Plato Book 7

In Book 7 of the Republic, Plato beings it with Socrates giving a scenario about the people living in a dark cave all their lives. They are bound to a wall, unable to turn their heads to look on either side of themselves or behind themselves. There is only a fire behind them to illuminate a wall like screen in front of them. Behind the wall are the puppeteers who have puppets and the prisoners hold artifacts. All the prisoners see are the shadows from the screen, so they are forced to believe that that is the reality of the world since they have not seen anything else different. Eventually one prisoner is set free to view the puppets and the fire. At first the light nearly blinds him, but after his eyes adjust he can now see clearly the fire and everything else around him. He soon …show more content…
Because the light from the sun is so bright, it’s too much to focus on all the different things, so he zones in on the shadows. He realizes that the shadows are a reflection of different objects. This leads the conclusion that the sun is something good and starts the bases of Plato’s talk about education. The man that is released from his bonds is seen as the philosopher-king because he knows about the “Form of the Good”. Then the philosophy-king tries to bring more people out of the cave to see all that he has seen from this new world. From there they can try to teach the others in the cave this new philosophy about life and reality. What Plato is probably trying to prove is that education is one of the most important things that everyone needs. But the most important subjects are mathematics and philosophical dialectic. In order to completely understand philosophical dialectic, you can’t be influenced by things, such as the outside world, because they won’t treat it seriously enough. In other words, philosophy dialectic should not be taught to the “wrong” people or the “right” kind of children at a young