Do we have any modern day caves?
Tell the kids the story of “Plato’s Cave”. Go thru the prisoners, the roadway, the fire, and the exit to daylight. Discuss with them what they think Plato is trying to say with the story. (Important to note that Plato’s mentor Socrates had just been killed by the government of Athens for the crime of corrupting the youth and causing dissention and distrust of the government.)
Have the kids after that discussion create a bubble map that has at least 4 possible “modern day caves” in the bubble they will label the “cave” and then explain why they think it is a cave in the bubble as well. Have an open discussion of the bubble maps in class before leaving for the day.
(Perhaps…parental control, public school system, the internet, media, etc….)
PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
The Prisoners
You are a prisoner in a cave into which no sunlight ever penetrates. You cannot remember a time when you were not a prisoner, shackled and immobile. In fact you don't even know you are a prisoner. As far as you are concerned, your situation is completely normal. You know there are other prisoners. You’ve never seen them, because of the dark - but you talk to them. Shapes appear and disappear in front of you. You give them names, like "tree", "girl", "house" and you discuss them excitedly with your fellow prisoners. You are satisfied with your life, because the cave is your life. You cannot imagine anything different.
The Roadway
Unknown to the prisoners, this elevated causeway crosses through the cave. No one knows where it leads to. Unseen by the prisoners, life-sized two-dimensional cut -outs of various objects, like "trees", "girls" and "houses", are constantly being carried across this causeway. Because of the fire, shadows of them are projected on to the far wall of the cave. These shadows are what the wretched prisoners take to be real objects. They give names to them, and talk about them, because they know no better. In fact their "reality" is nothing but the shadow of a two-dimensional copy.
The Fire
Although the prisoners don't know it is there, the fire is the source of all their "knowledge" about their world of the cave. Without its light projecting images of the objects carried along the causeway, their lives would be lived in total darkness. There would be nothing to look at and nothing to talk about.
The Exit to Daylight
Suppose one of the prisoners (we could call him "Socrates") escaped, and made his way up the rough track and into the daylight. On the way up, he'd seen the fire, and the causeway, and the two-dimensional figures. In the real world above, to begin with, he was blinded by the sunlight. As he got used to it, he was amazed by the shapes, the colors, the textures - now he knew what a tree was, or a girl, or a house. He couldn't wait to get back down into the cave to tell the others. He tried to describe the brilliance of the light and beauty of the things he'd seen. The prisoners soon got tired of his nonsense and killed him. They preferred the pictures on the wall. They preferred the world they knew and understood.
Understanding the Cave
Plato's allegory of the cave is a very important and popular philosophical treatise. In Plato's Republic, the concept to the allegory of the cave is explained, through the dialogue of Socrates and Glaucon. It begins with the assumption that if a group of prisoners had their necks and hands chained down in a cave; they would be unable to see behind themselves. With a fire behind them, they would be more capable of seeing shadows of images as they passed by the fire. As time passed, the prisoners began to identify the shadows and issued the different shadows names. However, if one of the prisoners was to climb out of the mouth of the cave, he would not be able to see anything at first because the light would be so blinding. But as his eyes gradually began to focus to the light, he would begin to see images more clearly. The light enables the prisoner to see the true image and not just the shadow of the image. If this prisoner was to go back to the cave, he would find that it would be impossible to conform back to his old world. At first he would not be able to identify shadows because his eyes would not yet be adjusted to the darkness in the cave. If the returned prisoner was to tell the other prisoners about the light and that their shadows were not real images, they would not believe him and would accuse him of trying to disrupt their way of life. Since the prisoner could no longer fit in, the others would be forced to kill him.
Plato's main conceptual scheme of the cave is that people see reality as the visible world when reality really is not the visible world. This is a quite an interesting concept for several reasons. The most prominent reason is that his scheme can be applied to so many facets of one's life. For example, many people believe the allegory was simply describing the events that led to Socrates' end. That Socrates with his philosophical teachings had tried to lead society out of the cave and show them the light but society felt threatened, so they killed him. Another example is that the cave represents the uneducated mind, meaning that before we become educated, we are ignorant of the visible world. Therefore the blinding light would be the complete educated mind but as the learning process became easier, it became easier to see the light of the visible world. A modern day case for the scheme of the cave is the obsession with television. Some people make the claim that television has become a cave for many Americans, that people mistake television for the visible world.
Plato's cave is fairly well covered on the internet and in fact some people have put forth what the allegory of the cave means to them. For instance, one person felt like the university had become a cave, because all the people do inside the university is talk about the things that occur outside the university. So when she left the university and went out into the real world, she was mesmerized. But if she were to return to the cave (university) now, there would be no way she could return to the old way of living. So when she tried to give the cave dwellers her new knowledge of the outside world, she was scorned. The internet proves to be a good resource for analogies like this one and it also proves to be a good source for helping people relate to ancient philosophy.