**Adapted from a term paper I wrote for a seminar on Plato in Fall 2011.
Plato's affinity for the dialectical use of myth and image often envelops his modern reader as much as it does the interlocutors within the dialogues themselves. It is precisely through the dialectical nature of his writing that he exhibits the aims of his philosophy: that of coming to self-knowledge through the struggle of apprehension. Socrates, to his interlocutors in Theaetetus, calls himself a 'midwife' -- not of the body, but of the soul -- claiming that his purpose is to help men "give birth" to their ideas. In this process, the knower comes into dialogue with the thing known, and through self-reflection comes to knowledge of knowledge, or knowledge of one's ignorance. Either way, the outcome is a positive one. Plato's dialogues function similarly; they do not themselves aim to give new knowledge, but simply to aim to become means through which to access the orientation of the self.
This process of coming to knowledge, in general as well as of the self, is also represented in Plato's most famous images, the Allegory of the Cave. The Allegory in Book VII of Politeia highlights the journey of a prisoner as he is released from his bonds and able to see those things which he was unable to see in his prior, bound, state (the idea of the ascension of knowledge is also explored in a more abstract way in book VI, through his discussion of the Divided Line -- the philosophies are mirrors, or 'reflections' of each other in much the same way that the line itself is divided in a mirror between 'thought' and 'belief'). Plato's point is that there is, in fact, "some thing" that is apprehended, and this some thing comes to be apprehended with increasing degree of clarity through the process of metaphorically ascending the continuum (i.e. the Divided Line) until "what is completely is completely knowable" (Politeia 476e-477a). Not only in this process does the prisoner of the cave come to knowledge of objects of apprehension -- of the shadows, the objects behind the shadows, the fire, the other prisoners, etc. -- he also comes to knowledge of himself, unhidden, as the subjective 'apprehender,' and eventually knowledge of that which allows both to occur (the object of knowledge, and the subject gaining that knowledge).
In his initial, shackled state, the prisoner is in an imprisonment to images. For the prisoner, truth is what lies in his field of vision, which is "nothing other than the shadows" of the objects being carried across the parapet and projected not he wall in front of him (Politeia 515c). Even his self-knowledge is limited; not only can he not see his own physical body -- only the shadows of himself projected onto the wall -- but he also cannot properly ascribe to which object his own self (his voice, his perspective, etc) belongs. And yet, the prisoner is content in his ignorance; there is no reason to believe that what he is seeing is untruth -- and really, it is not "untruth" -- shadows are real, the light playing on the wall is real, the wall itself is real. Yet, the fullness of reality is still partially (if not, mostly) hidden. What is unhidden to him at this stage is the images, or more remotely, the shadows of images (and this first situation of the Cave corresponds to the first subsection of the divided line: imagination, imagining represented by images, not the objects themselves, where one must rely upon sense alone as means to apprehend the sensible).
The first change to the prisoner's condition, indicated by motion (note the similarity here with the language of Aristotle), represents his first "turn" toward becoming (see? lots of Aristotle). He is released from his shackles (and also note that there must be another individual involved here, as one cannot unshackle oneself, but must rather be released by someone who is further than oneself along the process of knowledge -- this becomes the Socratic teacher, which we'll talk about later), and is able for the first time, to look around and move himself. At first, the prisoner is pained and unable to see through the light of the fire as his eyes are accustomed to darkness, and so retreats back to the familiarity of the shadows. The aversion to the higher degree of 'unhiddenness' is representative of the soul's own sort of 'self-imprisonemnet' which results from a "clinging to the body" that "wallows in every kind of ignorance" (Phaedo 82e-83c). However, the prisoner now has two things which he did not have in his initial state: first, a wonder (aporia -- remember that word??) about the change to his original situation; and secondly, a new awareness of his own form, no longer attached to the shadows of the wall, which turns to the first signs of inwardness.
Once the prisoner eventually becomes aware of and embraces this increased degree of 'unhiddenness', he is now able to make some use of reason (in terms of the Divided line, he is now in a state of belief, in which he is able to apprehend sensible objects through intelligible means, connecting the objects and the fire as the causes of the shadows). However, the objects known, while originals of the shadows, are still sensible and "manufactured" (Politeia 509d-510e); he is still within the walls of the cave, and thus everything is not completely and fully unhidden -- there is still much to existence (thus, much to knowledge) of which he is yet unaware. At this point, he can draw conclusions about the visible, but cannot yet apprehend beyond particulars. The focus is on opinion, contingent upon particulars that change and can be manipulated, as it is still dependent upon the sensible as the conclusive object of knowledge.
