Summary_of_Allegory_of_the_Caves

Summary of “Allegory of the Cave” In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” he points out how humans see things through two different eyes, a “mind’s eye,” and a “bodily eye.” He points out that a “mind’s eye,” is an eye through which a person uses a higher level of enlightenment that a person sees the whole picture of others, of both good and evil, and takes in their entire surroundings. He states that a person is only able to see this vision when they are residing within the outside world; outside of the darkness and into the light of a perfect world. In a “bodily eye,” one lives within darkness and is only able to see that which is only directly in front of them. They determine their reality based on what they perceive to be true. The cave, being a distorted view, filled with misperceptions and non-truths. It comes down to light vs. dark; conscious vs. unconscious (451) The prisoners that are kept in the cave, believe the shadows that they saw where true and lifelike. Their brains and their beliefs where based strictly on what was right in front of them, so they believed what they saw, for they had no other teachings or in actuality; truth. They are trapped in a false reality with no motivation to escape or desire to discover if what they saw (the shadows), was actually reality or their minds way of playing tricks on them, making them live a life of deception and lies. (p.450) Once one of the prisoners leaves the cave, a whole new world is open up to him. He is finally able to see that his past reality was a lie and an extremely distorted view of life. The prisoner realizes that by being chained to the walls, he was chained to darkness and living a lie. Once the prisoner absorbs what the light has to offer, he is able to start on a journey of finding the truth, of using his “mind’s eye.” However, he finds that the truth can be painful, in discovering that everything he knew to be true was not. At first he doesn’t know what to believe, because he is opened up to a world he, as well as the other prisoners he left behind, have never known. Once he finally embraces the light, he is able to look at things in a clearer perspective and to use a more reasonable view, when he lives his life, no longer trapped by the chains and the darkness of the cave. (452) The prisoner eventually returns back to the cave from which he came from, to help the other prisoners escape and to share the truths that the light has taught him. This was an extremely difficult process because this prisoner has seen both sides; light and dark. He is able to see how the darkened cave distorted his views and gave him a false perception about reality. However, the other prisoners only know one way-darkness. The other prisoners believe that he has lost his mind and want to have no part in his beliefs or findings and in return, reject him, even to the point of threatening to kill him. (456) Plato suggests the many differences between goodness (enlightenment), and its many appearances and how one finds the absolute compared to “the many.” Plato shared that people only had mere opinions, not true knowledge. He touches on “the form” and the “essential.” Plato states that the form, which is the many forms of goodness. That good can be used in many different forms, but yet have one common connection, which is the same way that people use in their perception of what is good. Plate believes that people may see many good things, but that a person in actuality is not seeing goodness itself. That objects are just that objects, which a person sees and touches are less real than that which we know intellectually. They saw real objects as inadequate. The “bodily eye” is full of deception and is contradictory. He believed that through the “mind’s eye,” a person can find true goodness, in an unchanging form; that a person cannot truly know by seeing and that a person must be disciplined enough to abstain from the perception of the sense. He believes that one cannot rely on teachers (people who teach by use of images), is being shown a false reality by using “false images.” In “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato teaches us that if we base our lives strictly on the shadows (the deceptions in life), than we will never reach full enlightenment. (456-457)