Comparing Plato's Apology And The Cave Parable

Both Plato’s Apology and the “Cave Parable” main concept is the contrasts between ideas and what we perceive as reality. People see reality as what a is visible for them about the world when reality is much more that what we can see. The “Allegory of the Cave” begins with the assumption that if any group of prisoners had their necks and hands chained down in a cave, they would only be able to see what is in front of them and not what is behind themselves. With a fire that is put behind them, they would be capable to seeing shadows of images that somebody else will create. As time progressed, the prisoners began to identify and notices the different shadows. However, if any of the prisoners was to climb out of the cave, he would not be able

In the Apology, the cave is Athens, Greece and the prisoners represents the Athenian citizens, who are captive to ignorance about justice or virtue. They are unable to question what they see and hear. They accept what comes in front of them as the truth without questioning it.The chains are the willingness to believe the conventional beliefs and reluctance/resistance to questioning that the Athenian population lack. The shadows/ shadow makers are the people in power who are the storytellers that created those conventional beliefs of reality. Those conventional beliefs include wealth/material possessions, reputation/status, bodily goods(sex, confort, desire, etc), and power. If these are our guiding values, they may mislead us quite profoundly becuase people is just manipulating the process to benefit themselves and hurt others. Socrates notices that that these values are held as ultimate by Athenians;however, these things leave out many other things such as justice, virtue, and friendship. The liberator/liberating message was Socrates, who challenged the conventional notion of well-being/human flourishing of the Athenians. Socrates also believed that a commitment to these things are a barrier to knowing reality as it is. Both Plato’s Apology and the “Cave Parable” elevates our need for a liberator because our hunger for knowledge can clash with other hungers and lead us to embrace non truths. The Apology describes how the Athenians(prisoners) were unable to turn their head away from what they see or what society presents them with. Socrates awakes from this illusion and throughout his life he tries to tell others, who are chained that there is another reality outside the cave and their conditional beliefs of a well-being. Socrates