Origin of Knowledge in Allegory of the Cave, a Book by Plato

Knowledge has been debated thoroughly throughout time, and with the debate of knowledge comes the question of where knowing spawns from, In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates proposes a metaphor that attempts to crack an answer to this question. To understand his answer to knowledge in relation to prior knowledge, we must first dissect the Allegory of the Cave in different phases of knowing. Once the Allegory of the Cave is analyzed, it is obvious that Socrates would believe that knowledge is not possible without prior knowledge. To set the scene, Socrates describes humans in a dark cave with “their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads” (The Republic). With this image, the reader is automatically struck with the idea of institutionalized imprisonment.

The humans are forced to sit, their whole lives, chained so that they are forced to look one way, never knowing anything but what they can see. He then describes shadows that are cast upon the wall, coming from puppeteers that hold up statues and artifacts in front of a fire. These artifacts, then, easily stand for ideologies or customs that people push on others. And the people holding them, are the pushers, the ones who beg to be heard as to force their ideas on others. The shadows are then the only “reality“ that the humans know. The first step of acquiring knowledge, then, becomes learning the environment and adapting to the images being seen, The humans chained up, being seduced with false images that they perceive to be true, are forced to learn this environment.

They do so by naming the images they see, and building their lives around this reality. For Socrates, this first step is one reason why knowledge depends on prior knowledge and therefore is impossible. Before the images appear on the wall, there are no shadows. For the lives of the humans in chains, the shadows that appear before them are only taken in as reality because they had previous knowledge. Another step to acquiring knowledge is an adaptation. For imprisoned humans, learning new things is difficult. Once one is freed, he stands up, looks behind him and Socrates focuses on how much his eyes have to change in order to see the fire behind him for what it truly is. “At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive someone saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply” (The Republic)?

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In this passage, Socrates notes that when freed, the prisoner will be in pain for two reasons He will be in pain at first because of the sharp light that he’s never before seen, never before adjusted to. This is a metaphor for acquiring knowledge in that humans are stuck in their ways and have a hard time facing the truth behind their so-called reality. The second reason the prisoner faces pain is that he has to give up every piece of knowledge he once knew. His whole life is then instantly questioned and he realizes that he now knows everything there is to know. This step of adaptation is crucial in that it makes clear that knowledge isn’t possible because there is always a new form of knowledge to adapt to, Socrates would say, in this step, that knowledge comes with the thought that you can always know more.

The next step to acquiring knowledge then has to do when the prisoner, again, gives up his current knowledge and trades it for something much grander. In this, Socrates shows that this process is a thousand times more quick than the previous process. “And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the Spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day” The past step only required the prisoner to realize the shadows he had seen all of his life weren’t reality. He traded in this notion of real in order to gain the notion that the fire was the true reality. Then, however, he goes outside and is again struck with the sharp light. Due to this, he sees certain images first. The shadows that are cast by real objects are the most true at first.

Then he quickly trades in that knowledge to learn that, instead, the reflections of men in the water is now the most true thing he knows. And this goes on until he finally and truly sees the sun. After this step of adaptation comes the step of commiseration. After gaining such beautiful knowledge, he remembers the life he lived in the cave with the other prisoners. He will “remember his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, (and) do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them" (The Republic)? In this step, he realizes that notjust everything he knows is correct, but that there are other prisoners in chains, being bound by what they think is the truth. He realizes that these chains are a metaphor for the hold on knowledge. The physical chains put a mental chain on every prisoner as well.

In this step, it is clear to see that Socrates would say true knowledge isn’t possible. The freed prisoner has given back so much of his knowledge. He traded shadows for fire and fire for the sun. And though the Allegory stops there, it would be easy to keep the cycle going with more complex ideas. This relates back to the idea that knowledge is only prior knowledge Once you know something, you immediately compare it back to what others don’t know and pity them. The final step in acquiring knowledge comes when one wishes to teach others things that they do not know. In the dialogue, Socrates shows that the prisoner not only pities the prisoners still locked away, but he wants to help them see the light, the sun. It’s a realization that he wouldn‘t rather be anywhere else, but in the glory of the suns.

However, he would wish to share this knowledge with the others And though he would think it is beautiful, the “Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death” (The Republic) in this, it is easy to see the metaphors The freed prisoner becomes the liberator, but the prisoners in chains become people who do not wish to be enlightened In everyday situations, humans revel at the ignorance of their fellow species, In this sense, they are just as the liberator in the Allegory, trying to talk sense into the ignorant, but ultimately failing. In this sense, Socrates would say that knowledge still, isn’t possible. The only reason the liberator has this “knowledge” is because he knows that what he knew before isn’t an actuality. He only “knows” because his prior knowledge wasn’t true, and this could go on in cycles.

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