On Plato's Cave

With no commentary on the validity of Plato’s conception of human nature, his allegory of the cave is not a good metaphor for it. Plato uses the cave and its inhabitants to represent man’s natural state, yet nothing of or within the cave is or can be said to be remotely natural. Each of the men are prisoners, not free-dwelling residents thereof, bound in chains and artificially proscribed from moving in any manner. What they see and are subject to perceive is determined by their prison masters. All is controlled, nothing is natural or variable.

The individual who does leave the cave does not do so through his own fruition, but is chosen at random (presumably) and compelled to go towards the surface and the light of day. How then can this person, who has left the cave and seen the sun in its pure form (the representative of the good), represent that rare species of human endowed with the capacity for philosophy and the contemplative life when the only difference between him and his fellow captives is that he was compelled to ascend while the others remained bound in chains below? He is distinguished not by natural gift or superior cognitive capacity, but by fortune.

Instead of providing a compelling metaphor for his view of man, Plato unwittingly provides those with views opposite his own a compelling metaphor to describe the regime he (in his critics’ view) and the masters of totalitarian states would impose (and have imposed) on their servile peoples. To wit, those masses are confined in a state of imprisonment by the few, bound in bondage and proscribed from any sort of meaningful freedom and liberty. What they are allowed to see, know, experience, and perceive is strictly regulated and controlled by the masters at the top.

This is the formulation of the totalitarian state, and is it not the exact formulation of Plato’s cave? Therefore the image of the cave, which Plato utilizes to convey the natural state of man, can logically be said not to convey that true natural state to Plato’s critics, but only the artificial state Plato and his ilk would impose on man. Plato would have done well to have found a different metaphor.