Allegory of the Cave viewed as a devastating criticism of our everyday lives as being in bondage to superficialities, to shadows rather than

n substance. Truth is taken to be whatever is shown by the senses. A good life is taken to be one in which we satisfy our desires. We are unaware that we are living with illusion, superficial knowledge, and false and conflicting ideals our lives are dominated by the shadow play on the walls of our cave made by newspaper headlines and by the endless moving shadows on the television screen, and by the echoing voices of opinion makers thought knowledge reason(dialectic) intelligible world understanding science mathematics and mathematics opinion visible world belief (perception) conjecture(imagination) objects higher forms forms of science and

things (objects) images, shadows

The Divided Line a vertical line is divide into four segments each of which from the lowest to the highest represents a level of knowledge. Each level of knowledge-imagining or conjecture, belief, opinion imagining or conjecture; imagining represents the lowest rung on the ladder formed by the divided line of knowledge. Its objects yield the lowest degree of truth. It is the level of knowledge in which mental activity is at a minimum, as in the awareness of such objects as shadows, after-images, reflections in water or in mirrors or in sooth, shiny surfaces other examples of the level of imagining are optical illusions, dream images, fantasies, soft borderline appearances at the point of waking or falling asleep belief: the level of belief is primarily the level of knowledge on which there occurs the recognition of things, of thee dimensional visible objects-apples, people, stars, dogs, cities (we live in this realm) apples, people, stars, dogs, cities are constantly changing that is why they

are not part of knowledge knowledge at the level of belief does not grasp the abstract concept of the objects which is perceived, does not grasp the botanist's concept of the apple, which identifies unchanging characteristics of each species of apple belief, which has its source in the perception by the senses of actual objects, is thus insecure belief is not based upon abstract truths or principles which are unchanging and which would give the farmer what the scientific botanist possesses: true knowledge the point that Plato is trying to make us see is that perception by the senses of objects in the visible world can never give us true knowledge for two reasons :

1. what can be known by the senses, he tells us, is only the world of flux, the world of particular things that are in the process of change. What we know at the level of belief is thus always subject to change, since we know only what we perceive in the visible world of continual change. Since the features that we perceive things are continually changing, we can never be sure of our knowledge of them. We only know how things seem to be, on the basis of our perception of them, not how they are. In fact, Plato tells us we do not have knowledge at this level but only opinion. 2. The second reason is that knowledge derived from the senses an never give us general, universal, unchanging, and abstract truths of the intelligible world. (MATH) Rather they give us only particular, changing, and concrete observations of this house, this dog, that tree, of the visible world. Plato is thus maintaining that sense perception cannot give us certainty in our knowledge about reality. Rational understanding or intellect: but what kind of objects are we ascending to in the light of the sun? Plato's answer is that the objects which we know by intellect or rational understanding on the third level of knowledge are the true concepts. The objects of perception are concrete, whereas the objects of intellect are abstract. Whereas the objects of perception are particular, changing things, the objects of intellect are unchanging, eternal. The highest level of the intelligible world and its corresponding knowledge is of the realm of the Forms forms are the eternal and immutable, absolutely true definitions of concepts, such as man, or justice. The forms are real, independently existing entities: they are eternal, immutable, intelligible objects in the intelligible world