2. The World of Forms Contd.
• The essence of things, Plato calls ‘Forms’ or ideas and
they cannot be known through sense perception
because they are not perceptible by the senses.
• Particular individual things are mere shadows,
reflections or imitations of these ‘Forms’ which are the
ideal things, the real things, the essence of things.
• They are objects of true knowledge, and only
philosophers can know them through dialectical
reasoning.
3. The World of Forms Contd.
• Hence only philosophers possess true knowledge since they
alone know the essences of things, the ideals, or the ‘forms’
of things
• The non-philosophers who depend on sense perception can
only know particular individual things, which are
reflections, shadows, or imitations of the ideal things, and
which are the object of opinion.
• Consequently non-philosophers can only have opinion but
not true knowledge since they do not rise through
dialectical reasoning to the level at which they can attain
the objects of true knowledge, that is, the essence of things
4. The World of Forms Contd.
• Of all the ideas or ‘Forms’ in the ideal world, the
‘Form’ of Good is dominant
• The ‘Form’ of Good is like the sun that
illuminates all the other Forms.
• It surpasses all the other Forms and is, in fact,
the source of the being of all the other Forms.
• Every other Form participates in the Form of God
which is the unifying principle of all the forms
5. The Allegory of the Cave
• Plato illustrates his theory of knowledge with his
famous allegory of the cave
• Plato says let us imagine that some prisoners are
chained in a cave
• Their legs and necks are chained so that they can
only look in one direction; they can only look
straight ahead, they cannot look back or to any side
• They are facing a wall which is like a screen(like a
cinema screen)
6. The Allegory of the Cave Contd.
• Behind them is a fire, and between them and fire
is a raised platform stretching across the cave
• Assuming there are men passing along this raised
platform carrying statutes of animals and other
things, from one side of the cave to the other.
• The light of the fire casts the shadows of these
things on the wall which the prisoners are facing.
• When the prisoners see these shadows they
think that they are seeing the real things
7. The Allegory of the Cave Contd.
• Since they cannot look back because they are
chained, they can only see shadows cast on the wall
by the light of the fire behind them
• Let us imagine that one of them succeeds in freeing
himself and escape from the cave
• He goes outside the cave and sees things for himself,
he sees the real things for the first time in the light
of the sun, and comes to know them, as distinct
from their mere reflections or shadows which the
other prisoners only see in the cave
8. The Allegory of the Cave Contd.
• He also comes to see the others for what they are,
namely, prisoners
• If he comes back into the cave, he will find it very dark.
• But the prisoner do not know that they are in darkness
since they have never gone outside the cave
• If he tries to free them from their chains and lead them
to the light, they will resist and oppose him.
• They will refuse to believe that what they see are mere
shadows of realities and will oppose anybody who tries
to tell them that
9. The Allegory of the Cave Contd.
• In the allegory, the cave is this world, and the shadows
cast on the wall are the particular things of this world
• The fire in the cave is the sun
• Outside the cave is the world of ideas, the intelligible
word or the world of Forms
• The sun is the Form of the good
• The prisoners who see the shadows are the non-
philosophers who can only know the individual things
in this world which are merely shadows of the essence
of things
10. The Allegory of the Cave Contd.
• The prisoner who escapes from the cave and
goes into the world outside is a philosopher
who rises above this world of the scenes and
goes into the intelligible world, the world of
Forms, the ideal world.
• The chains with which the prisoners are bound
and prevented from seeing the true realities are
passions, prejudices and sophistries
