As Plato writes in the dialogue The Republic, the form of the good is responsible for all truth and knowledge in a society. Since Plato and his colleagues have been debating on how a city state should be ruled and the qualifications the ruler should possess, he begins to examine how the form of the good would be useful for a ruler’s education of the rational part of the soul. As Plato has previously stated, the rational part of the soul allows the mind to have knowledge and wisdom while trying to avoid ignorance. Plato offers the idea that the good is the most important type of study for the ruler as the good will enable truth and clear thought when making decisions and ruling people of the state. To explain his hypothesis, he delivers three
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At first the prisoner is in pain from the brightness of the sun so he only looks towards the surface of the water. Here he sees shadows and then reflections of the trees, animals, and the sky in the water. Now the prisoner has come to the realization that the statues casting the shadows he understood in the cave are just copies of the actual objects outside the cave. The prisoner has now reached the level of discursive thought in the realm of the intelligible. As the prisoner’s eyes adjust to the outside world, he looks up to view the actual objects that were reflected in the water. The prisoner sees the trees, animals, sky, and sun in all of their actuality. He then realizes that the sun has created the trees and animals he sees outside and his ability to see these objects by the sun creating light. Plato describes this realization, “At that point he would work out that it was the sun which caused the seasons and the years, which governed everything in the visible realm and which was in one way or another responsible for everything they used to see,” (516.b-c). Once the prisoner has reached this conclusion, it is able to be assumed that he has reached the most sought after knowledge of forms and of the form of the good found in the realm of the intelligible. After dissecting the cave analogy, …show more content…
Plato is visually demonstrating how a person is able to reach a complete sense of knowledge in the world. Each analogy’s conclusion is reached when the object of the image has finally found and understood forms or more specifically, the form of the good. As the Sun analogy concludes, the sun provides, light and growth, such as the good provides knowledge and truth. Directly comparable, the Cave analogy is complete when the released prisoner is able to look at the sun and understand how the sun is responsible for all the prisoner is able to see. The Line analogy gives a concise explanation of the Form of the Good as a metaphysical object which is aligned with the mental capacity of knowledge. Plato is trying to demonstrate that the form of the good is the highest level of understanding one is able to achieve, hence why a ruler should focus his studies on understanding the form of the good while enhancing the strength of the rational part of his
At first the prisoner is in pain from the brightness of the sun so he only looks towards the surface of the water. Here he sees shadows and then reflections of the trees, animals, and the sky in the water. Now the prisoner has come to the realization that the statues casting the shadows he understood in the cave are just copies of the actual objects outside the cave. The prisoner has now reached the level of discursive thought in the realm of the intelligible. As the prisoner’s eyes adjust to the outside world, he looks up to view the actual objects that were reflected in the water. The prisoner sees the trees, animals, sky, and sun in all of their actuality. He then realizes that the sun has created the trees and animals he sees outside and his ability to see these objects by the sun creating light. Plato describes this realization, “At that point he would work out that it was the sun which caused the seasons and the years, which governed everything in the visible realm and which was in one way or another responsible for everything they used to see,” (516.b-c). Once the prisoner has reached this conclusion, it is able to be assumed that he has reached the most sought after knowledge of forms and of the form of the good found in the realm of the intelligible. After dissecting the cave analogy, …show more content…
Plato is visually demonstrating how a person is able to reach a complete sense of knowledge in the world. Each analogy’s conclusion is reached when the object of the image has finally found and understood forms or more specifically, the form of the good. As the Sun analogy concludes, the sun provides, light and growth, such as the good provides knowledge and truth. Directly comparable, the Cave analogy is complete when the released prisoner is able to look at the sun and understand how the sun is responsible for all the prisoner is able to see. The Line analogy gives a concise explanation of the Form of the Good as a metaphysical object which is aligned with the mental capacity of knowledge. Plato is trying to demonstrate that the form of the good is the highest level of understanding one is able to achieve, hence why a ruler should focus his studies on understanding the form of the good while enhancing the strength of the rational part of his