ABSTRACT
The allegory of the Cave is the best known and most memorable of Plato’s imaginative creations. Metaphysically, it expresses the contrast between ap pearance and reality: morally, it portrays a conversion process whereby we free ourselves from the tyranny of other people’s opinions, and come ourselves to know what is really right and wrong. Modern scientists explain the colours of the rainbow, the texture of metals, the sounds of musical instruments, in terms of vibrations of the electromagnetic fields, the quantum-mechanical properties of electrons, the motions of molecules in the air, which are accessi ble to the scientific understanding rather than perceived by the senses. Unlike Plato, modern scientists have a more economical-meaner, even-picture of reality; it is an austere reality that lacks colours, sounds and smells, and can be characterized in exclusively mathematical terms. In Plato’s Cave, by contrast, the appearances were monochrome shadows, and the real world outside possessed the full panoply of colour. And whereas modern scientists know scientific reality only through appearances, the prisoners released from Plato’s Cave would apprehend reality directly as it was in itself. Conversion, too, was different for Plato. It was achieved by the convert himself through strenuous intellectual effort, and resulted in an intellectual understanding of an impersonal reality, rather than being a response to an external call to a personal loyalty.
