In Plato’s Republic, Socrates paints a strange picture.
Imagine a cave, underground (as caves are), with no natural light. In this cave are people chained up and chained down; they can’t move a muscle, not even their heads from left to right, and they’ve been stuck like that forever. They’ve never known any different.
They are stuck in a dark cave looking at the wall directly in front of them. On this wall are shadows cast from a fire behind them. Between the fire and the people and the wall is a little runway with a kind of shadow-puppet theatre. The people look at the shadows on the wall – because that’s all they can look at, not being able to move their heads – and since they’ve been here like this forever, they take these shadows to be real. Those shadows are as real as it gets for them.
It’s a depressing picture. For Plato, this is what ‘ordinary ignorant people’, non-philosophers, are like. We walk around thinking we are knowing things and understanding things and engaging with reality, but really we’re just looking at shadows, locked in our mental chains. Socrates shows us this when his questioning exposes our ignorance: in thinking we had a clear idea of something (like ‘courage’, for example) we took a shadow for a reality.
That we are imprisoned in this shadow-theatre, ‘in chains’, is an important image. It resurfaces time and time again, I think. We see it in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s powerful opening line: ‘Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.’ In The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau goes on to explain these chains in terms of the inequality of a class-based society, but he is closer to Plato than that political theory makes it seem. We see it also in Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620), the work that should be considered the first step in the emergence of modern science; Bacon says we need to break free from this shadow-theatre of established convention in order to find the reality behind, and we need the scientific method to do so.
We are imprisoned by our ignorance. What happens when we break the chains? What is the first thing someone realises, in this dark cave, once they break free of their chains and has a proper look around?
The first thing they realise is that they have a sore neck. As Plato puts it, they ‘suffer sharp pains’. They realise they were in chains. Then they look left and right and see a bunch of other people in chains too.
This is Socrates’ first step, essentially. He realises that he doesn’t actually have a clear idea about anything; he tests the ideas that he has and finds them wanting. He realises that we all too often take convention’s word for it. Once he thinks for himself, he breaks those mental chains. This is not a pleasant experience; it’s painful. He realises that he was taking a shadow for a reality. He knows that he does not know. And now he looks around and sees a bunch of people who still think they know. They’re all still in chains. They’re still taking a shadow for reality. But that’s no longer an option for him. Once you’ve broken the chains, there’s no locking yourself back in.
So what’s the next thing you would do, once you’ve broken your chains, looked left and right, and seen a bunch of your fellow people still locked in chains?
You would try to free them. This is what Socrates does with his incessant questioning. In showing anyone, everyone, that they don’t really know what they’re talking about, showing them that they’re taking a shadow for a reality, he hopes to break their mental chains. He wants to liberate them as he has liberated himself.
But they’re locked in tight. He can’t free them. He looks around the cave some more, and sees the fire, and the shadow-puppets, and understands that he’s spent his life locked in a shadowy reality of illusion. He tries to snap people out of it: he tells them about the fire, about the shadow-puppets, about the real world behind them. But they don’t believe him. He sounds like a madman. Who in their right mind would question the shadow-reality when it’s all you’ve known?
Socrates notices an opening to the cave, a way out, a slither of natural light breaking into the darkness of the cave. So he takes that way out. The way is difficult.
Plato makes some special effort to mention that the way is difficult, describing it as a ‘steep and rugged ascent’. You have to crawl out, or be dragged. Allegorically, this way out of the cave is the philosophical method of coming to greater knowledge and understanding. Plato knows this is no easy thing to do. Sadly, it’s not as simple as breaking the chains and then, by that act alone, getting true knowledge. Breaking the chains, realising that you don’t really know much, is just the first step: you realise you’re in a cave, but you’re still stuck in a cave. You need to find a way out of the dark cave, into the light of the world above, but it’s not an easy route. You need to put effort into it. You need to persevere.
So Socrates crawls his way out of the cave, with much effort. What happens when he steps out into the world above? Well, given he’s spent all his life in a darkened cave, the brightness of a clear Greek day will be blinding. His eyes cannot see in the world above as clearly as they did in the cave because they have become accustomed to the darkness of the cave.
Allegorically, when we see philosophical truth – the real world, as opposed to the shadow-reality of the cave – we find it harder to see, harder to look at. Our (intellectual) eyes are accustomed to looking at shadows; they can’t see reality very well, at first. We have to persevere and let our eyes adjust. As they adjust, we have to trust that these new truths are real, even though they’re difficult to see clearly.
Socrates’ eyes slowly adjust. And he looks around. He sees trees, plants, rocks, animals, the land and the sea and the sky. He sees the world as it really is and all that it is.
Allegorically, this is the philosopher coming to understand the ideas that we have about things. This is to see the world as it really is.
Socrates casts his eyes up and sees the sun. Even with his eyes now adjusted to daylight, the sun is still blinding; he can’t look directly at it. All he can see is that it is an extraordinarily bright light that serves to illuminate all that he sees.
This might be the most important allegorical element in the whole story, because the sun here stands in place of ‘the idea of goodness’. For Plato, this is the most important idea that we can understand: everything depends on it. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see this idea clearly because it’s impossible to look at directly (like the sun).
In the cave-world, locked in our chains, we can’t see the sun’s light, seeing only shadows cast by the flickering and inconsistent light of a fire. Allegorically: We don’t see the real idea of goodness; we only see the shadows of society’s representation of goodness. These are not reliable representations: once these shadows told us that slavery was admirable, that homosexuality was abominable, that supreme executive power should be in the hands of the first-born male son of whoever previously held supreme executive power. Societies are prone to believing all sorts of nonsense, and they will always assure themselves that it is ‘good’ and ‘true’.
