Analysis of the Allegory Of The Cave, Delphic Quest, and Aristotle's On The Soul - Essay Example

Eventually a prisoner is released and the allegory details his progression out of the cave and into higher states of knowledge. It’s abundantly clear that the prisoners shackled in the cave represent humans at beginning stages of cognitive knowledge. Plato urges the reader to consider the prisoners’ predicament in terms of knowledge, ‘Now consider what would happen if their release from the chains and the healing of their unwisdom should come about in this way.’ As the prisoner is released from the shackles and realizes that the fire and statues have caused the shadows, he has then metaphorically passed from the imagining stage of reason to the belief stage, as evidenced in N.

Jordan’s chart. However the prisoner is still unaware of the world outside the cave and as he exits the cave he gradually becomes privy to a higher stage of cognitive development, “At first it would be easiest to make out shadows, then the images of men and things reflected in water, and later on the things themselves. After that, it would be easier to watch the heavenly bodies and the sky itself” As the prisoner exits the cave, man is correspondingly shown to have entered the thinking stage of cognitive development, where mathematical concepts are implemented through reason to construct and understand the world.

The prisoner then enter the final stage of cognitive development where they witness the actual objects that witness the cave from the outside, the actual objects that cause the reflections in the water, and ultimately the sun itself, “And now he would begin to draw the conclusion that it is the sun that produces the seasons and the course of the year and controls everything in the visible world.” This final stage is the Form of the Good, this seems to correspond to Plato’s concept of the idealized forms and Socrates concept that the unexamined life is not worth living, to conclude that the