Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

Thoughts on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

The allegory of the cave that appears in Book VII of Plato’s Republic is a well-known text for good reason: it is a brilliant allegory on the nature of the human condition in its relationship to knowledge, and it forces the careful reader to reflect on Plato’s implications about different kinds of knowledge. For the Greek philosopher Plato, the true reality exists in the world of ideas, a world that is invisible to the naked eye and can only be perceived by an enlightened mind, a mind that sees with the brilliance of the sun’s rays. In Plato’s understanding, this world of ideas is one that comes to full view only after much effort has been exerted on the part of the viewer. Furthermore, it is not a physical effort---the way it is in the allegory, where the people have to accustom their eyes to the light of the sun; rather, it is an intellectual effort, the kind of effort that the poet Dante exercised in the writing of his magnificent, three-part magnum opus The
Although Plato didn’t call his world of ideas a divine one, as Dante did, they both seem to agree on one central point: that human beings have the capacity to “know” things through their senses and they also have access to a higher kind of knowledge if they are willing to make an