The Forgotten Ending of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

And what it teaches us about the death of Jesus Christ

Maybe “forgotten” is too strong—there are, I presume, a great many philosophers and classicists who know how the story ends. But the Allegory of the Cave is not a topic only for specialists. It is referenced quite frequently in mainstream cultural discourse—essays, creative literature, even conversations—and in these non-academic contexts, I have never heard the ending discussed, or even mentioned.

Plato’s use of a rhetorical trope—namely, the prolonged, systematic symbolism called allegory—helped to make this short interchange between Socrates and Glaucon one of the most captivating passages in his vast corpus of philosophical writings. The Allegory of the Cave appears in Book Seven of the Politeia, commonly known in English as the Republic; this translation derives somewhat legitimately from Latin res publica but is now problematic, insofar as it implies that Plato was an ancient Greek forerunner of the American founding fathers. “Civil society” or “the constitution of the state” would be a better translation of the word politeia, and in any case, the fundamental theme of Plato’s Politeia is not political systems (in the modern sense) but the nature and sociopolitical implications of justice. Indeed, an ancient title for this text was On Justice, and soon after beginning Book One, the reader encounters a characteristically Socratic question about what exactly justice might be: “…but as concerning justice, what is it?—to speak the truth and to pay your debts—no more than this? And even to this are there not exceptions?”

Plato’s allegorical Cave is inhabited by prisoners whose chains force them to look only at the wall opposite the cave’s opening. Behind the prisoners are men and a fire; by passing various objects—“vessels and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone”—in front of the fire, the men cast shadows on the far wall. The prisoners have spent their entire lives in the cave, and all they’ve ever seen are these shadows of crafted objects. Socrates observes that the prisoners would speak of the shadows as though they were real things. “To them,” he continues, “the truth would be nothing but the shadows of the images.”

The parable is a compelling one, rich with interpretive possibility; as the American classicist Paul Shorey pointed out, “the suggestiveness of the image has been endless,” and

modern fancy may read what meanings it pleases into the Platonic antithesis of the “real” and the “ideal.”

That, for Plato, was the essence of the cave-dwellers’ illusion: they saw the shadows and thought they were objects, as men in the world see objects (the “real” as in physical, sensible, temporal) and think they are ultimate reality (the “ideal” as in conceptual, transcendent, eternal). Plato taught that Forms, also translated as Ideas, were immutable, immaterial entities that the demiurge used when fashioning chaos into cosmos. The cosmos contains rocks and statues and grammatical rules, and each of these perceptible and particular phenomena has its Form, its one universal, unchangeable, imperceptible archetype of pure being; the cosmos also contains observable, imperfect attributes such as “honest,” “noble,” “beautiful,” and these draw upon the full and perfect reality of the Idea of honesty, of nobility, of beauty. For St. Augustine, the realm of Plato’s Forms was nothing other than the Mind of Almighty God, and after St. Augustine, the theory of Forms in Platonic (or Neoplatonic) philosophy was reborn as part of the uniquely medieval affinity for living and thinking in symbolic ways.

In the Phaedrus Plato describes how the soul, at sight of singular phenomena, is moved to a remembrance of its heavenly home and of the archetypes which it contemplated in a previous existence, and of which it now beholds the imperfect copies. Thereupon, the soul, falling into an ecstasy of delight, wonders at the contrast between the Idea (archetype) and the phenomenon (copy), and from this wonder proceeds the impulse to philosophize, which is identical with the impulse to love.¹

We might say that the object is the thing as we know it, and the Form is the thing as God knows it.

In Plato’s estimation, knowledge gained through the senses (sensory knowledge) is inferior to—we might say, returning to the Cave, is a shadow of—knowledge gained through thought (intelligible knowledge). Thus, the truest and highest knowledge is knowledge of Forms, and all the Forms depend upon the Form of the good, that is, Goodness itself, the Truth that makes all other truth possible.

The Form of the good subsumes the Forms of justice, wisdom, courage, etc.; not only would they not be good without it, they would not exist without it. So goodness is at the core of Plato’s conception of the universe.²

If we are to acquire this ennobling knowledge of Forms and seek this transformative knowledge of the Good—or as Christians might say, if we are to think with the mind of God—we must turn away from the shadows. The chains must be broken; the Cave must be abandoned.

But what will happen if the prisoners decide that freedom and truth are not to be sought, but feared? What will happen if One from above—a Teacher, perhaps, a rabboni—descends to their underworld and offers them Light instead of darkness, Reality instead of entertaining deceptions, transformative wisdom instead of pleasing, and paralyzing, illusions? What will the prisoners say, what will they do, to One who offers them sight, when all they’ve ever known, and all they’ve learned to want, is blindness?

