the allegory of the cave?

Question

meaning of the cave? different objects in the cave represent?
events in cave?

Answer 1

It would be best to read it in the context of "The Republic," one of the central Platonic dialogues, in which the allegory of the cave occurs. Socrates passionately belived that it is the function of philosophy (which in Greek means love of wisdom) to liberate us from seeming or apparent reality into the true Reality, which for him meant the world of Ideas discovered through the reasoning process called dialectic, a process used later by Hegel. Every Platonic dialogue embodies this process. The uneducated mind lives in the cave, where the man is chained and faces away from the entrance to the cave and which has dim, flickering lights which cast confused shadows on the wall. The inmate, a virtual prisoner, thinks this reality the truth because he has known nothing else all his life. If he can be educated to leave the cave and to see things in broad daylight, his outlook would be transformed. From this position flow all sorts of consequences. The life of philosophical enquiry is deeper than a life of wordly prosperity or unthinking temporal power. Behind the numerous gods of Greek mythology there is one God. The sophists, who did not believe that there is an intellectual and spiritual truth to be discovered and who taught for money, as Socrates refused to do, are not true philosophers. Alfred North Whitehead said that all Western philosophy is only a series of footnotes to Plato. Even if one disagrees with Plato--and his former pupil Aristotle, who thought that the phenomenal world had more reality than Plato did, departed from his teacher and took philosophy in a new direction-- Socrates-Plato did get the conversation going in a very real sense.

Answer 2

In the simplest sense, Plato is talking about waking up to the truth of reality about us. He is questioning the very nature of reality and playing the ultimate "what if" game. Not content with mere suggestion, Plato interprets the allegory (beginning at 517b): "This image then [the allegory of the cave] we must apply as a whole to all that has been said" —i.e., it can be used to interpret the preceding several pages, which concern the metaphor of the sun and the divided line. In particular, Plato likens "the region revealed through sight", i.e., the ordinary objects we see around us:to the habitation of the prison, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the sun. And if you assume the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise...[M]y dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good, and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason...(517b-c)

Answer 3

Just to get you started, the story is about truth, and how to find it. Its about how we live in a world of shadows without knowing it since its the only truth we've known throughout our lives. And we will only discover that our world is false when someone frees us and drags us out of the security of our caves and into the light of truth.

But this was really a bad question to start philosophy with. You really shouldn't be asking people what these things mean. Plato was wrong. You don't need someone to free you in order for you to learn. And we do not live in a world of shadows.

Answer 4

Well... I consider my room my cave. I have everything in it that makes me feel comfortable and secure. I spend most of my free time in it.

So, I think the cave is a safe place.