The Allegory of the Cave

Socrates: To understand education we might compare it to this situation: Imagine people living in a kind of underground cave, and imagine them having their legs and necks chained, so that they are able to look forward only ...
- Plato, Republic

What is education really all about? In the Republic Plato has Socrates tell us of a dark cave in which a number of prisoners are strapped down and forced to look at the back wall, on which shadow-figures dance. The shadow-figures are cast by the light of a fire behind them before which people move objects about . The prisoners get to know the shadow-figures very well. They know which are the "heroes" and which are the "villains" and so on. It's a very neat and simple little world, and the prisoners are content.

But one day soldiers come and untie one prisoner and drag him away, past the fire and the moving figures, and then out into the sunlight. He is blinded at first but then he begins to make out trees and mountains and clouds. He realizes that the shadow-world of the cave was all a sham, and that he is seeing reality for the first time. Finally he is able to look up at the sun, which is the source of illumination of this rich, beautiful world.

But then the soldiers return the prisoner to his place in the cave. His eyes do not quickly adjust to the darkness, and he has forgotten the puppet-stories. He tries to tell his fellow prisoners that the shadow-play is not reality, that reality is outside the cave. They do not believe him. They are deeply offended, and if he continues trying to enlighten them, they will turn on him and kill him!

Which was, of course, just what happened to Socrates at the hands of the Athenians.

Plato believed that there is much more reality and certainty in the abstract realm of ideas--mathematics, science, and so on--than in the merely visible (and unintelligible) world of our everyday lives, and it is important to realize that, for Plato, the idea of Goodness is the highest idea, the idea which gives meaning to all other ideas. So people may learn mathematics, science, medicine, law; but if they don't know what Goodness is, what the good life is all about, they are failures. In our own time it is easy to think of examples of knowledgeable people whose lives are confused because they do not know right from wrong--the inside trader, the judge who takes a bribe, the minister who seduces members of his congregation the wealthy movie star or rock star or sports star who "has it all" but discovers it is empty and meaningless....

Is education really like this? Is a knowledge of the law, or medicine, say, really pointless without a knowledge of Goodness?

Bibliography

Plato, The Collected Dialogues, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1961. See the Republic.