Allegory of the Cave

Allegory of the Cave:

From Plato's Republic, Classical Period, Greece

Basically, you're a prisoner in a cave. You and all the other prisoners are tied up to the ceiling of the cave by your limbs, and your heads are chained in such a way that you can only see one wall of the cave. In another part of the cave there's a fire casting shadows on statues, and these shadows are projected against the wall you are facing: the only reality you know is shadows in a cave, in which you are prisoner. You and your fellow prisoners make it a game to identify all the shadows. They represent your entire field of knowledge.

One day you leave the cave and enter the world. First, because your eyes can't adjust, all you see are shadows cast by the sun. Then, as time wears on, you see other objects by the light of day, illuminated by the sun. Finally, when your eyes have completely adjusted, you see the sun itself.

This realization, for Plato, represents the way in which a philosopher reaches his understanding of truth-- represented by the sun, the final stage in the narrative of perception. But the journey is not complete: the true philosopher, after having seen the sun, must then re-enter the cave of prisoners and lead them, because they still live in darkness and cannot percieve truth. This is the function of the philosopher king: to take power and govern those not wise enough to achieve this enlightenment for themselves.

Aristotle would later bank on Plato's Philosopher King idea, tweaking it to include a narrower range of candidates for leadership which disallowed women and members of the lower classes because of what he perceived to be a natural inferiority. But the basic ideas are similar.