Education and the Allegory of the Cave

 

 

Education and the Allegory of the Cave by Vicky L. Oldham, December 22, 2021

In Book VII of the Republic by Plato (n.d./2012), Socrates engages his student Glaucon in a dialogue known as the Allegory of the Cave, an analogy representing the journey of a human being from ignorance to knowledge.  It begins with chained prisoners in a cave and ends with the transformation of a freed prisoner following his introduction to the real world.  The analogy's purpose is to show how education and comprehension of the "Forms," Plato's concept of higher truths perceivable only by the human soul, potentially create fundamental changes in humanity (Coumoundouros, n.d.).  To correctly understand the story as Plato intended, an introduction to the abstract concepts in Plato's Theory of Forms, particularly the "Form of the Good, " is helpful (Kraut, 2017).  Even without understanding the exact meaning of Plato's Forms, the Allegory of the Cave stands on its own as a parable of enlightenment and higher awareness through the process of education.

Socrates argues that those who achieve enlightenment and grasp the meaning of Forms are obliged to return to society to assist humanity (Plato's idea of the philosopher-king who rules the city through virtue and wisdom) (Coumoundouros, n.d.).  The story also conveys an ominous message, warning that the enlightened person who returns to communicate with people steeped in ignorance risks rejection.  Plato realizes the perils of greater awareness as he reflects on Socrates' execution in 399 BCE for teaching unpopular ideas. 

The Cave – The Conventional World

Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a group of prisoners chained in a dark underground cave.  They have never known any other existence.  They are chained so that their heads face forward toward the cave wall.  Behind the prisoners and well out of sight is a long, steep passageway leading to the cave entrance and the outside world above.  Glaucon says to Socrates: "You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners," and Socrates replies, "Like ourselves…and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another" (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p. 2).  The cave symbolizes conventional society and its associated ignorance (USU Orientation, 2014, 18:52).  Socrates refers to this dark realm as the sensible world, while above the cave represents the intellectual world.

The Puppet Show

A fire burns opposite where the prisoners are chained (Valadez, 2013).  A low wall sits between the fire and the prisoners, with a passageway behind the wall.  Socrates explains to Glaucon that it is like a "…screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets" (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p. 2).  The mysterious puppeteers move back and forth along the wall while controlling the puppets' movements to represent figures such as animals and people.  Puppets are animated before the fire to cast shadowy shapes on the wall before the prisoners.  The puppeteers also generate sounds that oddly seem to emanate directly from the shadows due to echoes in the cave.

The Prisoners' Delusions

The prisoners are chained and forced to look forward, watching the moving shadows, the silhouettes of puppets controlled by the unseen puppeteers.  This world is the only one the prisoners have ever known.  Socrates says, "To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images" (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p. 3).  As the puppeteers cause shadows to dance between the fire and the prisoners, the prisoners impress each other by identifying shadows by name.  Further, they compete with one another in their ability to memorize the order of the procession in the shadow parade and bestow awards and commendations on those who achieve the best score by recalling details.  They accept their delusional world of shadows despite being chained and compelled to believe what they are told their entire life.

One Set Free

Socrates asks Glaucon to consider what will happen if one of the prisoners is freed from his chains and forced to turn and look at the puppets and the fire.  The fire's unexpected glare briefly blinds him.  It causes his eyes pain, and when he turns back to the wall, he finds it difficult to adjust his vision back to his familiar shadows. However, the freed prisoner has now seen the puppets directly.  Socrates says, "Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?" (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p. 3).  Although the freed prisoner realizes it is the objects that have cast shadows onto the wall due to the light of the fire behind them, he still finds solace in his belief in his former shadow world.  Eventually, he knows the shadows he has taken for granted his entire life were only copies of more tangible things.  However, the discomfort the prisoner just experienced causes him to wish to be chained again, to return to his previous life among fellow prisoners.

Dragged from the Cave—Blind and Angry

Now, one of the puppeteers forcibly drags the freed prisoner up the steep ascent to the outer entrance of the cave.  The puppeteer keeps a firm grip on the struggling man.  Finally, he is exposed to the outside air under the sun's rays.  The freed prisoner cannot see anything due to the extreme brightness, and further, he is enraged by his circumstance.  It will take some time before he can see again, as he is blinded by the intense sunlight meeting his eyes for the first time.  Now in the light of day, he can only look downward and gradually perceives shadows and reflections in the water.  When night falls, his eyes begin to adjust, and he finally begins to look around.  He is shocked and enthralled by this new experience and now looks up to the dome of the sky. Socrates later remarks, "the spangled heavens should be used as a pattern and with a view to that higher knowledge; their beauty is like the beauty of figures or pictures" (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p. 25).  Socrates emphasizes how knowledge gained from observing the night sky enhances understanding of the Forms.

