Allegory of the Cave
The “Allegory of the Cave” is a famous section of Plato’s dialogue Republic. It’s called an allegory because nearly every aspect of the story is deeply symbolic. The Sun, for example, represents the Form of the Good (and among later Christian thinkers, it represents God).
But, as you saw from the animated video, it is also a story of how one moves from accepting beliefs without question to a critical examination of those beliefs.
It is a story of moving from ignorance to knowledge, of moving from the world of the senses to the realm of thought. It is a story of the liberation of the mind.
Explain how the trial of Socrates and the “Allegory of the Cave” are both examinations of the same idea: that the “unexamined life is not worth living.”
