Plato uses the allegory of the cave to question the Sophists and Sophism approach to knowledge. He questions how knowledge is obtained. He shows how Sophists are stuck in the opinion vs true knowledge. He propose that your senses inhibit the ability to gain knowledge and how others react when alternative ideas are illustrated by the attempts to kill the prisoner once he returns to the cave because they are afraid of the new opinion. He uses the allegory to portray his opinion that the knowledge we have is from imperfect reflections of the true forms. The forms are the reality and truth
The key question: Do you recognize that you are only seeing the world thru your senses and experience and that they limit your knowledge of the real world because you are limited in your own experiences and knowledge. Plato proposes the idea that our senses do not tell us the most accurate view of reality. You can only gain greater knowledge thru philosophical reasoning.
The Cave is used to represent the earthly world where things are not perfect and what we see is the reflections that we can interpret from our senses. The cave in the Allegory is a representation of a lack of knowledge that the prisoners endured.
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The fire within the “Allegory of the Cave” represents the prisoner’s limitation to knowledge as what they see is an interpretation from the fires point of view.
The prisoners represent ourselves existing in the real world. Most of us are ignorant of the knowledge realm. He also represents the philosopher who is trying to educate us in the truth of the real world when he returns to tell the other prisoners what he now knows.
The sun represents the knowledge that is needed to show us the real things and not the shadows we see from our senses. The sun is the knowledge that can show us the truth about the real form.
The chains are the limitations that prevent us from seeing the real knowledge. The shadows represent the imperfect objects that is an interpretation of the real forms.
As a reader we can see that Plato uses the cave to portray the world where shadows are images to us but the real things for the prisoners. We know that the real things are the not items they appear to be. The prisoner’s senses are only getting shadows of the real world.
The process the prisoner goes thru to see is the education process traveled thru for the prisoner to see the truth. The fire represents our senses that lead us to an interpretation of the real form.
The story infers that is you are always chained and looking at the wall of shadows you will only know the images you see. If you travel thru the education process you can begin to perceive new and differ forms of knowledge and truth. It also infers that some people will reject your attempt to change their mind and would rather remain chained to the things they know and are comfortable with.
The key concepts is that the main theme of Plato’s allegory of the cave is that we humans tend not to understand the true reality of our world. We think that we understand what we are looking at and sensing in our world, but we really just perceive shadows of the true forms of the things that make up the world. There is an immense distinction between appearances and reality. Things are not always what they seem, as a matter of fact they are not. The shadows were not what they were portrayed to be and it was all a distortion in appearance.
Plato is saying that, unless we become educated, we human beings are like the prisoners in the cave. We think that we understand the world around us. We think that the things we see and otherwise perceive are real. However, we are incorrect because the things that we perceive are mere shadows. There are true forms of everything that we think we perceive, but we cannot see those forms. In the allegory of the cave, Plato is trying to make us understand that we see shadows and we think they are the real thing. Thus, the main theme of the allegory is that we are ignorant about the true nature of reality.
Why does he think that there must be Forms? Plato says (in effect), that all individuals must belong to some pattern of FORM. Accordingly when we see such a pattern or form in nature, we recognize it, even though in many detaisl it differs from the last specimen we saw. We then go ahead and establish, say, a rule: certain kinds of animals are cats because they share cat-like features. And so on. In other words: We create an IDEA in our minds about a species of some animal or thing.
The parable of the cave is an exaggerated way of saying: in this world, the world we live in, we are trapped by our senses, which cannot capture the essence of the form in any actual thing. Our sense must make judgements about the imperfect specimen before our eyes. If not, they might bite!
What are “forms”? Plato says they are perfect templates that exist somewhere in another dimension (He does not tell us where). These forms are the ultimate reference points for all objects we observe in the physical world. They are more real than the physical objects you see in the world.
Plato makes several assumptions about how the released prisoner would react and how others would react to him. Would the prisoner really be happy to leave the cave?
Plato proposes the senses do not help us understand the differences between the appearance of item and what it reality is. The shadows are different from the real items such as they do not show us the 3rd dimension of depth or that things may not be what it seems. The shadow is not a true shape of the real item. The shadows were not what they were portrayed to be and it was all a distortion in appearance. If life is all a distorted appearance? You should use education to further define the truth and when you are expose to different things your opinion or knowledge can change to understand things differently in a more accurate knowledge.
If we do not follow Plato’s reasoning then we believe that the truth we know is correct and everything is as it appears. We are accepting the shadows as the truth without questions to determine if it can be something else. We are not asking questions to verify what we think we know is actual correct and just accept it and go on with life.
The main point of view is that humans mostly accept what they see as the truth and are satisfied with what they know. Only thru education and asking questions of the norm can we determine if the truth is accurate or if it is something false and needs further investigation to see the real thing behind what we though was true.
