Plato - the Cave Flashcards
Cave allegory outlined
Prisoners chained in a cave unable to turn their heads. There is a fire behind them and puppeteers. The puppeteers behind cast shadows using the the fire’s light and their puppets, shadows and echoes are the only things the prisoners can see/hear; they cannot see the real objects behind.
The prisoners also develop a game: whoever could guess which shadow would appear next would be praised a ‘master of nature’.
One prisoner escapes upwards out of the Cave and is stunned by the world he discovers. Initially thinking it is an illusion, he later grows to see 1) his old view of reality was wrong and of opinion 2) the Sun is a source of light and intelligence. He concludes his former life and guessing game was useless.
He returns in attempt to inform and enlighten his ex fellow prisoners, but they reject him as a madman and threaten to kill him if he attempts to free them.
The prisoners’ mindset
The prisoners understand the shadows and echoes of appearance to be reality; when they refer to ‘a book’ they think they are refering to a ‘real’ book but in fact refer only to the perceived shadows of a real book, which the prisoners can’t turn their heads to see.
Plato’s criticism of language
Terms of language aren’t actually names of physical objects but of things we can’t see, only can grasp with our mind.
Fire
Our physical Sun
Shadows
Physical objects which plebs take as reality.
Puppets
???
Prisoners
Plebs; unenlightened man
Explain the result of the prisoners’ release
They would be able to turn their heads, see the real objects and realise their error. Analogously, we can be released to see the causes of the shadows by coming to grasp with the Forms through the reasoning of the Soul.
Why Plato creates the allegory
He realises that most people can live/act/think without any awareness of the RoFs and seeks to explain why.
Book the Cave is explained in.
The Republic; Socrates to Glaucon
The cave
The sensible world
4 Parts of the Allegory
Cave
Game
Escape
Return
Escaped prisoner
Philosophers who seek knowledge beyond the sensible world.
The return
Unenlightened man rejecting real knowledge which would interfere with their beliefs; cognitive dissonance.
The game
How people who have knowledge of the empirical world are thought to be ‘masters’. Plato showing it is ridiculous to praise such.
