Allegory Of The Cave: Social Norm

Plato wrote about how when the one prisoner escaped, he stated that if the escaped prisoner were to ever go back into the cave and tell the other prisoners what he had seen and heard that they would laugh at him, criticize him, and tell him he should have never escaped. They would say that he would have been better off if he stayed in the cave with them. If that prisoner would have stayed in the cave, the other prisoners would have been just fine with him. In the society we live in, if you do something that is not known as a social norm in your community, you will be judged no matter what and in “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato gives a great example of what society is like today. If everyone starts to do their own thing then maybe one day social norms will no longer be a thing. But for now, everyone follows the social norms they are known

One symbol is the cave the prisoners are chained together in. The cave is very dark and they have never seen the sun before. The prisoners have been there since birth and they called it their home, they have never seen the outside of the cave. Behind the prisoners there was a fire and between them was a raised walk way. When the fire was lit, it made shadows on the caves wall, which was the only wall the prisoners could see. To Plato, the caves meaning represents the people who believe that knowledge and inspiration come from what they hear and see in the world. With what they hear and see it is known as empirical evidence. The prisoners trapped in the cave shows how people with empirical knowledge are “trapped” in a world full of misunderstanding things. Empirical knowledge is knowledge that is received by means of senses, particularly by observation. The prisoners represent this when they get their knowledge from observing the shadows on the cave wall. They know nothing different other than what they see on the one wall when the walkers outside the cave walk