Allegory of the Cave
Plato's image in Republic Book VII of prisoners chained in a cave who mistake shadows for reality — and the philosopher's painful ascent into the light.
The allegory of the cave appears in Book VII of Plato's Republic. Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine human beings chained in a cave from birth, facing a wall on which shadows are cast by figures passing before a fire behind them. The prisoners take the shadows for reality. One prisoner is freed and dragged painfully out of the cave, where he sees first reflections, then objects, and finally the sun — the source of light and life.
The allegory is Plato's most famous image of philosophical education. The cave is the realm of sensible appearance; the world outside is the realm of the Forms; the sun is the Form of the Good. The freed prisoner who returns to the cave to liberate the others is a figure of the philosopher-ruler, whose duty is to descend from contemplation back into political life. The image continues to shape every Western account of the relation between truth, education, and political order.