Plato\'s Allegory of the Cave

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is one of the central episodes of the Republic. In the Republic, Socrates teaches Glaucon about reason, human perception, ethics, and justice. The allegory of the cave is one such episode in the Republic, in which Socrates uses a story to illustrate his main philosophical points. A group of human beings are kept as prisoners in a cave. The cave therefore symbolizes darkness and ignorance, and is also an apt metaphor because human beings as cave men are the evolutionary precursor to the modern, enlightened human being like Socrates or Plato. The state of ignorance is also portrayed as a type of psychological imprisonment. Moreover, the human beings living in the cave are fascinated by the images dancing on the walls. Those images are technically shadows that shift form and shape when figures move before the fire. However, to the prisoners, the images on the wall are real. Like watching television, the viewers mistake the show for reality. They are so captivated by the shadow play that the people inside the cave do not even question whether the images are real, and what they might mean. The same can be said for people who watch too much television. When one prisoner is set free, the initial reaction is disbelief and shock. The prisoner must be dragged to the outside of the cave to understand how narrow the worldview of the cave-dwellers actually is.

The prisoners inside the cave are like prisoners of the consumer culture, always driven to earn more money in order to buy more things. Yet the pursuit of material wealth is an empty endeavor. Those who pursue wealth for its own sake are rarely happy, and rarer yet they are enlightened. Depending on the material world for one's highest moral values is detrimental to ethical behavior. Like the people living in the cave, the person who depends on the material world would develop a distorted worldview. Ethics that are shaped by narrow-mindedness, illusion, and the false images portrayed on television or newspapers are not shaped by reality at all. Plato shows that only by facing the sun, a symbol for truth and enlightenment, can human beings truly develop an ethical worldview and act ethically.

Materialism enables an illusory ethic. The ways shadows behave on walls, or the ways characters behave in television shows, is not the way human beings should be designing their ethical codes. Without truth, no ethics are meaningful. Ethics must be grounded in reality. Furthermore, ethics cannot be based on the shallow, illusory, and one-dimensional reality of the material world. Just as there is more to life than the cave, there is also more to life than what can be purchased with a credit card. If materialism and the quest for wealth subsume all other ethical quests, then the result is the modern capitalist system in which the pursuit of profit is more important than human rights. Materialism is a false ethic.

Human beings can still derive pleasure from the material world while acknowledging the shallowness of materialism. Plato suggests that materialism becomes such a powerful force in the human mind that to break free from it voluntarily is almost impossible. After all, Socrates tells Glaucon that if the prisoner who sees the sunlight were to venture back in the cave and break the news that the shadows on the wall were illusions, he would be killed. However, it is possible to enjoy the pleasures of the body without causing harm to the self or to others. The key is to acknowledge truth and wisdom.

Morgareidge suggests that collectivism can help with the mutual liberation that should ideally take place inside the cave. The prisoners can help each other to see the truth, represented by the sun in Plato's allegory, and then inspire each other to act ethically. "The walls of the cave and dungeons, whose solid appearance we now discover to have been produced by our own alienated labor, crumble, allowing us to perceive the light -- beauty and the good -- in a world of objects and activities designed by free human beings for the enjoyment of the most fully developed human capacities." The alternative ethic suggested by the cave allegory is one that values truth above all appearances. Furthermore, it is imperative that each person help fellow human beings to become liberated. It is an ethical obligation for an individual to help remove the chains of ignorance by always acting ethically and always speaking the truth. Then, it is important to lead each person away from the darkness and towards the light. Once each prisoner has been liberated, they can choose whether or not to wander outside the cave and abandon the shelter entirely or to go inside the cave for entertainment or for shelter. After all, the comforts of the cave shelter represent the pleasures of the material world that can never be fully denied.