 Imagine, from the moment of your existence, you have never seen the sun. You live in a cave. You're a prisoner. You're immobilized in a chair. Your hands and your feet have been bound. You can't even move your head around. You face forward. You face a wall. You've only ever seen the wall. You can't even look down to see you're on hands and feet. All you know is the wall. Behind you, unseen, is a fire. The fire casts light on the wall. Between the fire and you are people. These people carry puppets, cardboard cutouts, casting silhouetted shadows on the wall. You hear voices. The puppeteers call out the names of the shadows. Call out the names of the things. Cat, dog, tree, duck, person. You begin to remember these names. You start calling them out yourself. There are other prisoners with you. They listen to you. They listen to the puppeteers. They call out the names of the shadows. You think the shadows are the things. You think the shadow of a tree is a tree. A shadow of a dog is a dog. You and the prisoners quiz each other on your knowledge of the shadows. You do well. You begin to congratulate each other on your knowledge of the world. Your knowledge. One day, you are released. You struggle out of your chair and stumble out the entrance of the cave. Once outside, you, for the first time, see solid objects. You see color, movement. You see more than one side. And you do not understand. Finally, you see something you do understand. You do recognize. You see a shadow. You see a shadow on the ground. And you see that the shadow is coming from a solid object. When you see this, you realize it's the object, the solid object that's real. Not the shadow. The shadow comes from the object, but it is not the object itself. You do not see a shadow of a tree, but now you see, for the first time, a real tree. You'll see the shadow of a dog. You see a real dog. You don't see the shadow of a duck or a cat. You see a duck or a cat. You couldn't have known what a solid object is just by looking at shadows on the wall. You find out that the world is so much more interesting than you could have imagined. Looking up for the first time, you see the sun. You've never seen it before. Its light hurts your eyes. The shadows come from the solid objects, but not without the sun. Without the sun, there would be nothing. You wouldn't know the solid objects. You wouldn't see them. They wouldn't exist. You realize that the sun is that by which you know everything else. So here we have the allegory of the cave. The allegory has parts. Different things within the cave represent reality. The main parts are the shadows, the puppets, the solid objects outside, and the sun outside. Each part of the allegory of the cave represents something about reality and knowledge for Plato. So to understand what Plato means with these different parts of the allegory, ask yourself, what's more real? The shadows or the puppets? I mean, they both exist, sure. But ask yourself, does the existence of one depend on the existence of another? Do the puppets depend upon the shadows? If there's no light in the cave, there would still be the puppets. Maybe the entire place would be covered in shadows, but there would be shadows from the puppets. I suppose the fire is still in the cave, and suppose we put the puppets on the ground. There wouldn't be any shadows on the wall, but there would still be the puppets. Could these shadows exist without the puppets? No. Shadows couldn't exist without the puppets. If we take the puppets away, they would just be the light. So in the allegory of the cave, the puppets are more real than the shadows. Well, now ask yourself, what's more real? The puppets or the solid objects outside? Could one exist without the other? Well, no puppet exists without being inspired by at least something from reality. We have puppets of dragons, sure, but they're at least inspired by lizards, or maybe dinosaur skeletons, things like that. No, the puppets exist because the solid objects exist first. We wouldn't have a puppet of a tree without trees. We wouldn't have a puppet of people without people. We wouldn't have a puppet of dogs without dogs. Or at least something like them. So the puppets are actually just kind of copies, mimics of what's more real, the solid objects. The solid objects actually have color. The solid objects actually have more than one side. There's more to the solid objects than simply a silhouette. So in the allegory, ask yourself, what's more real? The sun or the solid objects? They both exist, both have more than one side, both have color. So they're both real in that way. But the solid objects still depend upon the sun. I mean, in some very real ways, and important in physics anyway, and Plato might probably know something about this. If we didn't have the sun, we wouldn't have any trees or any dogs or cats, any living thing whatsoever. So in that way, you know, the solid objects really do depend upon the sun. But even more than that, what I think was most important for Plato. Both the sun and the solid objects exist, but we know the solid objects by the sun. We don't know the sun by the solid objects. The sun illuminates everything else, makes it vivid, tells us about the solid objects. Without the sun, we'd be blind. So in this way, the sun is more real than the solid objects. And the solid objects in turn are more real than the puppets, and the puppets are more real than the shadows. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, all these things exist, but there is something of what it means to be more real than another. That's going to be understood in terms of what depends upon what for its existence and what tells us about the other things. So in the Allegory of the Cave, we have our parts of the cave. Well, the shadows in the Allegory represent appearances. Looking behind me, we have appearances before us. We've got some browns, some greens, some greys, some whites, some yellows. I have the feel of the wind. I have the warmth of the sun when I'm standing in it. These are all appearances. That's shadows. The appearances are less real than the particular objects. The puppets in the Allegory of the Cave, the cutouts, represent these particular objects. Now in the Allegory, the shadows are caused by the puppets, are caused by the involved by them, are caused by the puppets, and the fire together. But they are not the same thing as the puppets. They are less real than the puppets. Same here. We have the appearances of this tree, but if I don't have the appearances, say I'm not been conscious, or I fall asleep. The appearances are gone, but this tree remains. As opposed to cast a complete darkness for whatever reason. Suddenly turns midnight. I can't see anything. I don't have the appearances anymore, but the tree is still there. The tree is more real. The particular objects are more real than the appearances. The appearances are caused by the particular objects, but causes are distinct from their effects. And the Allegory of the Cave, shadows represent appearances. The puppets represent particular objects. And then we have the solid objects. The solid objects outside the cave, which you see when you leave the cave for the first time, when you get this glimpse of more reality, that represents the forms. Now in the Allegory, the particular, the solid objects are more real than the puppets. Without the solid objects, we would never have any reason to construct or think of the puppets. The puppets have no reason for their existence. The same thing is true here. With the forms, the form is the universal, the meaning of what it means to be that particular object. We have lots of trees behind us. What would any of these things be without their essence? What would they be without what it means to be a tree? So for Plato, in this Allegory of the Cave, the form of tree is responsible for those. The form of tree is more real than any particular tree. The form of tree is responsible for the existence of those. And the Allegory of the Cave, the appearances are represented by shadows. The particular objects represented by the puppets forms the essence, the universal, the meaning. This is represented by the solid objects outside. But the solid objects, we don't know the solid objects unless we have the sun. So what's the sun for Plato? The sun is that form above form. It's that truth above truth. That meaning above meaning. It is the good, the true, and the beautiful. Just as in the Allegory of the Cave, we know all the solid objects by the light of the sun for Plato, we know all meaning, all essence by the true, the good, and the beautiful. And just as without the sun, we don't understand anything else. If we don't understand the good, the true, and the beautiful, we're lost. For Plato, this is what we're supposed to do. This is supposed to live our lives. This is the secret to happiness, to human fulfillment, contemplation of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Just as if you understand the meaning of tree, you understand all trees. Just as if you understand the meaning of duck, you understand all ducks. You understand the meaning of person. You understand all people. If you understand the form, you understand everything below it. If you understand the good, the true, and the beautiful, you understand everything.