The full liberation from the sensible then must therefore come in a more violent fashion -- in the second 'turn,' the prisoner is dragged even more forcibly and painfully from the cave into the sunlight above. This is necessary, as the change lies not in the means of apprehending, but rather the entire shift to a different object of apprehension (i.e. from the visible/sensible object, to the intelligible object of knowledge). At first however, the prisoner -- now a 'free man' -- cannot yet focus on things "as they are," but because of the pain of the bright sunlight must see things in moonlight, in reflections in water. Though the soul does not yet come to first principles -- things themselves by themselves -- it is able to derive some intelligibility from particulars.
The final movement of the ascent is the freed man's turn towards the most unhidden -- the 'forms' -- the true objects themselves in the sunlight without the need to rely on reflections. He also now not only recognizes the sun as that which gives light outside of the cave, but also importantly recognizes its connection to the light of the fire inside the cave (this final turn represents the highest subsection of the Divided Line, Understanding). Here, the soul no longer makes use of the sensible, but instead comes to knowledge "using the forms themselves and making its investigation through them" (Phaedo 510b). It is also in this final turn that the soul comes to knowledge of the Good -- represented in his metaphor by the sun -- the "highest idea" or the "form of forms" (itself, not a 'form' in the same sense as other ideas -- it can never be grasped a concept because it is pure act and not an object of intelligibility). The prisoner, become freed man, in the final movement becomes the ideal of Plato's metaphorical Ideal City -- the Philosopher-king.
The Philosopher-king plays an essential role (that of the highest form of the soul -- Justice) in his ability to reside within the forms, in the highest state of knowledge and intelligibility away from the sensible. Socrates warns in the dialogue, however, that if given the chance, the Philosopher-king would remain within the purely intelligible outside of the constituted city; therefore, he must be compelled to act. This is the only way the could properly govern those below -- stuck in the sensible realm -- and thus would produce the best constitution (and by extension of the metaphor, the best ordering of a balanced, individual soul). As a lover of learning, he is oat able to set himself free, and in so doing, is also the one able to guide others to their own liberations (see the aside above about the guide out of the cave -- again, it has to come from another, and not the individual self who cannot release himself from what he does not know to be a prison; it must be another, someone with higher understanding). It is for these two reasons that the Philosopher must make the descent back into the cave, as Socrates suggests.
If the Allegory is viewed solely as the stages of formation of the Philosopher, there are two, more literal, ways of interpreting the descent correlative to the reasons expressed above. First, the Philosopher's descent in order to govern, in such a way that "political power and philosophy entirely coincide," which is the only was Socrates argues that the constitution of the city can ever "be born to the fullest extent possible" (Politeia 473c-e). Because he has seen the good himself, the Philosopher is not tempted by appetitive desires, and regards "justice as the most important and most essential thing" (Politeia 540d-e). It becomes his civic duty to order himself, as well as the city and its citizens. And second, the Philosopher must also descend in order to educate, to become the 'midwife' (see the beginning) to others within the cave, and to guide them in turning toward intelligibility. He becomes a means by which others can be educated, aiding them in 'turning around' -- must like the terms of his own ascent to freedom -- and attempting to lead them out of the cave to their own freedom.
Note also that this is no easy task, this descent of the Philosopher. Just as his eyes required patient adjustment when looking at light -- be it from the fire or later the sun -- he will again require patient adjustment when filled with the darkness of the cave. The rupture between him and the prisoners would seem to make it very difficult for the Philosopher to be the liberator of others without appealing in some way to what they know -- opinion. Because the prisoners reside among images (shadows), his appeals to knowledge would be ineffectual. The divide between them thus resides in their competing emphases: the understanding of what is "temporally good" versus the understanding of the good as "eternal truth, of which men cannot be persuaded" (Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics" 95).
There is also a final reason, in appealing to the metaphor as a metaphor and not as literal above, that the Philosopher must return to the cave. Again, at the beginning of the Allegory, Socrates makes a point to remind his interlocutors that the people in the cave are "like us" (Politeia 515a) extending the ascent not to a specific privileged or learned group, but to all man in general. The ascent symbolizes the movement of the soul from us of images to use of reason as its orientation toward knowledge of truth and the Good. In the soul's most unhidden knowledge of the world and of itself, it is able to grasp intelligible truths through purely intellectual means directly. However, this pure being is itself only something that can be fully actualized and achieved by the True Philosopher: The Divine. Despite the soul's desperate inclination to pursue the unhidden, itself by itself, man is not purely divine. Rather, he is a combination of body and soul, finite and infinite, sensible and intelligible in a continual process of becoming -- as a result of this, like the Philosopher-king, the soul must constantly fluctuate along the Divided Line, constantly striving for pure Understanding but only touching upon it -- he must continually reach back to sensible things for examples, images and metaphors to visually 'see' the concepts, and must satisfy the senses (and appetites). For this reason, Understanding is forever beyond man's grasp, in much the same way the actuality is in Aristotle's philosophy.
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