The Brilliance of Light

Daylight returns, and now the freed prisoner's eyes have adjusted.  He looks around in amazement as he perceives trees, houses, animals, and people.  He realizes the puppets in the cave were copies of these objects, and the shadows on the cave wall were just copies of the puppets.  Suddenly, he turns his gaze upward and directly beholds the intensity of the sun.  He is mesmerized by its overwhelming presence and begins to contemplate the whole meaning of his experience.  He realizes that the sun's light is the cause of everything he knows and that by the result of its light, the world outside the cave fills with color, shape, beauty, and life.  Socrates says, "He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold" (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p. 4).  Socrates further explains to Glaucon: "the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world" (p. 7).  Now the freed man understands that the sun's fire casts shadows, including the shadowy phantoms he formerly believed were the only real things.

The Return to the Cave

When the freed prisoner returns to the cave, he now finds that his adjustment to the world of sunlight has made it difficult to navigate his former dark abode.  He tries to explain his experience to the chained prisoners, but they refuse to listen.  In his confused state, attempting to adjust to the cave's darkness, he is acting strangely, and the prisoners speculate that his eyesight is damaged and that he has become deranged.  Socrates says, "Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if anyone tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death" (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p. 5).  Socrates adds that we may laugh at the freed prisoner who first encounters the sunlight because he is still full of ignorance, but laughing when he returns to the cave is wrong because the man now possesses wisdom.  He warns, "…if he has a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den" (p. 6).  The freed prisoner still desires to share his newfound awareness with his companions, and fortunately, another path opens to him—that of a teacher.

The Way of Education

According to Socrates, knowledge must be sought, and cannot be given.  An interesting presentation by Dr. Harrison Kleiner at Utah State University refers to the "banking model of education" (USU Orientation, 2014, 23:14).  Students sit passively while the professor "distributes his capital" (information) into a student's metaphorical bank account.  The student contributes by occasionally completing a paper or quiz.  Then the student withdraws all the account's assets at the time of earning the degree.  Socrates says this passive approach to learning will fail.  He continues, "…if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes."  Socrates further clarifies that authentic education requires self-inspired effort and the desire to strive for the good with all of our being:

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 too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good. (Plato, n.d./1888/2017, p.7)

Socrates says that the mind can only absorb knowledge through the effort of one's "whole soul." 

A teacher can show the way, but the student must be ready to learn.  A well-known saying goes, "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" (Zehr, 2015).  Often it seems like a coincidence when what we seek suddenly, almost magically, becomes accessible.  However, the readiness to learn brings us closer to opportunity because we begin to notice things that previously eluded us.  Like the mysterious puppeteers in the Allegory of the Cave, teachers may help to guide a student, but knowledge cannot automatically insert itself into their minds.  Instead, enlightenment is acquired by one's desire to attain it; that quest and a passion for knowledge must come from within.

The Consequence of Enlightenment

People often move reluctantly through states of distress and anxiety in the process of learning.  The experience of education so aptly illustrated by Plato through Socrates' dialog with Glaucon reveals how the journey to acquire knowledge may, unfortunately, isolate students who find themselves submersed in exploring abstract ideas.  The remote attitude of family and friends who are poorly educated or unwilling to participate in the same quest may prove disheartening.  One may feel sadness and loneliness despite newfound enlightenment, just as the freed prisoner is frustrated by his inability to communicate his discovery to the others in the cave. 

Still, Socrates says those who gain knowledge of the world beyond the cave must return: "they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and honours, whether they are worth having or not" (Plato, n.d.,1888/2017, p. 9).  Interpreting Plato, one may ascertain that it is the duty of the enlightened to contribute to society by their wisdom.  Those who genuinely comprehend the Forms will understand the reason for their return to the realm of the cave.  Educated souls experiencing the same epiphany as the freed prisoner in the Allegory of the Cave remain confident that there is more to human existence than anyone imagines.  That knowledge awaits others like an outstretched hand ready to assist those seeking greater truths along the upward path. 

 

 

References

Coumoundouros, A. (n.d.) Plato: The republic. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH1a

Kraut, R. (2017).  Plato, the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy (Zalta, E., ed.). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/plato/

Plato (n.d./2012). The republic. Trans. C. Rowe. London, England: Penguin Classics.

Plato (n.d./1888/2017). The allegory of the cave (Illustrated) (Benjamin Jowett, Trans., 1888) [Ebook]. Lulu.com. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S1CFDC2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

USU Orientation (2014, June 5). Allegory of the cave (Kleiner, H.) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/aBPd7getIcM

Valadez, D. (2013, July 26). The cave - an adaptation of Plato's allegory in clay [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/K2P4WO1_Hrg  

Zehr, E.P. (2015, June 23). When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/black-belt-brain/201506/when-the-student-is-ready-the-teacher-will-appear