Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Summary

The Allegory of the Cave and the Question of Philosopher’s Happiness Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents the reader with perhaps one of the most beautiful and enlightening metaphors in literature. His depiction of the rise of a soul from the cave of intellectual deficiency to the light of knowledge serves as the perfect analogy for the intellectual and education ascension of Philosopher-Kings in his ideal city described in The Republic. Similarly, it depicts superbly the stages of his Simile of the Line, a philosophical tool utilized to demonstrate the four basic levels of cognition. He describes these levels in ascending order as Imagination, Belief, Thought, and ultimately, Understanding (Plato 202). Plato places the first two cognitive levels in what he terms the visible realm, a state of existence relying solely on material, or worldly, goods and concepts. Thought and Understanding, on the …show more content…
Presented with two vastly differing definitions of the word, the reader is compelled to reexamine their own personal meaning of the term and reinterpret it un light of Plato’s extended metaphor. Plato’s Philosopher-Kings find happiness where no other could, in the depths of darkness and comparative depravity, they cling to the forms, their conceptions of all that is beautiful, just and virtuous. Rather than seeking happiness in the material realm, the philosophers find it in the intelligible. There are three components in the human soul: Appetite (that which seeks pleasure), Spirit (that which seeks honor) and Reason (that which seeks truth) (Plato 126). In a just and – in Plato’s view – happy individual, Reason rules over the Appetite and Spirit (Plato 131). Since it is the philosopher who possesses the strongest sense of Reason, it is ultimately the philosopher, and only the philosopher, who is able to achieve the ultimate form of