PLATO STUDY QUESTIONS

"The Allegory of the Cave" - Plato

1. The cave represents a prison house that binds the will to learn and achieve knowledge.  To dwell in the cave is to dwell in a state where only one of the two realities of the world exist, meaning that to dwell in the cave is to dwell as an ignorant being.
2. The key elements in the imagery are the sun, the shackles, the shadows, and the cave itself.
3. Enlightenment and education resemble man's ascent out of the cave, where we are blinded by a new world of higher wisdom that is achieved when leaving behind ignorance.
4. The "shackles" in the cave symbolize man's stubbornness.  Much like the business man who becomes so stuck in routine that if anything were to disrupt it, he would hate the change, this is true as well for the dwellers of the cave who become stuck in a state of ignorance and deny change to their ways.
5. Today, routine is the ultimate shackle to our lives as variety is the spice.
6. A freed prisoner "goes into the light" as a caved prisoner "comes from the light," which accurately states the two ways in which we see everything, discerning the shadows from the objects.  A freed prisoner and a caved prisoner are about as alike as the wise man and the ignorant.
7. Intellectual confusion can occur when letting knowledge become something that binds the mind or when we refuse to see the objects while only seeing their shadows.
8. According to the allegory, we, as human beings, already possess the soul of ascension, yet we choose to live in the dark in many areas.  It is up to us to free our intellectual minds ourselves, because we are able to make that choice on our own.
9. I agree in full that there is a distinction between appearance and reality.  Just the other day, I saw someone I once knew, and I thought, "Wow, that person looks like a genuinely good human being," when in reality, they could be a whole different person filled with self-interest or bad intentions.
10. If Socrates is incorrect, there are always two metaphysical assumptions: the ultimate goal of knowledge is to know the "good," and these things are separated into two worlds which are the intellectual and the sensible.