Analysis Of Socrates 'Allegory Of The Cave'

The Allegory of the Cave is a dialogue between Glaucon and his mentor Socrates. Socrates presents a situation in which several men are born chained to a cave wall with absolutely no mobility in their appendages or their heads for their entire lives. Behind and above them is a fire that casts shadows onto the cave wall that the prisoners are facing. Between the prisoners and the fire is a raised walkway that allows unnamed people to walk through, although the walkway has a wall to obscure the shadows of the people themselves to be seen by the prisoners. The people carry various objects above their heads, meaning these objects then get cast onto the cave wall opposite from the prisoners. Socrates claims that to these men, these shadows are all that they consider reality. The Allegory continues as one of the men is released and dragged to the mouth of the cave, where he is temporarily blinded by the harsh sunlight. Eventually, the man discovers a reality beyond what he experienced in the cave. The man eventually pities his peers down in the cave and returns to the cave to attempt to …show more content…
When his eyes adjust, he gets introduced to the world above the cave, where he can understand the meaning of all things, including the shadows of the objects that he now gets to see for real. This portion of the Allegory is akin to a man practicing philosophy and becoming a philosopher; an individual that realizes the ignorance shown by his peers and can now understand all that existence holds. An important piece of this experience is the man’s introduction to complete brightness, now that he beholds a world under sunlight. The sun in the Allegory of the Cave is representative of the absolute Truth or Good that a philosopher seeks after. When the source of Truth and Good shines its light on the man’s life, everything is suddenly