Knowledge And Truth Lead To Freedom In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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Recommended: Chapter 1- The Nature of Theatre

The philosopher Plato in his seminal work The Republic argues using Socrates as his vehicle in the allegory of the cave that knowledge and truth lead to freedom. Glaucon and Socrates enter into a discussion of a group of prisoners who can only see what is right in front of their faces. They are chained in a cave unable to move. Behind them in there is a fire and a group of puppeteers, their keeps, who use props: vessels, statues, puppets, and other objects to cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. This is all that they have ever seen. It is the truth they know. Occasionally a prisoner is forced to leave the cave. They have to be compelled to leave the world they know. Socrates relates to Glaucon the result of one of the prisoners
He has left ignorance and moved into an intellectual truth. The freedman would naturally feel pity for his former companions because they are living in a false reality. Would he return to the darkness to educate and free his prison mates? He would see nothing but darkness. Could the puppeteers allow him to live once he knew the truth? His companions in the darkness of the cave would not be able to understand the truth. Their chains keep them in their state of ignorance. The status quo likes the prisoners ignorant, they can control their thoughts and their perceptions of the truth. The freedman would be put to death for trying to educate the prisoners and free them from their ignorance. The other prisoners would not be able to fathom the truth. Socrates equates this an individuals journey to knowledge and once attained the person does not want to return to a state of ignorance. Knowledge effects change personally, politically, socially, and nationally (the
Socrates is not against all forms of poetry only the imitative genre. It is not truth. A creation held to a mirror is not real. It is a reflection of the original, and it can be distorted, and changed in ways that destroy the original.
Imitative poetry is in Socrates opinion do not provoke thought and are corrupting for the soul. People were too foolish to see that imitative poetry was not truth. It was seductive and could corrupt the knowledge of even a wise person. Truth was the only protection against the corruption of this type of poetry.
Imitation decreased the value of the original; poetry, art, etc. Socrates asks Glaucon to distinguish the difference in an original object, a bed, created by a carpenter and copied by a painter. Was the bed copied or created by the painter? Was it copied as it was or as it appeared? What is the truth? The painter is not the creator of the bed in question, he is only the copier of the carpenter’s art. He has imitated the carpenter’s art without the sacrifice of the carpenter.
The beauty of art never changes, beautiful never changes but the perception can be changed by imitation. By the reflection in the mirror. It can be imitated but it is not truth. Imitation is deception, seductions, and corruption of the

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