Reply #29: Let's take that a step further for the benefit of our friend [View All]

Plato's allegory was used to illustrate his theory of ideas (also called the theory of forms). The world of the prisoners in the cave was their everday world, so they interpreted reality through that experience. For them, shadows on the wall is reality. However, to the one prisoner who is allowed to leave the cave, reality becomes the world as most people experience it. The released prisoner returns to the cave and attempts to tell his fellow inmates about this higher reality. The other prisoners, who have never experienced anything beyond the shadows in the cave, do not readily understand what their favored fellow is saying.

The released prisoner is analogous to the true philosopher, who knows and understands a higher reality of which ordinary people are only vaguely aware. This is the world of abstract ideas or forms. What we call a cat in the everyday world is called such because it conforms to a universal idea of a cat. A philosopher is one with a better understanding of the idea as opposed to the concrete experience of the idea.

According to Plato, ideas are perfect and immutable; the concrete reality of the everyday world is corrupt and in a constant state of flux.