosophical assumptions: his belief that the world revealed by our senses is not the real world but only a poor copy of it, & that the real world can only be comprehended intellectually; his idea that knowledge cannot be transferred from teacher to student, but rather that education consists in directing student's minds toward what is real & important & allowing them to comprehend it for themselves; his faith that the universe ultimately is good; his conviction that enlightened individuals have an obligation to the rest of society, & that a good society must be one in which the truly wise (the Philosopher-King) are the rulers.

The Allegory of the Cave can be found in Book VII(7) of Plato's best-known work, The Republic, a lengthy dialogue on the nature of justice. Often regarded as a utopian blueprint, The Republic is dedicated to a discussion of the education required of a Philosopher-King

What Is an Allegory? - Latin ‘allegoria,’ meaning speaking to imply something else

An allegory represents a larger point about society or human nature through a simple story, in which different characters may represent real-life figures. Sometimes, situations in the story may echo stories from history or modern-day life without ever explicitly stating this connection.
Allegories are similar to metaphors in that both illustrate an idea by making a comparison to something else. However, allegories are complete stories with characters, while metaphors are brief figures of speech

In the allegory - "The Cave," a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them & give names to these shadows.

The shadows are the prisoners' reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses, while the objects under the sun represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through reason.

As they look at the wall before them, they believe the shadows of objects cast by the moving figures are real things & the only things. Their visible world is their whole world.

Concludes: the other prisoners would likely kill those who try to free them, as they would not want to leave the safety & comfort of their known world
fellow prisoners still inside the cave will believe that it is the outside world that is harmful; to them, that truth is not worth seeking

What are the 5 stages of the allegory of the cave?
Allegorical Meaning
Imprisonment in the cave (world of perception, interpretation)
Release from chains (breaking with perception)
Ascent out of the cave (world of ideas, sense experiences)
desire to help our fellows

The Freed Prisoner: - the Philosopher, who seeks knowledge outside of the cave & outside of the senses
The Darkness/Shadows: - darkness symbolizes ignorance
The cave demonstrates something about humans? - that human perceptions & interpretations are easily manipulated by what they see & are told what to think

Interpretation/Perception: the world inside the cave - the prisoners in the cave, the shadows on the wall created by firelight are all they know to be real