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The Journey To Self-Knowledge In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

The Journey To Self-Knowledge In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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Self-knowledge is a journey one may start, but the horrors of it may prove too difficult to finish. Socrates believed that “talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living” (Apology 38a). Narcissus and Oedipus may beg to differ. Both leading a pained life soon after achieving some sort of self-understanding; they are perhaps suggesting the opposite, that the examined life is not worth living. Either way, it is clear that the journey to self-knowledge should not be taken without the ability to move past it and adapt with it.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Socrates discusses that when a prisoner first realizes the shadows were only illusions and is taken out of the cave,

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