Allegory of the Cave vs What Is Our Life: Compare & Contrast

As the “Allegory of the Cave” unfolds, acknowledging examples in reserve of the real definitions does no better than considering shadows as real objects. Eventually, Socrates and Plato are driven by our ability to comprehend “the Good’ in reserve of numerous examples of goodness which dictates many of our lives, they yearn for us not to be misguided by society’s hypothesis and rather to take hold of the Good for ourselves. The kind of “Good” that the philosopher talks about is the (“absolute” good), and they claim that griping on to these truths by ourselves will help us in guiding our own lives.  In the “Allegory of the Cave” Plato wishes to put forward the variance between Goodness itself and its numerous forms. However, in this quest for the one “absolute good” shared by a variety of good things, they are fascinated by the common problem of how we get to find the one feature (absolute) shared by various picky examples. What most of the people in the society regards as being good, means nothing to the philosopher, for most people are guided by a sheer opinion, rather than being driven by knowledge. Goodness in this case is compared with the form of the Good, in that when Socrates talks about the form, he refers to the absolute of it.

            Drawing upon all his writings concerning the absolute good, Plato grasps that it’s difficult to see goodness at all, and rather we are able to see numerous good things, but not goodness by itself. As the “Allegory of the Cave” continues to unfold it indicates that, there is only one thing that blocks our knowledge, and that is the persistence that the visual world is reality and that knowledge is safeguarded by using our sanity in relating with this world of changing intricate objects. In one instance, Plato has Socrates say that the prisoners in the cave are “like ourselves”. In simple terms, Plato was conveying the message that the prisoners in the cave represented the majority of the people in the universe. The fact that the prisoners are at the lowest level, means that the proportion they represent in the society does not even depend on their own use of sight. According to Plato, most of us do not even make an effort to even facing the visible world and ascertain our opinions, but rather allow others, our tutors, to put on a “performance”. The performance entails the poets, as it uses images to educate us. The images used may either be visual or literal. In either way, those who hold on to them that such images amount to truth are deceived by imagination.

            The “Allegory of the Cave” can be compared to “What Is Our Life”? By Sir Walter Ralegh in that, Plato in various ways criticizes the use of images since he believes that images do not reveal the real picture about what should be known. Similarly, most of the poetry uses imagery in conveying their messages and that is what Sir Walter Ralegh employs as we are able to visualize and imagine what the writer says. If we then believe in what we are told in the poem, then as regards Plato we are being deluded by imagination. This is the main contrast between the two literal works. The allegory of the cave talks about the prisoners underneath the sun, where they cannot either perceive not to move anywhere as they are static facing the wall. Only they are bound to see are the images and puppets of their own selves. Similarly, Sir Walter Ralegh, claims that graves, (which I would compare with the underneath world where prisoners are located) hides us from searching the sun. Plato says that the sun is above and it’s difficult for one to face up, and the souls become joyous only when they go to the upper world and enjoy the good things. I tend to think that when Sir Walter Ralegh, said “Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest, Only we die in earnest that’s no jest”, He meant that our souls only find solace and become joyous when they die. This is similar to Plato when he talked about souls going to the upper world.