Latisha Konz Phi111-006 Kennedy 9/15/14 ESSAY 1: Plato: The Republic: “The Sun, the Line, and the Cave” Plato’s theory of the forms came about through the proposition of how we can define something correctly. And he asserts we are able to properly do so through an understanding of that which we are defining. The foundation of his theory stems from a distinction of the many things that we experience through the material world as derivatives of the true essence of what is real which he calls the forms. For example, we may experience beauty through that of a landscape or the beauty of a song. But beauty within the material world can change, end, or be a figment of opinion. But even after beauty passes, and we are no longer seeing or thinking of beauty, it …show more content…
The allegory of the cave gives the reader a story of prisoners in a cave shackled unable to move their heads or limbs while all facing a particular wall. And periodically on the wall, shadows would appear and the prisoners would converse about these shadows as if they were reality, because to them this was their reality. Later a prisoner is taken from the cave and out towards the light and into the sun, into the real world. At first while growing accustomed to the real world, the released prisoner would first recognize the shadows and reflections of men and other objects. Eventually he would see things as they were and his place in the world as he is. This parable clearly draws a parallel between the cave as a place of the visible, sensible world. What we are experiencing and gaining with our senses are mere images of the real thing, the forms. And the prisoner’s journey out of the cave and his experience into the real world parallels with our experience in the material world and moving out of the dimness and up into the bright, intelligible