In Plato’s book the Republic, Socrates uses the allegory of the cave to explain to Glaucon how most people are stuck in a world of ignorance, only looking at the material examples of Forms that they can see rather than understanding the higher immaterial Forms which exist in an infinite world beyond our own. People must discover the truth of the Forms through painstaking effort to think beyond their sight, and then share it with others, even if society sees them as crazy or dangerous.
In Plato’s cave, prisoners are bound in chains and can only see the wall in front of them, illuminated by a fire behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners is a parapet along a raised way. People carry objects like vessels, statues, and figures down this path, and the prisoners see only the objects’ shadows on the wall, cast by the light of the fire, not the objects they come from. Echoes can be heard from the other side of the cave, and the prisoners believe they also come from the shadows. This is the state of most people: they only see individual instances of the Forms, and fail to grasp the Forms themselves. In Plato’s doctrine, the Forms are the qualities that make up specific types of objects, different from individual objects. For instance, all squares must have 4 sides of equal length. This is the Form of a square, which exists outside of the physical world. We imagine squares having colors like blue, but they don’t have to be blue, or any particular color. Plato’s prisoners see individual chairs, dogs, etc. without knowing what common qualities make these individual things all chairs or dogs. They only think about the material world they perceive, but cannot grasp the immaterial, eternal, unchanging Forms. Plato is saying that the terms we use in our language do not refer to visible, material objects, but concepts that we can only understand with our minds. In the Republic, Plato tells readers what is necessary for them to understand the Forms. Languages name the Forms that objects that people perceive are part of. Plato’s prisoners are myopic, unable to understand what they cannot see.
One prisoner is freed and looks towards the light, blurring his vision. He at first cannot believe that the objects he is now seeing are realer than the shadows. He feels uncomfortable and wants to watch shadows again. He is then dragged up outside the cave into the outer world. The Sun irritates his eyes even more, and he is incapable of immediately perceiving the world’s real objects. He sees the shadows best, and from there views reflections of objects in the water, before moving on to the actual objects. He looks up at the nighttime sky and stars, and finally the Sun at daytime. He reflects on the Sun as the giver of all life in the world. In this allegory, the Sun is the Good, the source of all knowledge and truth, and the highest of Plato’s Forms. Plato says that discovering is the highest goal of life, even if it is difficult. Some scholars theorize that Plato saw this Form as God. To make judgements about what food, book, music, etc. is good, one must know what good means. Philosophers examine the permanent Forms. Some of the Forms do not even exist physically, but are real nonetheless: you can’t physically show someone an object called honesty, but people will know you are honest if you always tell the truth. Another example is the mathematical proposition 2 + 2 = 4, which was true before the creation of the world and will be after it. Its numbers do not exist in the physical world, but outside it. Numbers are infinite, but nothing material is. The physical world has imperfect examples of the Forms like absolute justice. Understanding the immaterial Forms is enlightenment to Plato.
The liberated man then pities his fellow prisoners, and wishes to return to the cave, free them, and tell them about the real objects. However, they see that the shadows blur his sight, so they avoid the Sun, and punish anyone who tries to bring them up to it with death. The prisoners confer honors among themselves on those who can see the shadows the fastest, but the freed man cares nothing for them, saying that it is “better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they [Plato’s prisoners] do and live after their manner”. Discovering the Good was more important to Plato than material prosperity. While he conceded some pleasure was necessary in life, he believed that living merely for simple pleasures only fits an oyster. To him, one has to discover and share the Forms even if it upsets others. Indeed, Plato’s teacher Socrates tried to educate others even at the cost of his life: he was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. Plato believed in absolute standards of right, wrong, and justice. One must not do evil even when it benefits them: in a later dialogue of the Republic, Glaucon mentions the mythical character Gyges, who finds a ring that makes him invisible. He uses it to kill the king, court the queen, and take control of the kingdom. Glaucon argues that people only follow justice to avoid consequences, and if they had the ring, they would do evil things to benefit them. Socrates objects that a good person wouldn’t use the ring and to do so would destroy them. Plato believed one had to use their knowledge of the Forms to improve the world.
The prisoner’s escape from Plato’s cave and discovery of the sun represents man’s ascent from ignorance to truth. He stays chained to the material world and fears to look beyond it to the truth of the immaterial higher Forms. But once he does, he gains enlightenment of the Good, the highest Form. Plato created the Western philosophical idea that the material world points to an eternal one, that this is discoverable through reason, and that doing so is the highest goal of philosophy and science. Christian Platonists built on Plato, saying that the Forms are eternal ideas in God’s aspect, or archetypes by which He created and arranged the universe.
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