Out Of The Cave's Darkness

Source: National Geographic

I'm currently reading a book that I personally feel is so informative and interesting so now I'll like to share with you some of the things I read in this book. You can click on the book in my "Current Read" tab to find out more about it and read its synopsis. I encourage you to get it if you're into philosophy. Let's go straight into it now.

I'm going to tell you a story. 

And I'd really like you to use your imagination here to build some sort of mental picture. 

Imagine this: 

There are six men living in a dark underground cave ever since they were born. They are chained from their necks to their legs and sit with their backs faced away from the mouth of the cave. They are unable to move and see behind them. Behind them there is a fire on a raised platform. Between the men and the fire there is a raised walkway with a low wall built on its side. There are human-like creatures passing along the walkway carrying statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone. Since there is a fire, they cast blurry shadows of the figures and statues on the back of cave. The six men are able to see those shadows. So these six men discussed among themselves about those shadows and they would name them. They would think that these shadows are all there is to it and nothing more. 

Now imagine this:

One man was able to break free from the chains and escape. What do you think he would do? He would want to know where all those shadows came from and what made them. But as he turns around, his eyes suffer sharp pains. The glare of the fire troubles him. He is dazzled by the clarity of the passing statues and animal figures that are before him now which were once only shadows. He is baffled when a passing human-like creature asks him to name each shadow. He denies that any of it is true. Then he manages to go out from the cave and see the sun for the first time. The light irritates his eyes and he is blinded at first. He is unable to see anything. 

Slowly, he grows accustomed to the world above the cave. He will of course see shadows best. Then he sees reflections of men and other objects in the water. Then he is able to see the objects themselves. Later, he will be able to look at the moon and stars. Then finally he is able to see the sun as it is. He then reasons that the sun is what gives life and light to everything in this world. 

This man decides to go back to the cave to tell the other 5 men about the things he saw outside. But as he goes into the cave, he is unable to see at all as it is too dark for him. He is unable to name all those shadows as well as the others. The 5 men told him that he went up and came back down without his eyes. They decided that it was best not to escape and go out at all. That man was unable to convince them about the beauty outside the cave. Then those 5 men killed him. 

What can you understand from this story? 

'The Allegory of the Cave' was a story told by Plato, a Greek philosopher in his book called The Republic. 

Okay. Some parts of the story are a bit unrealistic. I mean how could 5 men chained from their necks to their legs kill one guy? It is possible but highly unlikely. 

Anyway, Plato aims to explain that humans can think, speak, hear, or see without any awareness of what is true. Humans are able to easily mistake mere appearances for reality. For example, when the 6 men were naming the shadows they would only be using language to refer to the shadows. But they are unable to see the real object. Therefore we have no idea what that object truly is or how it came to be. The relationship between the darkness of the cave and the outside world is supposed to reflect the world of forms and the world of ideas. He meant that clarity of ideas is much more important that what we can only perceive through our senses. 

What can we learn from this story?

What we are able to sense in our world is only a shadow of the real world. The real world can only be understood with reason. We cannot just assume things. We need to discuss, think logically and ask questions. We have to reason the cause of things. We have to reason about the source of things. We cannot assume that we know everything there is to know just by using our senses. Plato has this idea that knowledge cannot be transferred from teacher to student, but education consists in directing the student's minds towards what is real and important and allowing them to understand it for themselves. We cannot immediately say that something is real and true without looking at it from different perspectives and reasoning about it first. I think that should be base of our education system which is lacking of this concept. We are so used to merely memorizing "facts" our teachers and lecturers give to us that we fail to try to understand them first. We fail to challenge those facts. We fail to question what is supposedly true.

Hope you enjoyed this read. Thanks for reading. 

This is the link to the full dialogue: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html

MY.

References: 

University of Washington. (2015). The allegory of the cave. Retrieved from https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm.

Gaarder, J. (1991) Sophie's world. United Kingdom: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 

EDIT: The book I meant in the first paragraph was 'Sophie's World'.