can anyone tell me what is the meaning?

Question

and the message or a brief summary on plato: THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE!!!!!!

Answer 1

Assuming that you are familiar with the allegory, and also that you can access wikipedia like the rest us and don't need a cut-and-paste with no original thought, I'd have to say that the 'allegory of the cave' basically encapsulates two hypotheses.

The first would be one of the older versions of the 'brain in a jar' conundrum (made most famous recently by the movie "The Matrix"). It asks how a person could know if everything (or even anything) that they percieve is real. Perhaps (as the allegory suggests) what we think we see is really just a poor facsimilie of the REAL truth. For Plato, this is groundwork for one of his favourite concepts - a 'world of ideas' which is an invisible realm filled only with perfection that spawns the lesser, imperfect things we see all around us.

The other major slant to the allegory is the idea that it is not possible to see both the reality and the illusion at the same time. By this, Plato suggests what has nowadays come to be known as a 'paradigm'. A person in one paradigm will have difficulty (at best) communicating with someone in a different paradigm: the two people assume different things to be true, have different ways of explaining things, and even at the coarsest level will tends to mean different things when they use the same words.

Another good example would be that of Copernicus. Many before (and even after) would find his proposition that the Earth moves around the Sun to be patently ridiculous. If the Earth moves, why can't we FEEL it moving? If the Sun is still, why can we SEE it trek across the sky? All their experience leads them to believe something different to be true, yet all of Copernicus' as an astronomer led him to believe something completely different.

This too is groundwork, though of a different sort. In a sense, he could use it to say, "look, I know my ideas SOUND crazy to you, but maybe they sound crazy because they're true. Not because they really are crazy". Plato would know firsthand (through Socrates) how bad it was to be percieved as a nut, so I suppose it's natural that he would be a little defensive about it...

Answer 2

Interpretation
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 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)

The brilliant sun outside the cave represents the Form of the Good, and this passage among others can easily give the impression that Plato regarded this as a creative, independent god. Moreover, after "returning from divine contemplations to the petty miseries of men", one is apt to cut "a sorry figure" if,

while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate about the notions of these things in the minds of those who have never seen justice itself? (517d-e)
Plato could, perhaps, be thinking (or subtly reminding the reader) of the trial of Socrates here.

It might appear strange that, while acknowledging the political ineptness of one "returning from divine contemplations", Plato has all the while been describing the ideal state, ruled by philosopher-kings, a qualification of which is that they are in regular intercourse with the Form of the Good.

Another more simplistic interpretation of the Allegory is the process and consequence of enlightenment. First one has to awaken from the dream we call life (breaking the bonds); then we become aware of the webs that influence and move us (shadows on the wall); and finally we see the truth for what it truly is (the sun and world outside the cave). Our instinct and natural desire is to free others and awaken them to the truth, but doing so is futile for they cannot see past the illusions and will only attack the truth bearer.

The Allegory becomes a metaphor for the life of Socrates. Awakened to the truth and killed for trying to bring that truth to the chained.

Yet another interpretation is that of the Idealists. As in the philosophy of George Berkeley, it is understood that we do not directly and immediately know real external objects. we only directly know the effect that reality has on our minds. In other words, we immediately know only shadowy inner mental images of real external objects. The real external objects themselves cannot be immediately and directly known. In the Appendix to his main work, Schopenhauer expressed it as follows:

Answer 3

Being shackled to one another and forced to look at a wall, ie the prisoners are the people. the gaurds making the shadows and controlling the fire and making sure people stay shackled is the government. the shadows are the enterntainment the government gives the people so that they dont go crazy and rebel. because this is all the people know they just accept it and think this is their life, trying to figure out what the shadows are. so they go on with their lives shackled and trying to figure out what the shadows are. not realizing that by turning their heads and breaking out of the shackles they can figure out what it really is and see things as they really are. .

I think the other thing is it not just about turning your head and seeing what is really going on but also its about getting out of the cave, because a cave sucks. I think that people because they live their whole life in a cave and therefore are dependent on the cave and know only the cave, that once people realize whats going on they, just are in a state of hey you tricked me, but now what, let me try and live in this cave and they realize the cave sucks and then go on thinking about their life shackled up and the good times they had while shackled when thats all they knew and wish they could go back to to being shackled and wish they didnt have the true knowledge. you need to not only turn your head around and see things for the way they are, but also you need to realize your in a cave and you need to get out of the cave to truely escape.

Answer 4

it means you should put down the crack pipe