plato

Allegory of the Cave – Plato’s Reality


We acquire our concepts about the material world through the usage of perceptual abilities. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave disagrees about the above statement and suggests that we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts we obtain through our somewhat limited senses were on the same level as what things really are. In the allegory of the cave, human prisoners are chained in a cave unable to move their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. Puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.
What Plato attempts to illustrate through this allegory is that the prisoners would cons...