This resemblance between the structure of the cave and the cinema entails a similar correspondence between Plato’s prisoners and cinemagoers. The cinema audience watches images projected onto a screen in front of them, these images are projected from a piece of film being moved past a light behind them, and the images on this piece of film are themselves merely copies of the real things outside the cinema. In addition, Plato’s Cave may strike us as very similar to the modern cinema. It can also be seen as representative of the nature of philosophy in general - as the attempt to subject received wisdom and preconceived beliefs to doubt, with the aim of replacing error for truth. The meaning of Plato’s allegory is manifold, it reveals his view of reality (metaphysics) and his related position on knowledge (epistemology). Although this would be dazzling and they would be bewildered at first, eventually, says Plato, the released prisoner would come to realise that what they used to take for reality was nothing but shadow and illusion, and they were now seeing things more clearly. In what follows, we are asked to consider what would happen were one of the prisoners to be compelled to stand and turn to face the fire, and then dragged out into the sunlight. The prisoners, states Plato, would believe that the shadows of the objects were the whole truth.

Along the road there are men carrying artefacts, and the fire projects shadows of these artefacts onto the back wall of the cave.

Behind them, and higher up, a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners runs a road, along which a wall has been built.

There they sit, facing the back wall of the cave, unable even to turn their heads. Plato invites us to imagine humanity as prisoners who have been captive since birth in an underground chamber. In his Cave Allegory (Republic, c.360 BCE), Plato presents a strikingly visual account of the distinction between knowledge and belief and, in doing so, provides us with what may be considered the earliest cinema.

Platos allegory of the cave