Republic: The Allegory of the Cave Plato is one of the greatest and most influential philosophers of all time. He was a student of Socrates and was a great influence to Aristotle whom he taught. He is a very key figure in higher learning as he founded the first institution of higher education in Athens and had written a lot of works that have shaped the field of philosophy. He represented his work mostly in letters and dialogues that created the basics of philosophy. One of his most famous dialogues is the Republic, which is a representation of the Socratic dialogues that defines justice, just people, and their characteristics. In the book Seven of the Republic, he gives one of the most vivid and elaborate metaphor called ‘the allegory of …show more content…
The people were only able to see the shadows of the puppets that passed behind them projected on the blank wall by the fire that burned behind the chained people. The people started to name the shadows because they were the closest things they had to reality regardless of the fact that other people were controlling the puppets. They were oblivious to the fact that the objects were carried by other people which led them to believe that the echoes of the people were the voices of the objects they saw. In this allegory, Socrates is trying to explain to his student that shadows seen by the prisoners were the only reality they knew because they had never seen anything …show more content…
It signifies the discomfort caused when an individual realizes that what they know could not be further from the truth and as such opening the mind to a new and wider scope of knowledge and information. In return to the cave, the freed prisoner is enlightened and pities his fellow prisoners for their one-dimensional view of the world and would want to bring them out of the cave for them to experience the same sun. However, due to the sudden change in lighting, he would be blind at first which would make his fellow prisoners skeptical and even adamant to leave the comfort zone and into the real world as it is harmful and