DACALOS, JEHNYLETE P.

CE4-1
ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE

The allegory of cave explains the effect on education and the lack of it in
our nature. It is written as a dialogue between Platos mentor Socrates and his
brother Glaucon. At the first part in this allegory where the setting is in the cave
and the fire, Socrates let Glaucon imagine that people were in a cave like
dwelling shackled by their legs and neck to stay in the same place so that
theres only one thing for the prisoner to look at; theres a fire behind prisoner
and a wall between them and the fire and in the wall along this low wall consist
of people carrying things that reach up higher than the wall, the prisoner could
only see the shadow of the things and they presumed the things were real
rather than projected things. Socrates uses this passage as a metaphor of that
people whos in chained or whose imprisoned from reality believes only on what
they see, believes on the things they thought it was true.
In the next part liberation, Socrates supposed that a prisoner got free from
the chain. The freed prisoner would walk or look around the cave and see the
flickering light from the fire and would hurt his eyes and would not immediately
see the things whose shadow he saw previously. If someone were to inform the
freed prisoner that he saw before were not real, he would not believe it and
would come back to his original state of imprisonment. But if theres someone
who would force the freed prisoner to go way beyond what he sees, he would
slowly accustom to the light of the sun and he would see much clearer on the
things that were real and not the mere shadow of the real things. The problem of
the people nowadays is that they only rely on what they see and not taking risk
in knowing whats the truth behind all of the things. People need not to be afraid
on stepping outside their own understanding. They need to open both their eyes
and mind to see that the former life they live in was useless and unreal.
The last part of this allegory is the prisoner returns to the cave. After the
prisoner got out of the cave accustomed by the light given by the sun and got
enlightened, the prisoner wants to share the things truth behind all the things
and want to enlightened the remaining shackled people beneath the cave yet
the prisoners inferred that the journey out of the cave would harmed them and
not undergo the similar journey as they thought that the freed prisoner were
blinded by the things outside the cave. And if they were able to harm anyone

who would attempt to drag them out the cave they would do it. As the freed
prisoner tried his best to help the shackled people to have them enlightened yet
they choose not to have the same path of that freed prisoner. People tend to be
scared of knowing philosophical truths and do not trust the wits of the
philosopher. Whether people are in the cave or not they need to be open minded
and acknowledge things that wont harm your life being.