In the surface-world, having escaped the cave, we can see things illuminated clearly by the sun’s constant light, but we can’t look directly at the sun itself because it’s too powerful and blinding. The idea of goodness is like the sun: it enlightens everything that we see – it’s by its light that we see anything real – but we can’t look directly at it. It enables us to see, but it remains hidden from our sight.
What a metaethicist does is akin to offering you a picture of the sun as if through a filtered telescope or reconstructed by a computer programme. We construct theories, allegories, representations, intended to make the idea of goodness easier to see. In this, we can look ‘directly at the sun’, but of course it’s only a representation, a picture. It’s a true and accurate picture, but for all that truth and accuracy still it isn’t really real: you couldn’t count on it to make any plants grow.
Let’s return to the allegory of the cave. Socrates has broken his chains, left the cave, and has now seen the world above. What next? He will return to the cave to tell the others about what he’s seen.
Much is made of the opening line of The Republic, the book in which we find the allegory of the cave. ‘I went down…’, says Socrates, ‘…to the Piraeus.’ Socrates descends. The Piraeus is the port in Athens, which gives us a certain context. Ports are places of industry, of trade, of the hustle and bustle of society. They’re not always the most salubrious of locations. Socrates went there to see a carnival.
It’s not a very big allegorical leap: Socrates descends into the cave of conventional society to tell them they’re living in a shadow-world.
What happens when Socrates descends back into the darkness of the cave? He has just been in the brightness of daylight, living in the light of the sun. The cave is dark by comparison. His eyes take some time to adjust; at first, everything seems dark. He can’t even see the shadows on the wall.
Allegorically, this tells us that a philosopher, once acclimatised to their improved understanding, will struggle to get by with the humdrum reality of convention. Once you have seen through the illusion, it’s very difficult to step back into it again. This explains why philosophers are so often mocked for ‘having their head in the clouds’ or ‘lacking common sense’. It also excuses someone like Socrates for not being able to ‘win the argument’ in a law court, for example, when he faces a spurious accusation. For all their cleverness, philosophers don’t appear to be the most practically-minded of people. They’re rarely rich or powerful, or else excel by the other measures of success that society values. In becoming absorbed in their extraordinary discipline, they now struggle to see the value in ordinary things.
That tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible is a fine allegory. Is it not intended to signify that when one has penetrated to the depths of things, the consequent loss of illusions brings about the death of the soul – that is to say a complete detachment from all that moves and interests other men?
Nicolas Chamfort
But Socrates’ eyes start to adjust and with a bit of difficulty, stumbling around and such, he begins to navigate the cave once again. He finds the people locked in chains and tries to explain the situation. What happens when the cave-dwellers hear what Socrates has to say? They’re still locked in chains, looking at the shadow-theatre and taking it for reality. Now they’re told that not only is everything they’ve known an illusion, but this bloke has just been outside and there’s a whole other world up there, full of things they can’t even imagine.
What a lunatic, they might think; just the ravings of a madman. Not only that, but this madman can’t even see the shadows on the wall. He can’t see the obvious! He’s stumbling around all over the place as if he can’t see where he’s going. He’s the one out of touch with reality, they think; he’s the one who’s living in a dream world.
Plato includes a cynical little detail here, suggesting that the cave-dwellers would esteem those who are best at discerning the shadows on the wall, best at remembering the order in which they appear, and so best at predicting which will come next. Those who can do this are considered the most able amongst them and they are awarded prizes. Socrates, with his eyes still adjusting, wouldn’t fare well in this competition.
Allegorically, this is the world of business and politics. The richest and most powerful in this world are those who are good at navigating the world of what people believe, regardless of the truth, and if people believe in shadows then you become rich and powerful by navigating that world of shadows. And in that world, how silly Socrates looks, going about the marketplace, visibly poor, barefoot, challenging the beliefs of successful people, accusing the rich and powerful of being miserable and ignorant. If he’s so clever, how come he’s not rich or powerful?
So they dismiss him as at worst a madman and at best a good-for-nothing. Either way, he’s not someone worth listening to. Socrates is left with no place in the world; he doesn’t belong in the cave anymore. But where else should he be?
Socrates’ contemporaries called him ‘atopos’, which colloquially translates as ‘odd’, but literally means ‘out-of-place’ or ‘having no place’. Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ has a clear message to philosophers: you will struggle to find a place in the world. Don’t expect reward or recognition for being a philosopher. The world will see you as ‘odd’, a good-for-nothing. This is inevitable because in challenging the conventions of common sense, the norms of value, etc., you must see through those illusions and stand apart from them. And having seen through them, you lose interest in the shadows and in the rewards that they bring: you have no interest in playing that game. But anyone unwilling to play the game must expect to be dismissed as a good-for-nothing (or worse). If you are true to your discipline, you should take such a dismissal, or a labelling as being ‘odd’ or ‘out-of-place’, as a good sign that you are on the right track. The example of Socrates being condemned to death for ‘corrupting the youth’ is a clear, if extreme, example of just this.
And yet, Plato concludes, what would such a philosopher, a true ‘lover of wisdom’, value higher than seeing the truth? Socrates would rather endure anything than go back to being locked in chains in a dark cave of ignorance.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
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