Plato

Plato The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. He sees it as what happens when someone is educated to the level of philosopher. He contends that they must "go back into the cave" or return to the everyday world of politics, greed and power struggles. The Allegory also attacks people who rely upon or are slaves to their senses. The chains that bind the prisoners are the senses. The fun of the allegory is to try to put all the details of the cave into your interpretation. In other words, what are the models the guards carry' the fire' the struggle out of the cave' the sunlight' the shadows on the cave wall' Socrates, in Book VII of The Republic, just after the allegory told us that the cave was our world and the fire was our sun. He said the path of the prisoner was our soul's ascent to knowledge or enlightenment. He equated our world of sight with the intellect's world of opinion. Both were at the bottom of the ladder of knowledge. Our world of sight allows us to "see" things that are not real, such as parallel lines and world, cave, understanding, knowledge, reality, wall, sight, shadows, reasoning, mathematics, finally, allegory, abstract, ways, through, thinking, things, struggle, socrates, side, senses, recognition, real, physical, out, opinion, models, mirrored, little, level, ideals, guards, forms, first, fire, enlightenment