The Parable of Plato’s Cave
06
Mar
The first thing is that it is not a myth, if we understand mythos what is what would be
a simple narrative, but if present in the popular imaginary can be beyond then it is a parable, a metaphor where the cave would be a place of “knowledge ” or simply a dark environment, that we deprived of light, this light being the light of truth.
This “myth” is in the work of Plato entitled “The Republic,” book VII, where it seeks the light of the theory of knowledge, lead men to language and education to an ideal state, so it refers to the Greek polis in its formation initial.
In a cave people walk and through the shadows on the walls observe the way their bodies cast shadows, and in them the objects they carry.
Imagine that the prisoners were freed and forced to look at the fire and the objects that made the shadows, they would awaken a new reality, a new knowledge, but unaccustomed to the light would hurt their eyes and they initially would not see well.
Plato did not seek the essence of things in the simple Phýsis, as did, for example, Democritus and his followers, influenced by Socrates, he sought the essence of things beyond the sensible world, and this is the true allegory of the cave.
Dialogue is metaphorical, metaphorical dialogue always in first person talks between Socrates and his interlocutors: Glaucus and Adimantus, the younger brothers of Plato.
In dialogue, the emphasis is on the process of knowledge, showing the worldview of the ignorant, living common sense, and the philosopher, in his eternal search for truth.
It can be said that, at least in the West, this is the first essay on “truth.”