Jesus answering, said to him, What wilt thou that I do unto thee? And the blind man said to him, Rabboni, that I may see.

The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied…. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.
—G. K. Chesterton

Though profound and eloquent in any age, the Allegory of the Cave resonates so powerfully in postmodernity—the Age of Unreality—that it seems almost to have been written with our world in mind. Indeed, it is strange and disconcerting to ponder how closely Plato’s Cave resembles the darkened interior of a movie theater, with its dancing images projected from behind upon a wall to which gazes are unnaturally fixed. Let us recall that “screen time” began not with computers, not with televisions, but with the cinema.

However, the Allegory’s piercing relevance to postmodern life, for example as an icon of enslavement to digital simulacra, should be built upon its original meaning. When the text is read strictly in its historical and philosophical context, the message is fairly clear: the situation in the cave evokes the contrast between the realm of particulars and the realm of Forms, and when seen in its entirety, “the allegory is exactly what [Plato] declares it to be, a study of our nature with regard to παιδεία [education] and ἀπαιδευσία [lack of education].”³ I’m not sure if this is widely understood—the Allegory of the Cave is fundamentally about educating the human person:

Education, the Allegory’s topic, is not what most people think it is, says Plato: it is not “putting knowledge into souls that lack it” (7.518b). Though education sometimes requires that kind of transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, this is not its essence, which instead is “turning the whole soul” (7.518d)—turning it around, ultimately toward the Form of the good…. Everyone, Plato insists, is capable of education in this sense (7.518c)…. Everyone has the capacity to be educated, to turn their soul from what is less real toward what is more real.⁴

In the coming years and decades, vast quantities of time and money will be dedicated to the issue of technology in schools. Research grants will be granted, academic write-ups will be written, new devices will be devised, updated recommendations will be recommended. To whatever extent all this activity improves the situation, which is dire, I suppose I am thankful for it. But the answer has been around for thousands of years: it’s right there in Plato. To educate a human being, especially in the crucially formative years of youth, is “to turn the soul from what is less real toward what is more real.” Electronic technology does the opposite, by its very nature it does the opposite, and therefore its overall effect in schooling will be negative—and I am wounded in saying this, for I too am trapped in the digital net. That even homeschooling now seems almost impossible without it is cause for lamentation.

We must find interior peace amidst all these imperfections that modern society has imposed upon us and our families. But we must also strive boldly for something better—such is our duty to our children, and to our God.

The scene of the Cave itself is the most famous part of the Allegory, but it is actually just the first of several stages in the tale.

In the second stage, one of the prisoners is freed and “compelled”—note this detail, he must be forced—to turn around and look at the light, and it is painful to see, distressing to behold. He is told that what he saw before was only an illusion, and he is shown the real objects—and he is merely perplexed. The shadows are still more real to him than reality.

Next, he is “reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun.” He is forced, held fast—note again the compulsion. His eyes are dazzled. Surrounded by reality, he at first sees nothing but shadows, which he knows all too well, but gradually reflections and objects appear to him, “and then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars.”

Eventually, he will be able to look upon the sun itself, “and he will contemplate it as it is,” and understand that it transcends all the things that he has seen. “The Lord God is a sun,” says the Psalmist, “the Lord giveth grace and glory.”

Finally, he will realize that something very good has happened in his life. Thinking of his former companions in the Cave—still chained to their illusions, still speaking of shadows as though they are real—he will pity them, and he will prefer to “suffer anything rather than give thought to these false notions and live in this miserable way.” And if he returns to the Cave, what would happen? Unaccustomed to the darkness, unable to behave as the others do, he would seem to be a fool. The prisoners would say that he ruined his eyesight going up there into the light of day, that it’s dangerous to leave the cave. And then what if the enlightened one tried to set them free? What if he tried to lead them upward, to teach them the Truth, to show them the Light, to save them from suffocating darkness and grotesque shadows and an everlasting living death of godless unreality? “If somehow the prisoners could get their hands on him,” Socrates asks, “would they not kill him?”

For those who, unlike Plato, live in the world redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and know the Story of His life and death, Glaucon’s answer is chilling, and true:

“They certainly would.”

1. William Turner, History of Philosophy. Ginn and Company (1903), p. 97.

2. Sean McAleer, Plato’s Republic: An Introduction. OpenBook Publishers (2020), p. 196.

3. A. S. Ferguson, “Plato’s Simile of Light. Part II. The Allegory of the Cave (Continued).” The Classical Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1922), p. 15.

4. McAleer, Plato’s Republic, pp. 211–212.