The Allegory Of The Cave

TITLE Of Assignment In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, the allegory narrates three prisoners in a cave who have never seen the outside world. Their arms, legs, and necks are tied to a rock so all they can see is a bare wall. Behind the prisoners is a fire that emits the shadows of statues onto the bare wall. However, the prisoners see the shadows on the wall as real objects because they have been there since birth. They think the shadows are the true forms because that is the only truth they have seen. Then, one of the prisoners escapes, and discovers that the shadow is not the true form. That the shadows coming from the statues are only copies of the “more real” form and lastly, without the sun, there are no objects. With these discoveries, Plato conveys his idea of the different levels of knowledge.
In the beginning, the prisoners believe that the shadows of the objects are the realest things. Then, the escaped prisoner realizes that the shadow is only a reflection of “the most real form”, the statue. Plato suggests that this is the perception of humans. Just like the prisoners, humans believe that the shadow, and the reflection of physical things, (empirical evidence) are real. However, despite the fact that he discovered a greater reality, when shown the statues, the prisoner concludes again that he has made contact with the most real form. Plato thinks that humans rely on sensory knowledge to believe. Like the prisoner, humans cannot fathom the idea of a greater reality without seeing