Hey! Professor Hitch here, and today, I want to give you a basic run-through of what "Allegory
of the Cave" is about. So, as you can see in the picture in front of us, there's a cave.
Definitely, there is a cave in "Allegory of the Cave" which you can see. Here on the bottom left
corner are prisoners. "Allegory of the Cave" is about a series of prisoners who are being held
captive in a cave. These prisoners have been raised in the cave. They don't know
any other life. They don't even know that there is a life outside of this cave.
Now, take a moment to look at the structure of this cave. So, the prisoners are chained. They can
only face to the left, here, in this space behind them, where they can't see at all, is a fire, and
this fire is going to project shadows onto this cave wall. The only thing [shadows] that they know
that exists in the entire universe. There's a roadway in this cave, presumably, maybe, where
the people who keep them walk around. So, these prisoners are going to grow up thinking that the
shadows they see on the cave wall are absolutely real, even though obviously they're just shadows.
To the people in the cave, these shadows actually represent other human beings. Now,
what happens in "Allegory of the Cave" is Plato supposes what would happen if somebody was
freed... what would be the next step, right? So, let's say that this prisoner right here,
uh, she is freed from her chains, and she crawls outside the rough ascent to sunlight.
It would be hard for her to do that because living in a cave, um, you're not going to be used to sun.
The sun's going to be painful as you climb up out of the cave. You're going to be regretting
all of your life choices doing that, and when you get to the surface, should you make it that far,
um, you'd simply be blinded by the lights, blinded by the lights.
However, eventually, if this prisoner is able to do that on the rough ascent
to sunlight and is able to acclimate to the sun, what the prisoner would then understand is just
how unfortunate their circumstances are... um, holy crap, they're being held captive in a cave,
and she would probably want to go back into the cave to sort of rescue the other prisoners
and let them know, like, hey, there's a better life. We just bring sunglasses... Um, however,
herein lies the problem, and this is something that Plato discusses when the prisoner descends
back into the cave to spread the good news. If you are somebody who's lived in a cave your entire
life, and somebody who escaped, who did the one thing you never thought you could do, comes back
and says, "Hey guys, turns out everything's false, turns out everything we knew is,
is, fake, here's the real world," you would look at that person as being super duper crazy, and if
you had a chance to, like, maybe stone that person or kill that person, we would probably do so,
and thus, continue living in ignorance. So, that is the basic plot behind "Allegory of the Cave"...
the last thing that I want to cover is, um, the word allegory, meaning that you shouldn't
necessarily take this story to be completely literal. Another way of thinking about this
story is that the shadows are illusions, the shadows cast by this fire onto the cave wall
are illusions, that the prisoners don't really know any better, and the sunlight represents
true knowledge, and what Plato then is trying to say is that the pursuit of true knowledge,
the pursuit of understanding, the universe as it really is is... freaking challenging, um, and is
not for the faint of heart... it is optimistic in some ways, but also pessimistic in other ways...
Now, there is only a basic overview of the whole story. I would encourage you to read this on
your own, ask questions, look up resources, but hopefully this was helpful! That's all for now!