In this reflection I will explains Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. People experience emotional and intellectual revelations throughout different stages in their lives. It implies that if we rely on our perceptions to know the truth about existence then we will know very little about it. The sense are unreliable and their perceptions imperfect because perceptions are only how we as individuals view things and not how they truly are.
My own interpretation of this allegory is People are like the figures in the cave because they believe the things they see are how they truly are, much the way we believe the things we perceive to be the truth. The cave is like the world we live in because the things we see only resemble their true forms, much they way the shadows on the wall were only resemblances of their physical form.
The Allegory of the cave is a way of explaining what Plato is trying to get across to people by looking at appearance versus reality and the steps leading to reality. He is talking to a follower of his named Glaucon and he is telling this fable to show what it is like to be a philosopher or a lover of wisdom. Plato’s cave has people who are unlearned of theory of forms chained unable to move their heads or limbs. A fire burns behind them, between the fire and the ‘prisoners’ there is a parapet where people can go to hold up puppets such as animals, plants and other things to cast shadows on the cave walls that the prisoners can see. The prisoners can hear echoes and see the shadows cast by the objects but aren’t able to see the real objects.
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The prisoners who are strapped in one single position since the dawn of their lives are incapacitated in such a way that all they are capable of doing is watching a stone wall cast in mysterious shadows. At this point, the spectators are unaware of what exactly they are witnessing. At first they would speculate as to how the shadows are flat and black and hold no matter yet are capable of motion and consistent movement. They would also examine the imperfections in the stone wall in front of them, and the graininess of the ground they knelt upon.
People today are like the people of the cave because we are chained by our senses to what we perceive to be the true. The darkness is a metaphor for our eyes not being able to see in the dark how things physically are because sight is a sense that we cannot rely on to see the truth even in the light. Plato implies that reality is like sitting in a cave with our back to the light. We can describe the shadows we see on the wall, but we never turn our heads around to see where the light comes from.
Even worse, we never really see each other we are in the dark. We can only know what is true when we know what is importance to us beyond what our senses perceive. We cannot live ethically if we do not understand this. The virtues of the soul are bodily qualities however we cannot rely on these qualities for the truth, we must only understand their implications.
