Although many describe truth’s effectiveness as mountain-crumbling, perhaps the intrinsic value of truth is romanticized. This is not to say that falsehood automatically has more power than the truth; simply that, in a given context, perhaps, the sole knowledge of the truth would fail to convert an obstinate and cruel audience to righteousness. In such a situation, the power of truth’s possessors eclipses the intrinsic power of the truth to maintain morality and to eradicate evil falsehoods. These problems surrounding the effectiveness of truth in this regard appear prominently in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Frederick Douglass’ “Learning to Read and Write”, but each author arrives at a different conclusion to such questions. While Plato
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Given that the cave-dwellers of his allegory cannot move or leave, they accept their limited perception, the shadows of objects projected by a distant fire, to be the totality of reality. While Plato describes one imprisoned cave-dweller as being freed from his confinement, this freedman makes his way outside and eventually comes to know the world as it truly is: governed by the goodness and justice. When this enlightened man returns to the cave, he finds it hard to acclimate to his previous, limited way of life; thus, the still-imprisoned cave-dwellers ridicule him as if he were a fool. In this way, Plato compares the freedman to the philosopher, who he thinks should rule society, and shows him to be rejected by society since their limited and weak perception of reality prohibit them from understanding the truth of justice and goodness that the philosopher tries to teach them. Eventually, however, since the philosopher “[has] seen the….just and good in their [respective] truth….[he] will see ten thousand times better [of the shadow-images] than the inhabitant of the den…., (286)” and can then lead them through the use of these images (i.e. their limited abilities to understand reality) to the greater
Given that the cave-dwellers of his allegory cannot move or leave, they accept their limited perception, the shadows of objects projected by a distant fire, to be the totality of reality. While Plato describes one imprisoned cave-dweller as being freed from his confinement, this freedman makes his way outside and eventually comes to know the world as it truly is: governed by the goodness and justice. When this enlightened man returns to the cave, he finds it hard to acclimate to his previous, limited way of life; thus, the still-imprisoned cave-dwellers ridicule him as if he were a fool. In this way, Plato compares the freedman to the philosopher, who he thinks should rule society, and shows him to be rejected by society since their limited and weak perception of reality prohibit them from understanding the truth of justice and goodness that the philosopher tries to teach them. Eventually, however, since the philosopher “[has] seen the….just and good in their [respective] truth….[he] will see ten thousand times better [of the shadow-images] than the inhabitant of the den…., (286)” and can then lead them through the use of these images (i.e. their limited abilities to understand reality) to the greater