Analysis of Plato's Allegory of the Cave - Essay Example

Allegory of the Cave was a work of Plato, which also means Analogy of the Cave. In this work Plato is describing the nature in education and in the wants of education. In the essay Plato is trying to bring an analogy between education and nature and how education has an impact on nature and it interpretation. It is a set of conversational dialogues between Plato’s brother Glaucon and Socrates. Plato has done a remarkable job in conceptualizing the essay from a point of view of conversation.

He has gone a different path while exploring the limits of human understanding on a particular subject by progressing into a narrowed path of information. To put it down in a brief, Allegory of the Cave consists of people who have been caged to the wall of a cave where they are facing the wall and can only see shadows of people who are walking behind them with the reflection from the fire in front of them. The people never get to witness the true picture and interpret reality from the shadow view they have while facing the wall of the cave all their life.

Plato then draws an analogy from this situation with respect to the life of a philosopher of his nature. He says that the life of the philosopher is very much inclined in this fashion, the only difference is that the philosopher is able to realise that what he is seeing is only shadows and not the true picture as to how it exists in reality. He finds out the truth and realises that all his life he was witness to a picture which did not exist in reality and that what he saw therefore was not true.

Then he moves onto say that the philosopher is freed from this cage and then finally sees the true picture as how it stands out to be, and not the way he perceived it. Emphasis is laid on perception and Plato tries to explain from this analogy that what humans perceive is not always true and that they need to free themselves from this cage of perception which masks over the true picture in order to understand the true picture. The claim in this analogy is that people should be free from the State as well as any authority which is designed to lock up perceptions into the minds of the people.

People should be free from such activities by any organization whatsoever, where they have the choice to look around and draw conclusions from reality rather than trading in flawed perceptions propagated by State into their minds. The author is using an emotional appeal to gather the support of his readers. He is using this tool as it looks to be the smoothest and the most subtle tool in convincing people of his idea as well as making them follow it in their own lives. In this way the people are able to connect at a very weak and high level and that is where the intensity is the maximum.

Once the intensity is achieved at a very deep level which can only be propagated through an emotional understanding of the idea, the people would automatically by the work of their sub conscious would catch and implement the idea into their minds. It is a connection of the sub conscious and that connection works only when applied at a very intense level, which includes the stretching of boundaries, therefore dealing at a weak point but at the same time strengthening it. The story revolves around an analogy which is romantic in nature. The