1. The Allegory of the Cave
Plato
The Allegory of the Cave

2. Plato (427(?) BCE)
“Plato means“the broad” – possibly his nickname.
Son of a wealthy Athens family.
Served in the Athens army during the Peloponnesian War.
Though planned as a school for future statesmen, Plato had become convinced that the road to knowledge lay in exact reasoning, as in mathematics.

3. Plato and Socrates Plato was Socrates’ student.
Almost all we know about Socrates is from Plato’s writings.
After Socrates’ execution for corrupting the young and neglecting the gods, Plato left Athens in disgust and travelled widely.

4. The Academy
In (ca.) 387 BCE, Plato returned to Athens and established a school for philosophy, built in a grove dedicated to the famous hero Academos.
The Academy continued until it was closed in 529 CE, over 900 years.

5. Plato’s Dialogues
Plato’s works span approximately 30“dialogues – dramatic conversations with statesmen, citizens, and other recognizable names from Plato’s time and earlier.
Socrates is the main interlocutor.
It is hard to tell what are just Socrates’ own views and what is just Plato’s voice.

6. The Allegory of the Cave
What is an allegory?
It’s a story that teaches you about something other than what is in the story.
What is an analogy?
A comparison made to show a similarity.

7. Purposes of the Allegory
Plato’s Cave Allegory has a number of purposes:
Distinguish appearance from reality
it is possible to have the wrong understanding of the things we see, hear, feel, etc.
Explain enlightenment
moving from ‘shadows’ to ‘the real’
cannot be taught, you must see for yourself
Introduce the Theory of Forms (or Ideas)
as shadows are to physical things, physical things are to the Forms (Ideas)

8. Plato’s Theory of Forms
Plato believed that true reality existed beyond what we can perceive in the world.
What we perceive around us is a shadow of this truth.
Two distinct levels of reality exist: the visible world of sights and sounds that we inhabit, and the intelligible world of form that stands above the visible world and gives it being.
For example, Plato maintains that in addition to being able to identify a beautiful person or beautiful painting, we also have an idea of what Beauty is, and we are only able to identify a beautiful thing/person because we have this concept of beauty in the abstract.

9. Plato’s Theory of Forms
In other words, the beautiful things we can see are beautiful only because they participate in the more general Form of Beauty. This Form of Beauty is invisible, eternal, and unchanging, unlike the thing in the visible world that can grow old and lose their beauty.
The Theory of Forms envision an entire world of Forms, a world that exists outside of time and space, where universal forms of Beauty, Justice, Courage, and the like exist unaffected by the changes and imperfections of the visible world.

11. Plato’s Theory of Forms
Plato believed that these Forms, or Universals, are:
Eternal
Unchanging
Necessary
Because everything in space and time
comes into being at some time and in some place, and
goes out of being at some time and in some place,
The Forms, eternal and unchanging, must be outside space and time.

12. Plato’s Theory of Forms
S0 how do these eternal, unchanging Forms interact with the changing world of our experience?
Plato tells us: by a relation of ‘participation’ or ‘sharing’
Another way to say it, Forms have ‘instances’ in physical things.
This red thing has an instance of “redness,”
This chair is an instance of “chairness,”
This dog is an instance of “dogness.”

14. Discussion
Why do the other prisoners consider the first prisoner to have been ruined by venturing outside?
What do the shadows on the wall versus the real objects symbolize in Plato's theory of forms?
Describe other "caves" in modern life in which people might be "imprisoned" or feel "imprisoned".
How does this imaginary dialogue relate to what actually happened to the historical Socrates?