"Allegory of the Cave"

    The "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato represents an extended metaphor that contrasts what we believe to what is reality. Everything we percieve is an imperfect "reflection" of the ultimate form. An allegory in itself is a symbolic story. You can infer by the title alone that the cave is going to hold some kind of representation of something else. Throughout the story Plato helps us understand the significance of the cave through figurative language, imagery, and symbolism.

     The "Allegory of the Cave" mirrors the philosophers journey. Socrates felt like he was seeing the bigger picture in the world, and when he tried to go out and tell people they killed him. The freed prisoner from the cave is a direct relation to Socrates life as a philosopher. In the cave the prisoners were wearing shackles. They saw only the shadows of workers on the back of the cave wall caused by a burning fire, and they thought that was all there was. They didn't know that the shadows were a mere reflection of something else. When one of the prisoners got free, he discovered that there was an entire world out there that he never knew. He saw the light and the sun for the first time. When he tried to go back and tell the other prisoners, they resisited. They did not want to believe that everything they saw and knew was a simple reflection of something bigger.

     This relates to our society today in so many ways. Sometimes I feel like we are shackled by ignorance. Learning is interactive and instead of shutting out new information we should embrace it, not let it hold us back. What if we came from a perfect world, and what we see in front of us is just a reflection of that. It would explain why we get glimpses of perfection at times. What we believe might not be reality. We never learn anything "new".. we simply rediscover what was already there. By not exploring the possiblity of these new ideas, we are acting just like the prisoners who stayed in the cave. The world we see in front of us is the "world of senses", which could also be looked at as the inside of the cave. The "world of ideas" is the outside of the cave. It's the perfect world where everything originated and everything exists. Sometimes we get glimpses of the world of ideas because we are by nature always trying to reach or get back to that place. Just like how an artist can have an idea in his head, but after he paints it, it doesn't turn out right. To someone else it might look perfect, but unless you're that artist you won't see the idea that could have been.