I just can’t remember which philosopher used this example when arguing about “reality”. Or about something like that - man, my college philosophy professor would be so disappointed. I’ve had no luck tracking it down on the net and hope that one of you can tell me who it was.
Anyway, the story goes something like this:
A man is chained to a seat in a cave and he is sitting next to others who are also chained to their seats. They can’t see each other, but they can talk. They talk about the images they see, which are shadows (displayed on the cave wall in front of them) of the world and its inhabitants as they pass in front of the cave door. One day, the man breaks free and goes outside the cave to explore. He returns in wonder and explains to all the others what he has seen. Only, they don’t believe him, they think he is completely insane.
I think the general opinion is that Socrates said what Plato told him to say. In other words, Plato was not merely a faithful scribe but a writer interested in getting his own ideas across.
There is no doubt of Socrates’s historicity – he was real enough and no-one doubts Plato was his student. It’s likely that Plato heard the cave myth first from Socrates. IIRC, it’s origin is older than that, however. Plato is certainly the one that made it famous.
Plato merely used Socrates as a character in much of the Republic. I guess it can be debated if Plato really learned it from his teacher or not. I think I learnt that the cave myth was an example of Platonism or something. I don’t know if that prove’s anything…
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
FWIW, They Might Be Giants mentioned this allegory in their song “No One Knows My Plan”. Here are some lyrics:
When I made a shadow on my window shade
They called the police and testified
But they’re like the people chained up in the cave
In the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy