Allegory Of The Cave, Book VII Of Plato's Socratic Dialogue, Republic

In the Allegory of the Cave, Book VII of Plato’s Socratic dialogue, Republic (ca. 375 B.C.E.), and in his criticism of poetry at the beginning of Book X, Plato’s mouthpiece Socrates critically considers the distinction between the ‘real’ world, that of the Forms, and the world that can be seen through appearances, including the significance regarding education and poetry. Through allegory Plato’s Socrates demonstrates mimesis within language, arguing the signifiers applied to objects are not names of physical objects that can be seen, just as the terms the prisoners applied to the shadows are not, but are names of things that can only be grasped by the mind. For the prisoners, the shadows are the only reality, however Plato’s Socrates hypothesises that if a prisoner were to be released, he’d be educated by his surroundings and realise “the greater reality of the things in front of his eyes” (Republic VII), the allegorical counterpart to normal people grasping the Forms.

Furthering this, in his enlightenment regarding “the intelligible realm” (Republic VII), through the blinding of the sun, the prisoner sustains the notion that communities should elect philosophers as rulers, in order to avoid political turmoil. Failing to establish how exactly the prisoner is freed and how the enlightenment required to become a “philosopher king” can be achieved (Republic V), the parable is separated further from the real world it is intended to represent. Habib contends that within Republic, Plato is “never unequivocally clear as to what precisely is the connection between the realm of Forms and the physical world” (22). Significantly, the Allegory of the Cave is dependent on the world of Forms, without proof of a world of Forms, the analogy becomes