Thulean Archives

Imprisonment in the cave. Plato begins by having Socrates ask Glaucon to imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned from birth. These prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them, and not look around at the cave, each other or themselves. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, behind which people walk carrying objects or puppets of men and other living things. These people walk behind the wall, so their bodies do not cast shadows for the prisoners to see. But the objects they carry do, just as puppet showmen have screens in front of them at which they work their puppets. The prisoners cannot see any of what is happening behind them, they are only able to see from the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. The sounds of the people talking echo off the walls, and the prisoners believe these sounds come from the shadows.

Socrates suggests that the shadows are reality for the prisoners, because they have never seen anything else. They do not realize that what they see are shadows of objects in front of a fire. Much less that these objects are inspired by real things outside the cave which they do not see.

Departure from the Cave.

Plato then supposes that one prisoner is freed. This prisoner would look around and see the fire, the light would hurt his eyes and make it difficult for him to see the objects casting the shadows. If he were told that what he is seeing is real, instead of the other version of reality he sees on the wall, he would not believe it. In his pain, Plato continues, that freed prisoner would turn away and run back to what he is accustomed to, that is, the shadows of the carried objects. He writes, it would hurt his eyes, and he would escape by turning away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him.

Plato continues, suppose that someone should drag him by force up the rough ascent, the steep way up, and never stop until he could drag him out into the light of the sun. The prisoner would be angry and in pain, and this would only worsen when the radiant light of the sun overwhelms his eyes and blinds him. Slowly his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can only see the shadows, gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water, and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself. Only after he can look straight at the sun is he able to reason about it, and what it is.

Return to the Cave.

Plato continues, saying that the freed prisoner would think that the world outside the cave was superior to the world he experienced in the cave. He would bless himself for the change and pity the other prisoners, and would want to bring his fellow cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight. The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, would be blind when he re-enters the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun. The prisoners, according to Plato, would infer from the returning man's blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him, and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave.