What is a sandwich? Many would say with certainty that a sandwich is fresh meat, spread and fresh vegetables between two slices of bread. Looking through images of hotdogs, wraps and cookie sandwiches, many would begin to feel insecure about their previous answer. Certainty has the power to evoke feeling of achievement and safety. While doubt has the ability to make one feel hesitant and startled. In Plato’s dialogues, “The Allegory of the Cave” and “Euthyphro” both share the concept of questionable doubt with limited certainty. Questionable doubt creates limited certainty because doubt interferes with one’s ability to learn and comprehend the truth. This is shown through Socrates’ stubbornness with piety and impiety, and the prisoners
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In the “Allegory of the Cave”, since birth the prisoners have had a false perception of the real world, all that they have ever known is a false reality casted onto a wall. To the prisoners, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images [casted on a wall by their oppressor]”(Plato 2). The escaped prisoner represents the one who seeks knowledge outside of the false reality. As the prisoner escaped, he began to question whether “what he saw before [him] was an illusion [and as] he [began] approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence he [had] a clearer vision. . .” (Plato 3). Being unfamiliar with his surroundings, he begins to feel uncertain of everything that he previously knew and cannot make sense of reality but now realizes that there is life outside of the cave. As he becomes used to his new surroundings, he realizes that his former view of reality was wrong. Socrates and Glaucon emphasis that now the knowledgeable prisoner must now return to the underground cave to inform the rest of the prisoners about the new found reality. After his return, the unrestrained prisoner is considered “. . .ridiculous [because]. . .Men would say. . .that up he went and down he came without his eye; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the …show more content…
One thing is certain; doubt is an absolute necessity to uncover the truth and gain
In the “Allegory of the Cave”, since birth the prisoners have had a false perception of the real world, all that they have ever known is a false reality casted onto a wall. To the prisoners, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images [casted on a wall by their oppressor]”(Plato 2). The escaped prisoner represents the one who seeks knowledge outside of the false reality. As the prisoner escaped, he began to question whether “what he saw before [him] was an illusion [and as] he [began] approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence he [had] a clearer vision. . .” (Plato 3). Being unfamiliar with his surroundings, he begins to feel uncertain of everything that he previously knew and cannot make sense of reality but now realizes that there is life outside of the cave. As he becomes used to his new surroundings, he realizes that his former view of reality was wrong. Socrates and Glaucon emphasis that now the knowledgeable prisoner must now return to the underground cave to inform the rest of the prisoners about the new found reality. After his return, the unrestrained prisoner is considered “. . .ridiculous [because]. . .Men would say. . .that up he went and down he came without his eye; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the …show more content…
One thing is certain; doubt is an absolute necessity to uncover the truth and gain