Journal On Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"


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1. Summary
The important idea presented from reading Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is one stated by Socrates. The story reminds us that "the unexamined life is not worth living." The people inside of the cave were viewing the world as what they thought was true but in reality was not. They blindly accepted that the shadows of reality that were put in front of them were the truth. However, when the single man who escaped from his chain traveled out of the cave and into the light of the sun, which represente the whole truth, and realized that he had just discovered what was the truth in the world outside of the cave.
2. Three Main Ideas
The three things that are most important about this section and that need to be remembered are that we cannot automatically accept what people tell us is the truth, we must examine our own consciousness for biases and imperfections, and that we can easily be blinded by the strong light of truth so we must always adjust to its radiance.
We cannot accept what other people tell us is the truth because often times they are trying to manipulate you intobelieving what they believe. The e-mail sent to Mr.Sciuto describing the picture taken as a boy having his arm being crushed because he had stolen bread from a local market because he was hungry. The source of the e-mail was trying to manipulate the ideas of the person who reads it into believing that what they saw was common Islamic practice, but if more research was done on the subject it is easy to see that is not a boy getting his arm crushed and that it is in fact a street show. We must always question what we are told is the truth because sometimes blindly accepting it as fact can lead to misconceptions.

We must examine our consciences for biases in order to prevent us from giving a small-minded answer to others. It is nearly impossible to understand and discover all of our biases, but we must try to discover and understand our own biases so that we can have an open mind and be willing to change our view point of things. Rather than believing that one thing is true we must accept that there are many different forms of the truth.

The light of truth in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave blinds the man who comes out of the shadows of the truth on the walls of the cave that he believed to be reality. However, the man adjusted to the radiance of the sun which represents the truth. We must be like the man in Palto's story. We cannot shy away from the brightness of light of truth, but instead we must adjust to the power of the bright light from the shadow of what we think is reality and see the wholeness of the world in front of us.

3. Question to Think About
Q:What seperates thinking from reasoning and how can we tell if we are using reason or not?

A:The key difference between thinking and reasoning is that when we think we act with biases and we don't realize it and accept them as true. When we reason, we understand that we are biased in our opinions and act against our own nature by thinking without biases.We also understand that the decisions that we make is one based upon our faith in whether or not something is right.