Does Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave comes as philosophical challenge to a modern reader? What’s the author’s hidden purpose beyond the allegory? The perpetual bestseller of allegorical writing inspires us in both literary and allegorical sense. Plato metaphorically approaches the world as dark cave where people cannot see any objects. They are chained and deprived of movement. Meanwhile, Plato challenges us with an outer world existing outside the cave behind the wall.
While people outside the cave are moving, they are sending shadows falling in the cave world. However, those inside being chained can only see the shadows perceiving them as sort of illusion. They have nothing else left but to believe in that illusionary reality. While Plato’s outer world is completely visible and full of light, anyone from the cave world cannot enjoy the light of the outer world at first while having his/her eyes dazzled in the light. Though, gradually a person realizes the reality of the outer world and. Here comes a sense of gratitude, as well as sympathy with all the rest ones who are still living in the cave world being lost in darkness. Plato’s metaphysical message consists in being a slave in the outer world instead of a king inside the cave world. Herewith, the author challenges his protagonist with decisive choice between the two worlds and tasks him to persuade his ignorant fellows from the cave world.
While using the cave as allegorical metaphor, Plato suggests various symbolic meanings. They make us associate the dark cave with the modern world full of ignorance, while chained people are symbols of ignorance therein. Plato reveals the retrains of people’s perceptions by portraying the raised wall, while the shadow comes as a symbol an illusion that often overwhelms our sensory perceptions. Plato deems that people focus on appearance and ignore reality (Hall 74-75).
There is no such thing as the appearing world, which is only imitation of the real world, according to Plato. While the shadows provide us with such an imitation, we can recognize the reality only through spiritual knowledge. However, our perceptions and senses are bound by the chains which Plato metaphorically applies as the symbols of our limitations. In other words, Plato claims that we cannot understand the reality while living in the material world; we can do it only by breaking the chains of the material world. Plato provides us with an alternative of the outer world which he symbolically fills with light to suggest spiritual reality. We can enter it only by breaking the chains of the material world that comes as the dark cave in Plato’s writing. At first, we enter this reality with our eyes dazzled through which Plato symbolizes the hardship of denying the pleasures of the material world. Our eyes are further dazzled when we try to reconsider ignorance in this new reality. Thus, Plato concludes that our existence in the material world is immensely limited.
Another important theme Plato challenges in The Allegory of the Cave is our perception. The author claims that we are bound by sensory and spiritual perception. Through sensory perception, we concentrate on appearance. However, this world provides us only with illusion and falsehood that comes to us with the shadows, allegorically describe by Plato. This means that we cannot perceive truth or reality with our senses. We can achieve it only by developing spiritual perception that comes to us as divine enlightenment.
Hence, the attainment of spiritual perception is possible only by breaking the chains of sensory and rejection of values of the material world. This is how Plato reaches perfect philosophical concept of spirituality (Watt 10).
- Hall, Dale. “Interpreting Plato’s Cave as an Allegory of the Human Condition”. Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science, 14 (2): 74–75, 1980.
- Watt, Stephen. “Introduction: The Theory of Forms (Books 5–7), Plato: Republic, London: Wordsworth Editions, 1997. Print.
