What I learned from The Allegory of The Cave

There are so many good lessons that I have learned in a philosophy class during my college years. Every lesson is like a journey to travel back in time to see the very beginning of philosophy and the public and how it shaped today’s society, how it had changed over time, and how it built a government and created rules and laws. After every lesson, it is an experience. It can be about life, or it can be about society. It can be about happiness or it can be about education.

The topic my philosophy professor covered in the class that has interested me the most is The Allegory of the Cave, more specifically, it is Republic by Plato. It has been staying inside me since the day I understood what it’s about. I must admit that it is never an easy job to read a philosophy book because it talks about big things from ancient times. But with The Allegory of the Cave and through the way my professor taught, I know it is about the knowledge of human beings through a metaphor and it could be understood as it was the education, the society, and the mind of humans. The philosophers had been moved by this metaphor and it brought them to the Form of the Good. The allegory of the cave was a concept developed by the philosopher to consider the nature of belief and knowledge. It was about education, which is always important to anyone’s life.

Source: StudioBinder

The goal of education in the Allegory of The Cave by Plato was to get every man out of the cave because what the prisoners saw in the cave was so limited. A group of people had lived in a deep cave since they were born and they could never see any daylight. It is surprised that they were bound so that they could not look at any side except straightforward. Behind them was a fire, and behind the fire was a wall. There were many different statues on the wall that the prisoners were facing, cast shadows by the burning fire, which were controlled by another group of people behind the wall. The prisoners watched all stories that those shadows were casting. Soon, they believed those shadows were the most real things in the world because all they could see was the statues.

Then, Plato argued about another scenario. The prisoners were free from the bonds on their necks and they could look at the fire and at the statues themselves. They must be surprised and realized what they were seeing on the wall all these years. It was the fire and statues that caused the shadows, which were the reflection of real things. The prisoners took the statues and fire as the most real things in the world. The prisoners were dragged out of the cave into the real world which was the real thing. Seeing the light for the first time, they were all amazed that they could look at their reflections, the real objects like trees, flowers, and more. Those things became their most real things. They began to understand that the sun is the cause of everything he sees around him—of the light, of his capacity for sight, of the existence of flowers, trees, and all other objects.

The Form of the Good was the basis of all goodness, truth, and beauty in the world. When the prisoners had held the Form of the Good, they had understood what was in this world. They used their knowledge to derive from understanding the Form of the Good to change all their previous thought into knowledge so that they could understand all of the Forms.

The Form of the Good was to the intelligible realm and the sun was the visible realm. When the prisoners were in the cave, the only sun that they had was the burning fire. Above all, the sun gave light and visibility in the visible realm, and the Form of the Good was the basis of intelligibility. To me, The Allegory of the Cave contained the goal of education, which meant it is important to everyone. Dragging people out of the cave was like beginning to teach them the basics, telling them what is right and wrong. Education should not put the knowledge into the human’s soul but guide people to go the right way. In the real life, I believe that anyone should have a proper education to gain more knowledge.