Plato's 'Common People In The Cave'

1. Common people in the Cave- In this story, Plato’s takes our everyday life and create the metaphor of people sitting in a cave. There are people at the bottom of a valley in the cave who are chained in and can’t move. All that these people see are the shadows that are put on the wall in front of them which are produced by puppeteers who are behind them by a light source producing the shadows. The people who are chained in also only hear echoes and believe this to be the shadows are talking. The only thing that these people have ever seen or know about are the shadows and echoes, causing them to believe that this is the truth. The issue is that the truth that they believe is being manipulated by someone else, the puppeteers. Plato equated these people in the cave to a common person in the city. They are not always very educated and rely on people to lead over them and tell them what to do.
2. People who have been freed- At one point in the metaphor story, one person was released from the chains that were holding them down to their specific spot in the cave forcing them to look at the shadows. When they were released they started to look around and they saw the light. In this story light is equated to the real truth. At first the newly freed
Education- The entire point of this story was to show how education works. In the book it says “education isn’t what some people declare it to be, namely, putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes.” Essentially this means that you cannot teach anything to someone who is not willing to learn. Equating this back to the allegory of the cave that was presented before this, the people who are chained to the cave and won’t listen to the people who have seen the light don’t want to learn. They think they already know the truth and whatever else is told to them cannot be true. Much like teaching someone who is blind to see, it is impossible without a complete reconstruction of the systems in