Plato's The Myth Of The Cave

One of Plato’s many philosophical theories is the Myth of the Cave. In the textbook Philosophy The Power if Ideas, pg. 38: Plato describes a scene, in which there are prisoners held captive in a cave facing away from the entrance. There is a fire behind them, and that fire is casting shadows of the objects in front of the fire onto the wall that they are looking at. These prisoners have then obtained the perception that this is the reality of the situation. This is the true size, shape and physical form of the objects in front of the fire. When one of the prisoners escapes, he finds that the objects in front of the fire are not how they once seemed when sitting with his back to them. However, if he were to try and tell the other prisoners what the …show more content…
This perception of the items could be debated that it is a Form since it is not the true state of what the item really is. In the case of the tennis ball, it could take the Form of Plato’s Theory of Circularity. Is the tennis ball really circular? The prisoner that escapes is most likely feeling a sense of disbelief coming to find that everything that he has known is now proven to be unreal, and also knows that until the other prisoners are released, and are shown the light of the true situation they will never know what the truth is. Moreover, since he is the only one seeing the new situation, is he really seeing the truth? The Myth of the Cave might be used in many modern day debates in topics such as religion to answer the question; Is there a God? Those who claim to be in a similar situation as the man, who escaped, might argue that there isn’t a God because they are seeing the material things on the table. However, others might say there is a god, because they are seeing the grander depictions of the items on the