Sometime in the 300s BC, the Greek Philosopher Plato, writing in the
voice of his teacher, Socrates, introduced his theory of Forms through a
short thought experiment in Republic known as “the Allegory of the Cave.” It can be summarized like this:
All your life you have been chained to a wall in a dark cave.
Your head is restrained so you can only look at the blank wall in front
of you. Behind you is a large fire, and every so often someone walks
between you and the fire, holding a different object each time so as to
cast a different shadow on the wall in front of you. The sound and smell
of the fire, the constantly changing shadows on the wall in front of
you, and the voices of your fellow captives are all that you think,
know, and talk about. Suddenly, your captor releases you and allows you
to walk around the cave. For the first time in your life, you see the
fire. After noticing all the objects that your captor had carried to
cast the shadows which you previously thought were reality, you come to
understand their true origin. Eventually you are allowed outside of the
cave, where the sun shines everywhere and you finally understand the
true nature of your surroundings.
The theory of Forms is the idea that there are perfect, unchanging,
and definitive truths (Forms) that exist separately from what we as
humans think we know as truth. For example, a blue shirt is not blue in a
dark room, therefore there must exist some perfect and unchanging idea
of “blue” that exists outside of its characterization of the shirt. The
quality of universal “blueness” exists independently of things that we
call “blue.” Similarly, an action that a person performs might not be
viewed as appropriate or justified from every person’s point of view,
but somewhere there must exist some ultimate Form of Justice. The
quality of justice exists independently of whether we as humans think an
action is just. The Forms are symbolized by the outside world in the
allegory, known by Plato as the “realm of being” while the cave itself
represents the ordinary world we as humans, or captives, perceive on a
daily basis, called the “realm of becoming.” The constantly changing
shadows represent the constantly changing world that we experience.
Plato’s views prompted a long philosophical debate that extends to
modern philosophy. He believed that there is a ‘realm’ where universal
truths and qualities exist independently of the actions and objects we
label them with, a view known as the Realist or Platonist view. On the
other side of the debate is the anti-realists or nominalists, who
believe that there is no universal truth, and that the quality of
anything is essentially in the mind of each individual person. The
realist would believe that ideas, facts, ethics, or principles can exist
without a single person knowing it, while the anti-realist would say
that these are all human creations, and there is no ultimate truth. So
which one are you?
Note: The allegory ends with you, the now enlightened one, returning
to the cave to free your fellow captives and share your enlightenment.
However, rather than seeming happy, they yell at you, call you crazy,
and don’t even want to listen to you speak. This is may be symbolic of
the fate of Plato’s teacher, Socrates, who refused the Athenian
government orders to stop teaching philosophy and was eventually
executed. It also suits to symbolize the issues that philosophers faced
in those days when they tried to teach knowledge and wisdom to people.
Full text of the allegory: https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pd
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