Cameron B. answered • 02/22/21
Instructor of History, Religion, and Classics
The Allegory of The Cave (The Republic Book VII) is one of Plato's most significant passages which explains much of his Philosophical system and how he understood the world around him. In the passage, Socrates paints a picture of a cave with prisoners, chained to rocks, only able to look at the cave wall before them. Behind the Prisoners is a fire and farther back is a road where people/things pass by, casting their shadow over the wall the prisoners look at everyday. Everyday they see the shadows and the sounds, unable to look behind them they naturally assume that these things they hear and see are real things. Thus, the shadows, in Plato's allegory, represent our imperfect perceptible/sensible reality, in which we view objects and people.
The allegory continues and Socrates poses the question to Glaucon, What if a prisoner were to escape the Cave and view the world outside of the Cave? His eyes would be blinded by the light, first making everything painful to see (the pain represents the difficulty/harshness knowledge & wisdom), but as his eyes adjusted he would see the objects which he only once saw shadows of before. The world outside of the cave and the objects which the freed prisoner sees are the world of the Forms. For Plato, our world is divided into two ontological categories: The Essential Form and Sensible Reality. Essential Forms are perfect predicates which are communicated to particular objects. For instance, consider a red ball. We see the ball and we understand that it is red and it is a ball because it is round. Now a ball can be both red and round without being perfectly red or perfectly round. We would still perceive the ball and call it red and round even in an unperfected state. But, there must be a Form in which something is perfectly round or a thing is perfectly red. These perfections Plato considered to be Forms and they were ever communicating with various objects in our perceptible reality, giving way to particulars (i.e. this red ball). As such, the Essential Forms were considered to have preferentially ontology. The prisoner who lives outside the cave recognizes the perfect forms which gave life to the imperfect, sensible shadows within the Cave. And thus, Plato distinguishes between Perceptible and In-Perceptible Reality and most importantly, between Universals (i.e. the Forms) and particulars (i.e. this ball).
Furthermore, if the prisoner were to return to the Cave and describe the outside world to the other prisoners, undoubtedly they would laugh and mock because all that they know and have perceived are the shadows, which to them are reality.
Hopes this detailed explanation helps!
~Cameron Brock
