Questioning Your Thoughts Through Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

The Allegory of the Cave is among the most popular work in Western Philosophy. This is part of the book Republic written by the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato helped to shape what Western Culture is today and is arguably the most important figure in Western Philosophy.

This article aims to dissect what this famous allegory is actually about and the message Plato wanted to communicate through it. You will see how this allegory could help you question your own thinking and improve upon it.

The allegory presents a conversation that Plato’s teacher Socrates is having a conversation with Glaucon, Plato’s brother. Socrates is a big part of Plato’s dialogues. He is the Jesus figure of Philosophy. He wrote nothing during his life, yet others wrote about him and his philosophy.

It is important to grasp the context of this story being told in Plato’s Republic. Plato wrote Republic to provide the order and character of a well-governed city-state and the just man. Plato also proposes a utopian city-state ruled by a philosopher-king. This part of the book is on education and what should make up the education of what Plato mentions as the Philosopher King.

The dialogue starts with Socrates asking Glaucon to make an image of our nature in its education and our want of education.

Socrates imagines a cave where there are prisoners who chained in their legs and neck, unable to move. The chain binds them and thus have a limited scope of what they can see. Behind them is a fire that is burning and a road through which there is the movement of people, animals, etc.

The prisoners there only see the shadows and the sounds of the movement behind them, believing that the shadows depict the actual reality. To these prisoners, the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things.

Socrates now mentions of a scenario where one prisoner is freed of his chains.

The first time the prisoner comes out and sees the sun, his eyes are burning and he cannot see it directly. Everything seems foreign to him. He at first is questioning these things and if they are actually real. His benefit of the doubt is what he used to see before in the cave is truer than what he is witnessing right now.

Yet, as the days pass, he gets accustomed to this new environment. He now realizes that what he saw back in the cave were actual shadows rather than the reality. He can now see the sun directly and enjoy the light of the stars at night. He comes to find a sense of serene here and finds it to be a way better reality than what he experienced in the cave.

He realizes what he saw in the cave were mere illusions and is happy to be closer to reality. Yet, he pities the prisoners who are still hooked on the illusions.

Realizing this, he thinks of his fellow prisoners back in the cave and with excitement goes back to talk to them about this better reality. He wants to free them of the chains from the darkness they are facing right now.

But the prisoners, upon hearing this, find him to be a source of laughter, as Socrates puts it. They think he has gone mad and believe that the reality they are living in right now is the good one. Going up the cave is not worth it, they say. They even think as far as to kill him if he tries to enforce the so-called better reality among them.

Socrates now talks to Glaucon, reflecting on this allegory.

Socrates mentions that those who are qualified to lead the Republic should first get the knowledge on that which most of the masses have not yet attained. Socrates also mentions how it is the responsibility of such enlightened individuals to help the majority in realizing these better ideas.

In the context of the philosopher king, Socrates mentions in the dialogue:

“Our job as founders is to compel the best natures to go to the study, which we were saying before is the greatest, to see the good and to go up that ascent”.

You also have to go down as we cannot have them living a worse life when you know a better life is possible. It is not only about your own happiness, but that of the Republic. Because who you are today is because of the Republic and the people you surrounded yourself with.

Reflecting on this allegory, we can consider the cave to be Athens, Greece and the prisoner who went out the cave as Socrates. In his life, he wanted to show the light to other people and communicate what he believed were better ideas. However, the society at the time was not ready to embrace his ideas, and he was killed because of it.

We can take different lessons from this allegory.

Though the Allegory of the Cave was written in the education's context of the leaders for a well-governed republic, the beauty of the story is powerful to be used in different ways.

Questioning our thoughts and their quality is one of them.

Thoughts are the seeds that shape our life. It is those seeds that dictate the quality of our actions and what we actualize into the world

Consequently, it is crucial to question our own beliefs continuously.

As in the Allegory of the Cave, there could be areas where our own heads have been motionless throughout life.

This is where using the word ‘questioning’ becomes imperative.

Put yourself in the prisoner's scenario who is resisting going up to the cave. You might put yourself in the same scenario with your thoughts, resisting to accept better ways to see things.

That is why questioning your own thoughts could be a silent superpower you can unleash.

For example, maybe you are a workaholic who believes that work should be prioritized in life as that will help put everything else in line. More work, more money, more happiness. Let’s say that is your belief structure.

I am simply asking you to sit for a moment in solitude, see yourself from a third-person perspective, and question this belief.

• It is about asking yourself:
• Is this belief within a dark cave?
• Is there a better reality out there I am missing out on?
• Assuming I am in a dark cave, what would a better reality really be?

Taking the time to pause and ask these questions can literally transform your life.

Asking what silly things we are seeing in our own beliefs and being nearer to what would be better makes sense.

Yet, how much do we spend our thinking upon it?

Just like the prisoner who broke from the chains and found a better reality, our reflection should be on whether there is indeed a better way to think about what we believe.

As mentioned in the Allegory itself, it is really about being self-aware enough on which thoughts are useful & helpful whilst which are useless & harmful.

Segregating and filtering the useful & helpful ones and discarding the useless, harmful ones can become a habit that makes you unique from the crowd.

Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect- Mark Twain

If Plato were speaking to you, I believe he would agree and put it in his own words how this path really is the right journey to the soul’s journey up to the intelligible place.

We can thus see the Allegory of the Cave as a kind of analogy in thinking of this process that can help to improve your own thinking and over time, make it iconoclastic.

It is also exactly in such moments when your actions are misaligned to what is popularly practiced, let the Allegory of the Cave remind that such judgements are expected.

The result is to advance ourselves with the best ideas out there through questioning what we currently believe.