The Allegory of the Cave At the beginning of Book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates famously invokes an image of human nature with respect to education and the lack of it, likening our situation to that of prisoners in a cave. Imagine an underground cave-like dwelling, its entrance entirely out of sight. Inhabiting this cave are human beings whose feet and necks are chained so that they can neither get up nor turn their heads; they can only see straight ahead. Above and behind them burns a fire, and between them and the fire there is a raised path and a low wall, like the screen above which performers display their puppets. Behind this wall men pass to and fro carrying statues and figures of human beings, animals, and other objects in such a manner that the artifacts appear over the top of the screen, projecting onto the wall opposite the fire. The prisoners, unable to see neither the objects carried behind them nor one another, behold only the shadows of themselves and of the statues cast onto the wall in front of them. The prisoners represent the vast majority of the human race: “they’re like us.” They live in a world in which images are mistaken for realities. What is a shadow, after all, but a mere image of something real (in this case a statue, which is itself an image of something even more real, namely a living human being or animal)? Moreover, the prisoners have not the faintest clue that throughout their entire lives they have been exposed to nothing but distortions of the truth—they are, in other words, unaware of their ignorance (just like Euthyphro, the fanatical young priest about whom you will read in the next chapter). The shadows represent the authoritative opinions that govern the hearts and minds of whole communities, and give a transcendent purpose and meaning to our particular existence.[1] These shadows are to be contrasted with the light of truth illuminating the world beyond the cave (but which also makes the shadows visible within it). The people carrying the statues are the lawgivers and poets who establish the cultural values and cosmic worldview that characterize and define a given society. In his excellent commentary on Plato’s Republic, Professor Allan Bloom explains: “We do not see men as they are but as they are represented to us by legislators and poets. A Greek sees things differently from the way a Persian sees them. One need only think of…the significance of cows to Hindus as opposed to other men to realize how powerful are the various horizons constituted by law or convention.”[2] These authoritative opinions are not accurate reflections of nature, but rather a curious amalgam of natureandconvention. To quote once again from Professor Bloom: “The first and most difficult of tasks is the separation of what exists by nature from what is merely made by man.”[3] This, precisely, is the business of philosophy, which literally means “the love of wisdom,” coming from the ancient Greek words philein, meaning “to .

1. The Allegory of the Cave
At the beginning of Book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates
famously invokes an image of human nature with respect
to education and the lack of it, likening our situation to that of
prisoners in a cave. Imagine an underground cave-like dwelling,
its entrance entirely out of sight. Inhabiting this cave are human
beings whose feet and necks are chained so that they can neither
get up nor turn their heads; they can only see straight ahead.
Above and behind them burns a fire, and between them and the
fire there is a raised path and a low wall, like the screen above
which performers display their puppets. Behind this wall men
pass to and fro carrying statues and figures of human beings,
animals, and other objects in such a manner that the artifacts
appear over the top of the screen, projecting onto the wall
opposite the fire. The prisoners, unable to see neither the
objects carried behind them nor one another, behold only the
shadows of themselves and of the statues cast onto the wall in
front of them.
The prisoners represent the vast majority of the human race:
“they’re like us.” They live in a world in which images are
mistaken for realities. What is a shadow, after all, but a mere
image of something real (in this case a statue, which is itself an
image of something even more real, namely a living human
being or animal)? Moreover, the prisoners have not the faintest
clue that throughout their entire lives they have been exposed to
nothing but distortions of the truth—they are, in other
words, unaware of their ignorance (just like Euthyphro, the
fanatical young priest about whom you will read in the next
chapter). The shadows represent the authoritative opinions that
govern the hearts and minds of whole communities, and give a
transcendent purpose and meaning to our particular
existence.[1] These shadows are to be contrasted with the light
of truth illuminating the world beyond the cave (but which also

2. makes the shadows visible within it). The people carrying the
statues are the lawgivers and poets who establish the cultural
values and cosmic worldview that characterize and define a
given society. In his excellent commentary on Plato’s Republic,
Professor Allan Bloom explains: “We do not see men as they
are but as they are represented to us by legislators and poets. A
Greek sees things differently from the way a Persian sees them.
One need only think of…the significance of cows to Hindus as
opposed to other men to realize how powerful are the
various horizons constituted by law or convention.”[2] These
authoritative opinions are not accurate reflections of nature, but
rather a curious amalgam of natureandconvention. To quote
once again from Professor Bloom: “The first and most difficult
of tasks is the separation of what exists by nature from what is
merely made by man.”[3]
This, precisely, is the business of philosophy, which literally
means “the love of wisdom,” coming from the ancient Greek
words philein, meaning “to love,” and sophia, meaning
“wisdom.” Philosophy is a rigorous, logical, and systematic
activity of the mind that seeks to discover the ultimate nature of
reality, including and especially the nature of the human being.
For Socrates, the single most important question the philosopher
grapples with is: “What is the best way of life for a human
being?” Socrates reasoned that if he could provide a correct
answer to this question, he would have solved the riddle of
human happiness, which is what everyone longs for and
actively, if not always thoughtfully, pursues. We are all of us,
therefore, in need of philosophy. But let us continue with the
cave allegory.
Next, imagine that one of the prisoners is forcibly turned toward
the firelight. He would be pained by the sudden brightness in
his eyes, and would be unable to make out the statues being
carried before the fire. Moreover, he would have difficulty
believing that the statues are more real than their pale shadows

