Critique Of Plato's Myth Of The Cave

A man by the name of Haruki Murakami once said, “No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.” It is difficult to imagine that a man that lived over twenty four centuries ago still has no parallel competitor to the amount of influence that he had. The man’s name is Plato. A student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle, he founded one of the first advanced academic institution in the Western world. While Socrates may have been his teacher, Plato was the one who decided to write them down into books which obviously prolongs the time of his thoughts and knowledge. While he had many important ideas, the most important one to critique in terms of relevance to today’s world is his description of the Myth of the Cave. Throughout this paper, Plato’s life will be explored while also focusing on the most important teaching that Plato had and it’s counterarguments. Plato came from a fairly fortunate family who stemmed from powerful people. His father, Ariston, is said to be descended from the kings of Athens and Messenia while his mother, Perictione, is related to the famous Solon. It is important to keep this in mind when looking at his arguments in order to give them perspective. He was raised in the highest social class in Athens and was allowed access to the finest educators of their time such as Aristotle. These …show more content…
While it may seem like a good argument for certain scenarios, it is important to see that it can be easily abused by those that use it for every scenario. It is also crucial to consider how pragmatic the Myth of the Cave can be. However, with every single argument, there stands a counter argument. Diogenes of Sinope once said, “Of what use is a philosopher who does not hurt anybody’s