The Acceptance Of Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

In this essay, I will present the allegory of the cave, explain what it is about and evaluate what Plato may be trying to teach us.
Within this allegory, Plato presents us with a cave that contains a group of people that are chained it's wall for their whole lives. The way they were chained had them facing a blank wall, in which they were able to see shadows casted onto it due to a flame that would burn from behind them. Between the fire and the men was a wall and a walkway. This was used by people to make the shadow puppets, which the men that were chained to the wall would start giving names to whatever figure came up. The people chained to the cave wall were also lead to believe that the sounds the people were making were simply coming …show more content…
The prisoners knew what they knew, which was the shadows and sounds that were produced in the cave along with whatever they named these shapes. It isn't until the prisoner is freed and sees the sun that they discover "true reality". Because of this enlightenment, the prisoner realizes that everything that they had known was all untrue. This then leads said prisoner wanting to share this enlightenment to those who still remain in the cave since they felt truly bad for them and their lack of knowledge on what truly exists apart from the cave. This theory of forms was Plato's way of giving meaning to life by presenting us the idea that there exists a deeper and greater reality, which in the allegory's case would be the outside of the cave. Plato also presents his idea of the divided line, which further emphasizes the idea that there exists different realities. In the case of the divided lines, there exists the visible world, which has visible thing or images (the shadows and sounds within the cave) and the intelligible world (the outside of the cave), which includes the ideas, or forms, and The Good, which is the highest