3. decorating the cave wall, as these latter are all that the prisoner
has ever known since childhood. And if the prisoner
were compelled to look at the light, his eyes would hurt and he
would avert his gaze, turning instead toward the comfortable
and familiar darkness. Lastly, if someone dragged him away
by force up the rough, steep path out of the cave and into the
daylight, he would be distressed and annoyed at being so
dragged. Once out of the cave, the glaring sun would leave him
temporarily blinded, unable to see objects in the natural world.
Gradually, however, he would recover his sight, first making
out the shadows of things on the ground, then seeing their
reflections in pools of water, followed by a direct vision of the
objects themselves. Lifting his gaze still higher, he would
behold the moon and the stars at nighttime, and then finally see
“the sun itself by itself in its own region.” The prisoner, having
spent his whole life mistaking the soiled fragments of the truth
for the truth itself, has finally achieved liberation from the cave
of ignorance; he has literally become enlightened.
The sun represents what Socrates refers to at the end of your
reading as “the idea of the good,” which is the source of
all being and intelligibility. That is, the idea of the good is
responsible for all that exists as well as for the fact that
whatever exists is capable of being understood by us. It is “the
cause of all that is right and fair in everything…—and that man
who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see
it.” This idea is the key to the mystery of the good life. Anyone
who is to live the best and most satisfying life—a life wherein
one is in possession of the comprehensive human good—must
be emancipated from the prison house of ignorance, making the
ascent to the fundamental principle that informs not only the
human condition, but the very cosmos itself. (Exactly how we
are to liberate our minds from false opinions and strive for and
ultimately apprehend the truth about the ultimate nature of
things is a question we will discuss in the next chapter.[4])

4. To the one who has been liberated from the tyranny of
shadows—and who is therefore genuinely happy because he has
seen the light of truth—the habits, opinions, honors, customs,
and praises, indeed the very lives, of the prisoners languishing
in the darkness below can only be seen as pitiful, slavish, and
crude. The philosopher, meditating on the lives of the cave-
dwellers, will echo the sentiments of Achilles as he wandered
miserably through Hades in Homer’s Odyssey: better it is “‘to
be on the soil, serf to another man, to a portionless man,’” and
to undergo anything whatsoever rather than to think and live as
they do.
Upon re-entering the cave, the philosopher will be unable to see
properly because of the darkness, and the other prisoners will
ridicule him, thinking that the voyage into the light of day had
ruined his sight, thus rendering him incapable of competing
with them in forming judgments about the shadows. Finally, if
the philosopher attempted to liberate and enlighten the other
prisoners, he would be met not with gratitude and an open mind,
but with violent hostility; they would kill him.[5] Why is this
so?
You will notice from the above that the emancipated prisoner
does not exit the cave on his own initiative and by his own
unaided efforts: rather, he must be compelled to escape. He
must be dragged away by force up the rough, steep path out of
the cave and into the light of the sun, after which he will
be distressed and annoyed at being so dragged. Why the dogged
resistance to enlightenment? One reason why so many people
are disinclined to live “the examined life” is that, in addition to
requiring a sharp mind, iron self-discipline, and a formidable
memory, doing philosophy is extremelyhard work. The path out
of the cave is not smooth and flat, but arduous and rugged. In a
sense, it is much easier and perhaps more superficially pleasant
for us to remain smugly contented prisoners in the cave, human
beings tending as they do to follow the path of least resistance.

5. It is a lamentable fact of human nature that not everybody is
willing to carefully examine his or her most basic assumptions
and thereby gain freedom from the uncritical acceptance of the
beliefs that we inherit from those who came before us. Do most
human beings seem to prefer a comforting illusion to an
unsettling truth? If the answer is “yes,” then we have discovered
another reason why philosophy is a difficult enterprise: it
requires a degree of courage on the part of the truth seeker,
namely, the courage to follow the argument wherever it may
lead. This in turn forces us to risk abandoning some of our most
comforting and emotionally sustaining beliefs once we discover
them to be philosophically unsound. For the lover of wisdom,
this risk is worth taking. Why? Because by doing
philosophy, we achieve true freedom and independence of
mind. As Socrates says near the end of the Apology, “the
unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”