Different Stages Of The Allegory Of The Cave Essay Sample

The allegory of the cave is all about the different levels of knowledge or enlightenment. Plato tried to explain what he knew about a philosopher- King. He tries to create a scenario where people have lived in a cave since they were born and that they have never seen light and all they do is just look all straight ahead. There is nothing they can think of in life other than where they are and what is in the cave. This can be symbolical of when a person’s brain is empty and does not know anything outside their thoughts and that they cannot think of anything that is not within their imagination and that which they know.
When the people leave their space and ascent to the world above, they encounter different things and start seeing life differently from what they knew while in the cave. They start seeing more real forms, things that are sensible. This is the point at which cognition starts making sense. This applies directly to the education of the philosopher king, because he also moves to the point at which his imagination develops from the point at which they know nothing to where they start using their cognition and his intellectual level begins to increase.
The allegory of the cave is a clear symbol of how people in the education ladder move from one level to another in their quest to be knowledgeable. The philosopher king, in his education moved from a level of intellectual dwarfism to a point where he understood everything outside of his world. The different stages or points at which they got to learn something new is representative of the different levels which the prisoner got themselves until they reached the form of the good.