Salvador Dali Allegory Of The Cave

The Greek philosopher Plato would have benefitted from using Salvador Dalí’s “The Persistence of Memory” as a tool for defending his views on reality. Dalí’s surrealistic painting and Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” refer to the illusionary aspect of the human senses and how easily a fake reality can arise from those tricked senses. Plato would have seen the famous melting clocks representing time’s dynamic nature in dreams and understood their importance to false realities because dreams are a form of false realities. He would conclude that the melting clocks represent the upper world looking down at the lower world; therefore, the painting must represent those in the cave who have escaped to see their former reality from a new perspective.