Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Imagine that you’ve been born and brought up inside a movie theatre. Everything you’ve been exposed to comes from movies. Your ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ are conditioned by the images displayed on the screen.
But you don’t know that they are projected images because the only thing you have access to is the screen. Now imagine that you were able to somehow make it to the projection booth. You will find out that there’s a higher-level reality of some sort.
You understand that your previous experience was of mere images.. just copies. But what happens if you make your way outside the building? You apprehend an even higher reality, one that is more ‘real’, unlike the copies you perceived in the cinema, which you thought were real.
The city, the rivers, the streets are all real!
You also realize that what makes your experience of this ‘new’ world possible is the sun, which is the main source of light. Everything else seems to be just a shadow of that.
But you thought the images displayed on the screen were all that there was. So what do you do now? You decide to go back to the theatre to tell your family, friends, and society that there’s a different kind of reality out there. How would they react?
Of course, Plato uses a cave as an example. But the idea is the same. What is the allegory supposed to represent?
Plato’s allegory of the cave represents the distinction between appearances (physical world) and reality/forms (intelligible sphere). More on the theory of forms here.
Forms are the essence of entities, qualities, or things (humans, horses, tables, geometrical shapes, or concepts like justice, beauty, etc).
Appearances are copies of forms.
To elaborate upon this idea, Plato presents the analogy of the divided line. It is supposed to illustrate the difference between knowledge and opinions.
You can break free from the shackles of appearances, dogmatism, and unfounded opinions through philosophical activity.
Philosophy is the pursuit of the good life at physical and mental levels.