What Socrates Describes: The Cave
The Cave is probably the best-known image in Plato’s Politeia (Republic). It is usually illustrated with prisoners facing a cave wall, while behind them objects are carried in front of a fire so that their shadows are projected onto the wall.
Before considering what the Cave might represent, however, we should first do what Socrates asks Glauco to do: look at what he actually describes.
The Cave
Plato, Respublica VII.514a–515b
Μετὰ ταῦτα δή, εἶπον, ἀπείκασον τοιούτῳ πάθει τὴν
ἡμετέραν φύσιν παιδείας τε πέρι καὶ ἀπαιδευσίας. ἰδὲ γὰρ
ἀνθρώπους οἷον ἐν καταγείῳ οἰκήσει σπηλαιώδει, ἀναπεπτα-
μένην πρὸς τὸ φῶς τὴν εἴσοδον ἐχούσῃ μακρὰν παρὰ πᾶν
τὸ σπήλαιον, ἐν ταύτῃ ἐκ παίδων ὄντας ἐν δεσμοῖς καὶ τὰ
σκέλη καὶ τοὺς αὐχένας, ὥστε μένειν τε αὐτοὺς εἴς τε τὸ
πρόσθεν μόνον ὁρᾶν, κύκλῳ δὲ τὰς κεφαλὰς ὑπὸ τοῦ δεσμοῦ
ἀδυνάτους περιάγειν, φῶς δὲ αὐτοῖς πυρὸς ἄνωθεν καὶ πόρ-
ρωθεν καόμενον ὄπισθεν αὐτῶν, μεταξὺ δὲ τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ
τῶν δεσμωτῶν ἐπάνω ὁδόν, παρ’ ἣν ἰδὲ τειχίον παρῳκο-
δομημένον, ὥσπερ τοῖς θαυματοποιοῖς πρὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων
πρόκειται τὰ παραφράγματα, ὑπὲρ ὧν τὰ θαύματα δεικνύασιν.
Ὁρῶ, ἔφη.
Ὅρα τοίνυν παρὰ τοῦτο τὸ τειχίον φέροντας ἀνθρώπους
σκεύη τε παντοδαπὰ ὑπερέχοντα τοῦ τειχίου καὶ ἀνδριάντας
καὶ ἄλλα ζῷα λίθινά τε καὶ ξύλινα καὶ παντοῖα εἰργασμένα,
οἷον εἰκὸς τοὺς μὲν φθεγγομένους, τοὺς δὲ σιγῶντας τῶν
παραφερόντων.
Ἄτοπον, ἔφη, λέγεις εἰκόνα καὶ δεσμώτας ἀτόπους.
Ὁμοίους ἡμῖν, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ· τοὺς γὰρ τοιούτους πρῶτον μὲν
ἑαυτῶν τε καὶ ἀλλήλων οἴει ἄν τι ἑωρακέναι ἄλλο πλὴν
τὰς σκιὰς τὰς ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς εἰς τὸ καταντικρὺ αὐτῶν τοῦ
σπηλαίου προσπιπτούσας;
Πῶς γάρ, ἔφη, εἰ ἀκινήτους γε τὰς κεφαλὰς ἔχειν ἠναγκα-
σμένοι εἶεν διὰ βίου;
Translation
‘After this, then,’ I said, ‘make a likeness of our nature, with regard to education and lack of education, in the following condition. See people as though in an underground cave-like dwelling, with its entrance open towards the light and extending along the whole cave. In it they have been from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds, so that they remain in place and look only straight ahead, unable because of the bond to turn their heads around. There is for them the light of a fire burning above and far away behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners, above them, a road. Beside it, see a little wall built, like the screens which puppet-showmen have in front of the people, above which they display their puppets.’
‘I see,’ he said.
‘See, then, people carrying along beside this little wall all kinds of objects projecting above the wall, statues of men and other animals made of stone and wood and fashioned in all sorts of ways, with, as one would expect, some of those carrying them speaking and others remaining silent.’
‘You describe a strange image,’ he said, ‘and strange prisoners.’
‘They are like us,’ I said. ‘For, first of all, do you think that such people would have seen anything of themselves and one another except the shadows cast by the fire falling upon the part of the cave opposite them?’
‘How could they,’ he said, ‘if they were compelled to keep their heads unmoving throughout their lives?’
What Does Glauco See? What Should He See?
Socrates does not merely describe the Cave. He repeatedly tells Glauco to visualize it: ἰδέ, ‘see’; Glauco replies ὁρῶ, ‘I see’; Socrates continues, ὅρα τοίνυν, ‘see, then’.
Glauco even recognizes that the image is atopos, ‘strange’ or, more literally, ‘out of place’. Yet when Socrates begins to describe the shadows which the fire produces, Glauco raises no objection. What happens if we take Socrates at his word and actually try to see what he has described?
Here’s an extract from my 2014 book, Plato’s Republic as a Philosophical Drama on Doing Well (details at the end):
When Socrates asks Glauco to make a (mental) likeness of the cave, [he] says that he sees what Socrates describes—the captives staring at a cave wall, a raised walled path behind them, and a fire at a higher level behind that (514a1–b7). Socrates then tells Glauco to see people walking along the raised path, raising images above the wall and making sounds appropriate to the images as in a puppet show (514b8–515a3). We might have expected Glauco to react to the puppeteers, but he is more interested in the captives (a4):
You relate an absurd image and absurd captives.
Socrates accordingly drops the puppeteers for a moment and concentrates on the captives (a5–b1):
[They are] like us, I said. For do you think, first of all, that such people see anything of themselves and each other apart from the shadows [cast] by the fire falling onto the [side] of the cave opposite them?
[No], he said, for how could they if they are compelled by force to hold their heads unmoving?
Here is what Glauco should have pictured to himself. The fire which is above and behind the raised walled path behind the captives will not project their shadows onto the wall opposite them, but onto the floor in front of them. The application of geometry would have made this point obvious. Socrates does not point this discrepancy out, but now adds another element which would seem to obliterate the captives’ shadows altogether. He points out that the shadows cast by the models (carried by people behind the path wall) would also fall upon the cave wall opposite (b2). He does not mention the wall of the raised path, but its shadow could be conceived as reaching all the way to at least the foot of the opposite wall upon which the shadows of the models appear. Were Glauco to have been picturing clearly, he would have noticed these discrepancies, but he does not. Thus he is not even imagining as Socrates requested. His logos is not called in to help sort out the problem, because he sees no problem.
Extract from Chapter 6, ‘The Digression’, in Plato’s Republic as a Philosophical Drama on Doing Well by Ivor Ludlam
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