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Plato and The World Of Forms. 1. Explain Plato’s’ use of the metaphor of shadows, in his allegory of the cave? Plato, 428-347 Bce. Plato after being a pupil of Socrates left Athens and returned to Athens in 397, where he founded his academy. From his experiences and beliefs, Plato worked on his theory, this theory was, ‘The Analogy of the cave and the world of forms.’ You are a prisoner in a cave, and bound at the neck, wrist and heels. Day in and day out for your whole life, you have only seen the back wall of this cave, and shadows of objects passing the moth of the cave. The ‘objects’ projecting the shadows, you have never seen in your life and can only relate to the shadows. One day however you manage to escape and get to see the objects that once projected the shadows onto the back wall. Obviously, these ‘real’ objects would stun you, and what you thought to be reality is not, but something more interesting and maybe more colorful, you could say a ‘philosophical enlightenment.’ This forms the basis of Plato’s theory, in numerous ways through the analogy and the shadows.
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