These prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not look around at the cave, each other, or themselves (514a–b). Socrates begins by asking Glaucon to imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned from childhood. In particular, he likens our perception of the world around us "to the habitation in prison, the firelight there to the sunlight here, the ascent and the view of the upper world the rising of the soul into the world of the mind" (517b). Socrates remarks that this allegory can be taken with what was said before, namely the analogy of the sun and the analogy of the divided line. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from things passing in front of a fire behind them, and they begin to give names to these shadows. Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. All three are characterized in relation to dialectic at the end of Books VII and VIII (531d–534e). The allegory is presented after the analogy of the sun (508b–509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d–513e). It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, narrated by the latter. The Allegory of the Cave (also called the analogy of the cave, myth of the cave, metaphor of the cave, parable of the cave, and Plato's Cave) is presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work the Republic (514a–520a) to compare "the effect of education ( παιδεία) and the lack of it on our nature". This entry was posted in ResponsePaper, Uncategorized by Alisa Rudy. However, I do believe that if Socrates and Glaucon had heard of the phrase “ignorance is bliss”, they might have drawn a different conclusion.
![the allegory of the cave summary the allegory of the cave summary](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/moACSNaqKzc/maxresdefault.jpg)
Socrates and Glaucon agree that this process is preferred over the unenlightened state of the cave prisoners. The allegory of the cave is an accurate description of the philosophical process one must face throughout ones life. Sometimes, and I’m sure many people feel this way, we want to return to that cave of shadows an echoes, because dealing with reality isn’t as easy as people make it seem. As a teen, the moments when one realizes that life isn’t always fair are often the hardest moments of “growing up”. I have always identified with the expression “ignorance is bliss”. However, when Socrates and Glaucon agree that the freed prisoner would not want to go back to their state of idealized imprisonment, the allegory veers into op-ed territory. The goodness and justice we thought was inevitable is in fact not guaranteed to occur. As we age and are exposed to many different things in life, we realize that things are not always in accordance with the idealized version of the world we had in our heads as children. The “education” Socrates mentions is our inevitable exposure to reality. In the start, we have a sugarcoated, childlike perception of reality, which is our “natural condition” before “education”. To me, this is an almost accurate description of life, and the process one goes through with the passage of time. The “people” they see are the realities of life. When the prisoners leave the cave, Socrates explains that these are the philosophers who have come to an understanding of what life really is. This is portrayed as an idealized sense of what goodness and justice are. Socrates explains that these prisoners are like unenlightened people who have only an ideal version of reality, which is to say their imagination of how life should be. Once the prisoners climb out of the cave, they are exposed to reality and they see what caused the noises they heard and the shadows they saw. They are limited to only these observations. The people of the cave are only able to hear echoes from outside, and see shadows of people as a result of a fire behind the cave. They cannot turn their heads, so they can only see what’s right in front of them. Socrates describes to Glaucon a scene in which there are people chained by their arms and legs to the wall of a cave.
![the allegory of the cave summary the allegory of the cave summary](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GVgzSsOjBHE/hqdefault.jpg)
In Book Seven of The Republic, Plato presents his famous “Allegory of the Cave”.