The Allegory of the Cave: Transcendence in Platonism and Christianity by Ursic Marko and Andrew Lout:
The Allegory of the Cave is a genius story that opens the reader’s mind to the beyond. This story is from Plato’s masterwork “The Republic” that explains how individuals often acquire knowledge on aspects of justice, good, and beauty. The name “Allegory” is drawn from the metaphor of using prisoners who are chained in a dark cave to explain the challenges that people experience in their struggle to sustain an intellectual and just spirit.
The allegory is a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon where they imagine people who live in an underground cave with an opening to the outside world after a steep ascent. The prisoners in the cave were chained for a lifetime in a manner that they could not move their heads (Ursic & Louth, 1998). The fire behind the prisoners caused them to view the shadows of objects in front of them. Prisoners could only see the shadows of objects carried by other people in the cave. Although those in the cave speak, the echoes produced to make it difficult to understand what is being said.
As a result of the illusion created by the shadows, the prisoners encounter a difficult time after being freed due to the assumption that the shadowed images were the reality of life. After being dragged to the light, the prisoner gets dazzled by the sun’s brightness and the beauty in the stars and moon. After getting accustomed to the reality, they pity the Individuals in the cave but do not want to return to them (Ursic & Louth, 1998). However, although the new arrivals choose to remain in the light, true enlightenment can only be achieved by ascending into the cave to join the men who are chained in order to share the knowledge with them.
In this metaphorical representation, Plato explains that an individual’s path to intellectuality is both strenuous and painful. The imprisonment in a cave represents an imaginary world while the freedom from the chains represents a sensual real world. It is through the world of ideas that an individual ascends from the cave but must return to free other prisoners.
References
Ursic, M., & Louth, A. (1998). The Allegory of the Cave: Transcendence in Platonism and Christianity. Hermathena, (165), 85-107.