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Allegory
Explanation and Analysis—Allegory of the Cave:
In Book 7, Plato uses allegory to discuss knowledge in one of the most well-known allegories in literature, the allegory of the cave. Socrates details a hypothetical world in which prisoners are chained in place inside of a cave. There is a low wall behind which unseen people carry objects, and a fire projects shadows onto an outer wall that the prisoners can see. These unseen people also make sounds, which sound to the chained prisoners as if they are coming from the shadows.
Now Socrates asks his hearers to imagine that someone escapes from the cave and sees the real world and the actual sun. Originally blinding and displeasing, the real world would soon seem more real than any experience in the cave ever was, a feeling that would correspond to the truth of the situation. However, if that escaped prisoner were to return to the cave and attempt to convey his experience to the prisoners still in chains, they wouldn't be able to comprehend the world beyond the cave. They may even react negatively, having no desire to leave the cave at all.
This allegory, drawn out over multiple pages by Plato, is comparable to philosophers attempting to seek out true knowledge: "the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world [...] in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all." Socrates is urging his interlocutors, and the reader, to doubt the importance of material experiences. The physical world is the world of the cave, full of falsehoods that mislead agents in the world. Meanwhile, the real world of the allegory is the world of the intellect, and the sun is the Form of the good. Plato's notion of Forms is foundational to his philosophical project and is conveyed in The Republic through an allegory that emphasizes how misleading material imitations of Forms are, as well as how transformative considering Forms themselves can be.
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