preview

Plato Cave Allegory Essay

Decent Essays
Open Document

Plato’s search for the meaning of justice through a debate between Socrates and his brothers parenthetically generates conditions for the ideal state of society. Plato creates a parable to reflect the ideal state known as the “cave allegory”. Plato likens people to prisoners chained in a cave only willing to observe the wall of the cave. Behind the prisoners is a road where people go about their lives and beyond that road is a fire that throws shadows of the people on the road on the wall in front of the prisoners giving them limited view of the real world. If one prisoner were released he would feel the glare of the bright light and reject the reality of cave he sees before him but if brought out of the cave and into the sunlight he would …show more content…

The prisoner’s being shackled by their ignorance serves as a thinly veiled critique of the Greek populace. Further on in the text Plato states that Democracy is the third worst state of government as the public are too uninformed to make educated decisions. Satire by nature goes around the point as someone’s less likely to disagree with a point if they aren’t directly exposed to it. However Plato leaves little to be inferred which subverts the foundation of satire, thus Plato’s Cave allegory acts less as a vehicle of satire and more as a blatant critique of Greek society and specifically Athenian government. Plato’s disdain for the democratic form of government is incited by the injustice he sees in society. Plato viewed justice as an order and duty of the soul, believing that philosophers were the only ones who held this justice. Thus Plato’s ideal form of government would have philosophers leading society, dubbed “the myth of the

Get Access