We should also consider whether or not to step outside the cave. Can we actually leave the cave? Can we abandon or avoid relationships as Introverts are inclined to do. Is it safer to remain inside the cave than to venture outside without the help of interpreters? Should we (and can we) face the profound challenge of unmediated experiences? Where should we look for help in recognizing ways in which we still carry the cave shadows and cave interpreters with us when stepping outside the cave? As we step outside the cave, are we likely to confront some objective reality through our experience, or is the experience itself constantly shifting depending on setting, context, interpersonal relationships and the nature of our own past experience? Are we just moving to another cave?
Imprisonment In the Cave: An Expanded Version
Epistemological analyses push us to an even more challenging perspective. The allegory offered by Socrates (through the voice of Plato) is actually much more extensive than the version we just offered in this essay. Plato provides us with more details about life inside the cave and about what might occur if one cave dweller is allowed to step outside the cave and then returns to the cave. Inside the cave, its inhabitants (as prisoners) are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not look around the cave.
Behind the prisoners is the fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall. People walk behind the wall. Their bodies do not cast shadows for the prisoners to see, but the objects they carry do cast shadows. The prisoners cannot see any of this behind them and are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. The sounds of the people talking echo off the shadowed wall, and the prisoners falsely believe these sounds come from the shadows.
Leaving the Cave
What happens when one of these people is unchained and leaves the cave, discovering that the world is something more than the shadows they have always assumed were reality. This single prisoner is freed, being forced to turn and see the fire and then forced (allowed) to leave the cave and confront the outside light directly. The light would hurt her eyes and make it hard for her to see the objects that are casting shadows. She would not believe it if she were told that what she saw before was not rea. Instead, the objects she is now struggling to see are real. The prisoner would be angry and in pain, and this would only worsen when the radiant light of the sun overwhelms her eyes and blinds her.
The sunlight is representative of the new reality and knowledge that the freed prisoner is experiencing. Slowly, her eyes adjust to the light of the sun. Gradually she can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Plato continues, saying that the freed prisoner would think that the real world was superior to the world she experienced in the cave. She would feel blessed for the change, pity the other prisoners, and want to bring her fellow cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight.
Returning to the Cave
Can this person come back into the cave and what would the “enlightened” person say to those still in the cave. How would they absorb this radically different perspective? The cave dwellers don’t know what to do with the returning unchained “revolutionary” who talks about a different reality. Would she be considered a “philosopher” (as Plato suggests) or would she be identified as a “fool” or as a person who is “mad”? Her experiences terrify compatriots. She realizes that she cannot remain in the cave. She would stagnate. Other cave dwellers will not change or move forward. They perceive her as dangerous.
