Allegory of the Cave: The Light Versus the Darkness

Plato's Allegory of the Cave: An Exploration of Symbolism and Meaning

One of Plato's philosophical writing, which is in the form of an allegory, is the allegory of the cave. An allegory can be viewed as a writing that has two types of meaning which include either literary or allegorical implications. The definition of allegorical can be interpreted as a symbolic or metaphorical suggestion; while on the other hand, the purpose of the literary is the content matter or the subject. In the setting, actions and characters are usually used as symbols which can be inferred to make symbolic meanings. Plato's allegory uses a lot of symbolic suggestions in his writings hence consist of allegorical meaning. The chained prisoners who are in the dark caves represent the ignorant people present in the world while the dark caves themselves symbolize ignorant modern world. The raised wall in the middle of the two universes symbolizes the people's restriction to think where else the shadows symbolically show the illusion and the realm of sensory perception as Plato calls it. This paper seeks to describe Plato's "Allegory of the cave." With consideration to the plot and setting with a thought experiment of the philosopher and the prisoners.it also affirms whether the philosopher succeeds in getting the prisoners out of the cave using platonic arguments he would use to convince them.

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The Dichotomy of Appearance and Reality in Plato's Allegory of the Cave

According to the philosopher, there is a hidden reality to the vision of the people; hence, the appearance is deceitful. He reasons like an ideal philosopher that the appearing world is a real-world imitation or a photocopy thus claims that the photocopy is represented through the shadows and people can only be informed about the real universe through spiritual knowledge. Plato's Allegory of the Cave displays an exact and challenging image of the world. This is because he clarifies two observations that happen in the attitude of individuals in this world, and they incorporate the sensory perception as well as spiritual perception. Plato says, "anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak" (Hall, 78). There are the individuals who are generally lost in the haziness, but then they neglect to understand that they are lost basically because they have never gone into the other external universe of light to perceive that for sure they were lost in the cave world. Additionally there are the individuals who were once in the darkness which found the opportunity to go to the universe of light and they can't help those in dimness to break their chains and get to the external universe of light since they can't persuade them regarding a superior and real word that they have never been to.

Sensory Perception versus Spiritual Perception in the Allegory of the Cave

Individuals judge things dependent on what they can see, smell, contact, hear, and even feel. Plato says, "whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so to the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being" (Ferguson, 26). This is sensory perception, which is typically unique for various people. A few people are ignorant, mainly because the ignorance world impacts them that they live in and because of the shadows that they see. The prisoners in the cave believe that the shadows that they see on the cave walls are reality principally because they have not yet gotten a chance to see the pictures that mirror the shadows in the cave from the external universe of light. The way that they have never observed the truth they will live to accept that the shadows are the truth and nobody can persuade them that it was not reality by merely letting them know subsequently it is hard to induce them to break the chains and escape the cave to this present reality. In the allegory, the chains symbolize our limit in the material universe and therefore hard to see the fact. To seek the truth, we need to break the material world by breaking the chains which link us to the light outer world and which also represents the spiritual certainty. The first time of dazzling eyes symbolizes difficulty of rejecting the material universe while the second dazzling symbolizes the struggle of accepting one's ignorance after we know the reality.

Conclusion

It is because of these shadows that the philosopher recommends that to get such prisoners out of dimness to the external universe of light, there is the need of an impact by a divine soul which enables such a person to break the chains holding them into the cave world and get out to the external world with fortitude to conquer the first dazzling of eyes once they see the light. We, as a whole, need spiritual perception to escape the darkness and to break the chains holding us hostage in the obscurity, which is the spiritual perception.

Works Cited

Ferguson, A. S. "Plato's Simile of Light. Part II. The Allegory of the Cave (Continued)." The Classical Quarterly 16.1 (1922): 15-28. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/636164?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Hall, Dale. "Interpreting Plato's cave as an allegory of the human condition." Apeiron 14.2 (1980): 74-86. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/APEIRON.1980.14.2.74