Plato's Allegory of the Cave

The following are in response to these questions.

1.  According to Socrates, the Allegory of the Cave represents the process of becoming a philosopher.  He details how it is akin to realizing that the world you have always known is the shadows of reality.  A philosopher, like the prisoner emerging from the cave, finds that there is an entire world that he knew only hints of before.

2.  The key elements in the allegory's imagery are the cave, the prisoner, the shadows, and the outside world (the sun, specifically).  The cave is the prison in which the prisoner (potential philosophers and scholars, or just humans in general) is trapped.  The shadows are a twisted version of the outside world.  These shadows represent the narrow view of the prisoners.  They have some idea of reality, but only a small slice of it.

3.  The allegory suggests that the process of enlightenment or education is potentially painful, but ultimately beneficial ("And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?).  However, after growing used to enlightenment, one feels compelled to return and share knowledge with those still in the dark.

4.  The imagery of shackles suggests that the prisoners lack freedom--in the case of the allegory, this means freedom of the mind, not necessarily of the body.  The cave indicates that the prisoners' perspectives are both insular and primitive.  Because of the shackles, they are unable to see anything but the grisly shadow of enlightenment.

5.  Things such as politically biased news sources, trend conformity, popular opinion, and brand loyalty are all things that "shackle the mind" in some way.  They filter the raw reality.  While the mind is not shackled in the sense that people are confined against their will, it is similar in that it only allows the prisoners to see a certain representation of the real world.

6.  The freed prisoner sees the entire world.  Although he is blinded by it at first, he soon sees the virtue in it. The cave prisoners are left only watching the shadows projected on walls by the silhouettes of people walking by with strange objects.

7.  Intellectual confusion can result either from lack of light or overwhelming light.  Lack of light is the lack of knowledge and enlightenment, while being blinded by light is the result of having one's eyes opened suddenly to vast amounts of new information.  Both cause the one to temporarily lose sight before the eyes (symbolically, the mind) is able to adjust.

8.  The cave prisoners get free when they are dragged from the cave.  This suggests that intellectual freedom is not necessarily something that seems desirable at first.  For many, the comfort of ignorance is preferred to the harshness of truth.  For their own good, the prisoners are forced out of the cave.

9.  There is definitely a distinction between appearances and reality.  If there was not, then it would theoretically be impossible to lie (and obviously, it is not impossible to lie).  Throughout the year, our class has talked about things such as wearing social masks, and how performative utterances can reveal people's "true selves".  All these things indicate that there is an indisputable difference between appearance and reality.

10.  The two alternative metaphysical assumptions are that appearances match up perfectly to reality, and thus there is no reason for one to question his or her surroundings.  These assumptions would pretty much make every philosopher ever obsolete.