Plato's Cave

Crubeens

Can anybody explain to me the meaning behind Plato's Cave?

I know what it is, how the 'story' goes, and what it's supposed to mean; but I still can't understand why everything we're supposed to see in the real world is really only an image.

Help!

Playboy

Check out the wikipedia article on it

DadaKopf

Plato thought there were two realms in the universe. The world of ideal forms and the world we live in. The latter is just a corrupted copy of the former. Hence greek sculpture - an attempt by man to represent the true, essential nature of the world of ideal forms.

Art, philosphy offers a path out of the cave. (I think.)

davej

I don't think its possible to ever leave "the cave" of experience and enter some sort of realm of ideal forms.
However it is possible to map out the presuppositions and limits of life in the cave - which should help to prevent us from overstepping the bounds of reason and allow us to make more informed judgements about the nature of cave life.

In this sense leaving Plato's cave could only lead to another larger encompassing cave. i.e. still grounded in the world of sensations and subjective experience.

davej

ISAW

Crubeens wrote:

Can anybody explain to me the meaning behind Plato's Cave?

I know what it is, how the 'story' goes, and what it's supposed to mean; but I still can't understand why everything we're supposed to see in the real world is really only an image.

Help!

The point I think is not that there is not something "really there". something might well be there but we may have different perception of it. and that in turn is dependent on our own selves.

You see a doughnut. I see a hole.

The other think I think is that we can never be sure of the ultimate reality of something. We may think see the shadow but not grasp the substance. We all "see" things differently. That is not to say something is not there.
Say the president or king. some see him as father of the nation. His kids as their own father. His father as a son. Now he might be a drug addict and a wife beater as well. The picture people get is different. Who is he really? You can apply that to Elvis, OJ Simpson, the postman, the dog next door etc.

daithiocondun

The story of the cave tells us of a group of men (the number is insignificant) who are in a cave. They are facing the back wall of the cave and are shackled so that they cannot turn around and cannot look behind them or at each other. There is a perpetual fire burning behind them, and outside are people who live in the "real world". Therefore, all the men in the cave see are the shadows of these people projected on the wall which they face. They only see the shadows and it is all they have ever seen. One day, a man leaves the cave and walks into the light. He is blinded by the light of day and, frightened, returns to the cave telling the others of his fear, and hence, none of them ever leave again.

The story tells of Plato's notion of the world of the forms and the artificial world we live in. The world we live in, for Plato, is artificial and not real. It is there to only distract us from the truth of the world of the forms. The world of the forms is an actual place where exists perfection of all the things on this earth. Therefore, for example, a tree on this earth is only an imperfect copy of the perfect tree in the world of the forms. The aspiration therefore, for Plato, is for us to understand this and to devote our lives to the attainment of the perfect knowledge residing in the world of the forms so that, when we die, our souls will return to the world of the forms and stay there in perfection (like heaven). If we fail to do this in life, our souls will simply go to the world of the forms when we die, and return to earth by reincarnation endlessly unless we do as Plato teaches us to do. Now, the myth of the cave says therefore, that the cave is the earth and the world outside the cave is the world of the forms. The people in the cave are in the dark and never get to see the truth outside. They are like this so long that when one leaves, he is overwhelmed by the beauty and light of the outside (world of the forms) and runs away from this truth. It is a moral story telling us that we must be brave and not afraid of the truth, abandon the shackes of our pitiful life and we must seek the light and beauty of the outside world of the forms, in eternal aspiration of the "good" (Plato's abstract idea of God).

Beautiful, ain't it??!
I hope this helps!

Scigaithris

DadaKopf wrote:

Art, philosphy offers a path out of the cave. (I think.)

Jacques Derrida in The Gift of Death (1995) discusses not only the image on the wall, but also turning away from this image to the metaphorical Sun (i.e., the Good), and away from the orgiastic (i.e., irresponsibility or nonresponsibility, depending upon the context). Both the cave wall image and the Sun are lesser and greater mysteries respectively, and acceptance of the latter requires that the former be subject to it; i.e., a mystery subordinated to a larger mystery. In essence we never escape mysteries, only accept larger ones linked to earlier ones. In the Platonic sense (see Plato's anabasis, Eugen Fink, and Jan Patocka), we buy larger distortions of reality as we become more articulate (and responsible) of the world we find ourselves in? Plato provided the imagery, but failed to account for the transition from mystery to nonmystery; i.e., "a path out of the cave?"