Summary: Allegory of the Cave & Book X
The central theme of the Allegory of the Cave is to explore the importance of education on the human condition. Plato starts in a dark cave where people are prisoners. They have always been there. The only light in the cave is a fire which shines on the front wall. There is a line with a low wall between the prisoners and the fire. The captors manipulate objects to create shadows on the front wall. The prisoner’s legs and heads are shackled. There is no freedom to move. They can only see in front of them. This is where they started. The only sound is echoes from the walls of the cave. The shadows are only an imitation of reality. This is the lowest form of reality called imagination. The captors allow a prisoner to roam around the cave. The prisoner is becoming more educated. Once the
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Socrates notes that evils which attacks the soul, cowardice and the like, clearly do not destroy it. Injustice, for instance, never kills souls by itself, though the unjust man may be killed in body by others. We must forsake the study of the soul in the prison of the body and use philosophy to truly study it.
Socrates returns to the theme of justice to determine how the unjust and the just will be in relation to the gods. They will love the just and hate the unjust. Even when it seems as if the just suffer, like Job, the gods have a plan, which will become clear in the end; in the long run, the unjust cannot triumph. Socrates recounts the story of Er. He dies, but is revived twelve days later, allowing him to describe the abode of the deceased. Those sufficiently evil were condemned to pay back their wrong for eternity.
Er goes on a journey. The fates, daughter of necessity, commands the souls to choose a life from a panoply before them. He says that we must understand how to choose and avoid extremes both in our current life and those after it. This is how people learn to be