The Allegory of the Cave

In Republic VII, Plato imagines prisoners chained from birth deep in a cave, able to see only shadows cast on the wall before them by figures carried past a fire behind them. Taking the shadows for the whole of reality, they name them, predict their order, and award honors for skill at this — and call it wisdom.

The ascent

One prisoner is freed and dragged up the steep, rough path into the daylight. Dazzled and pained at first, he can at first bear only shadows and reflections, then the things themselves, then the stars and moon, and finally the sun — an image of the Good, the source of all being and knowledge. Returning to the cave, he stumbles in the dark, and the prisoners, content with their shadows, mock him and would kill anyone who tried to free them — an unmistakable allusion to the fate of Socrates.

What it means

The allegory dramatizes the divided line: the shadows are images, the fire a counterfeit sun, the upward journey the soul's passage from the sensible to the intelligible. Education, on this picture, is not pouring knowledge into an empty mind but turning the whole soul around, away from the shadows of the senses toward the light of the Forms. It also states the philosopher's painful duty: having seen the Good, to go back down and govern those still in the dark.