There is a story from Plato's 'The Republic' (Book VII) that is as fascinating as it is haunting. It is the allegory of The Cave. Here I describe the story as it was told by our philosophy lecturer, Dr Adam Cooper in our class last night. I hope it arouses your appetite to read Plato's story in its original form. I found the story a meditative piece that moved my mind to thought and my heart to reflection. For my own journaling I've jotted down some notes below the dotted line. I hope only that the story will speak to you in its own way. I include a link at the bottom that leads to Plato's Story in its original form.
"Socrates paints an image to his listeners as he speaks with Glaucon.
There is a dark cave. In it a fire burns bright, casting light within the cave. At a distance facing away from the fire, a whole row of people sit chained up. Their necks are restrained so that they can only look ahead at the wall in front of them and can't look behind. These people were born here and have been this way all their lives.
In between the people and the fire, other unchained people parade about propping objects above their shoulders. With the fire behind them the light casts ‘puppet-like’ images onto the cave wall; creating something like a shadow theatre. The chained people can only see the images on the wall in front of their eyes and hear the sounds behind them. They look at the shadow of figures cast by the fire. Each in their own mind, they try to create meaning of these shadows and sounds; and it is the only reality that they know.
It happens now that one of the chained people are freed. He turns around and sees the fire for the first time. He is blinded by the light. The temptation is that the light is too bright and he would want to turn back. But instead he waits for his eyes adjust to the light -- and he discovers the parading people with the objects. Now he learns the real meaning of the shadows and the sounds. He presses on and exits the cave and comes out into the light of the sun. When he emerges into the sun light, he is really blinded! He gropes around. He needs to be patient for his eyes to acclimatise. He sees the things all around him: First, things under the shade and then finally -- the brightest -- the sun itself. He realises now that life in the cave was mere illusion compared to outside the cave.
He adapts to the outside world. To return to the cave would be misery. If he did his eyes would need to re-adjust to the darkness. And until then he would be groping around before he could see in the dark. To return to darkness would be to return to blindness.
He feels pity for the chained people. The chained people in the cave make up games and contests for themselves, prizing the one who correctly guesses the next sequence of images that will appear on the wall. He no longer has any care for any of this disillusioned sense of glory of the lives down in the cave. He wants to tell them about the reality of the world and the reality of the confines of their lives.
From the bright sunlight he enters back into the darkness of the cave. They hear his story but they think he is mad. They see him fumbling around in the dark, talking about something they can’t possibly imagine, and take him to be a fool."
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In this parable Socrates speaks with Glaucon. Adam Cooper said that Glaucon is also the Greek term for “clear-eyed”. He says the story of the cave is about seeing, vision. It is about reality vs disillusionment. It is about seeing things for what they really are.
Socrates says that the fire represents the physical sun. We look on the world as illuminated by the physical sun and we think what we experience in our senses is reality. The cave screen represents life on this mundane world. Dr Cooper makes a similitude with the TV in our day. What we see and hear on the screen we take as true. Thus the assertion, "It's true...I saw it on TV!"
Dr Cooper posits that the journey out the cave for the man freed from the chains is a painful one. Emerging from the cave, his life starts with shadows, to reflections and then to ultimate reality. It is a gradual process of shedding disillusionment. It must be painful to have to regard his previous life as misdirected. But once he has seen the light, he cannot go back to the life of darkness. Rather what is before him now is a responsibility to go back into the cave to serve those in the darkness. This, Socrates says is the role of the teacher, the educator.
For me this is a poignant parable that can be read many ways. Socrates told it to describe the philosopher's journey from disillusionment of this corporeal world to rational truth or what he calls the Absolute Realities -- of Truth, Good and Beauty. It is a story Socrates used to instruct his listeners about the meaning of education; that it is a tool to turn people around, so the their eyes -- which represent the soul -- would go from facing the darkness to facing reality. Socrates' eventually relates the parable to those in political life. He exhorts them on their role as men of wisdom -- enlightened in the truth -- on the proper governance of civilians, who are in the dark. The role of the wise is not to deride those who still live in the darkness of the cave, but to serve them with their knowledge of reality.
A link to Plato's Cave in its original form:
