Plato Allegory of the Cave

           Paper Reaction of Plato Allegory of The Cave

The allegory of the cave indicates that the differences between educated people and uneducated people in the real world. The former is maverick, wise with free pursuit of love and the latter is submissive, a fool of restricting its activities to a designated area.

The Allegory, for one thing, it describes the prisoners' life in the cave; for another, it reveals the difficult process of climbing from the bottom of the hole and the sensation of turning to light from the darkness, which in fact implies the difficulty and possibility of Mind Turn. So what can drag the mind away from the changing world into the real world? In Plato's view, it’s education. Education guides the soul to grasp the right direction, to see the truth and virtues. Therefore, in order to realize the "spiritual turn", it is necessary to pursue the truth of knowledge. This education system is not only heuristic, but artistic, which is based on his advocacy of the "seven subjects".

Education involves educators, educatees and education environment. If a person doesn’t be trained appropriately or the education method is not satisfactory, it can’t get good educational results. Education is not only to raise the cognition, but to improve the characters’ morality. Plato's education is morally based education, that is, the highest principle of education is morality. Its ultimate goal is to create the ideal city guards’ personality so that they can build the ideal city and have a happy life.

Plato proposed the cultivation system of philosophers of the school system. People from born to death were accompanied by education. The system focused on the talent education. The ultimate goal was to cultivate the national leaders so that only a small number of outstanding people with high morality and intelligence could become the highest ruler though the extremely strict assessment and elimination.

Education needs to be forced, and the process is hard. Although the soul has the inherent potential to acquire knowledge and has the skills to turn, but it does not guarantee that it will automatically appear from the visible world to the knowable world. This innate cognitive ability was restricted by the human body and desire.    Thus, Plato argues that education should provide children with a pure environment that allows them to live in groups and prescribe what children need to learn. In addition, it should be strict with children both in physical and willpower, so that they can resist all kinds of temptations. The compulsion of education is ultimately to restore human innate cognitive ability.