Critique Of Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

Viraj Ganglani

Ethics essay 3

How does Plato use the allegory of the Cave to illustrate his conception of the structure of reality, of the philosopher’s search for knowledge?

“The Allegory of the Cave” is a theory Plato spoke about which was on human perception. He claims that in order to have knowledge, you must attain it through actual philosophical reasoning and not just by using your senses as that is merely an opinion. To test out his theory, he basically had 3 people chained in a cave in a way that faces a wall. This was done to such an extent that they could not even turn their heads 180 degrees to see any of the people walking by. They could only seen reflections of it as well as a flame lit behind them. One of the three prisoners

eventually finds a way out of their bindings and escapes out of the cave. He is shocked by what he sees, and returns to the cave to tell his peers about it. They believe he is lying and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free.
The entire “ The Allegory of the Cave” is a critique we as a society see as reality.

Our entire perception of reality is flawed because most people perceive sensations of the world and gain knowledge from that, but in order to truly gain the “good” and true knowledge, one must understand the “forms”. Now here is where the philosophers’ problem comes from; if we interpret the Allegory from an epistemology standpoint we can see where the philosophers’ struggle comes from. A philosopher wants to break free from the cave, the cave is the philosophers’ body and philosophy is in sense the sun. Before philosophy, all one could see was an illusion on reality, and you could never truly understand the world as you saw it because your perception was hammered by the fire. Once you found philosophy, all the shadows you had seen became inferior copies, and you could see all the actual items that were casting those shadows; but here is where the dilemma comes into play. If one could find a superior that was casting a shadow, what would stop a philosopher from finding another superior? Plato then argues that in order to fully see knowledge we must enter the realm of forms, or realm of beings; because that is where true knowledge

lies.
If the philosopher ever returned to the cave he would be blinded by ignorance as he was once blinded by turn knowledge. Also those he tried to inform who were still in the cave would believe him to be hurt and therefore kill him in order to prevent themselves from suffering the same fate. It is an interesting dilemma because the philosophers’ one goal is to be able to seek true knowledge but he cannot give it to anyone else because anyone who hasn’t escaped the cave wouldn’t be able to fully understand it. The cave itself is ones own mind before seeking philosophy and the fact that a philosopher not only wants knowledge for himself but to pass it onto everyone else is his greatest problem. Every now and again it is the duty of the philosopher to return to the cave, into the shadows to try to impart insight on those still stuck in the cave. However it is nearly impossible to do this because one cannot force the right desires on any one else.