Joanah Eresechima - My understanding of the cave allegory

 During class the other day, we had a discussion about the Allegory of the Cave from Plato as well as the simile of the line. On this line, half of it is the universals, which are more real, and the other half is the particulars, which are less real. The universals are considered the fundamental truths but can also be considered as the world of being which are perfect ideas that are fixed/unchanging. On the farthest left part on the spectrum, we have the form, which is basically the essence of which you define anything related to it in the physical world. The example of the cat goddess, as strange as it is, helped a lot. There are many types of cats in the world, ranging from house cats to lions, but at the end of the day, they all are based on a sort of blueprint that is “The Cat”. The other side of the universals is the concepts, which is a vague description of the form. So, for cats, this would be an animal that has four legs, a tail, canines, etc. So, it’s basically the likeness of a cat. (Little note here, what I’m realizing at this point is that the lower levels rely on the levels above them to survive. If it weren’t for the cat goddess, the vague concept of the cat would not exist.). Moving on to the particulars, these are considered the world of becoming as they are ever changing. The farthest right part of the spectrum is the bodies, which are physical copies of the universal. They can vary in size and shape but in the end, they are still representations of the form. The other half of the particulars are the shadows, which are the distorted copies of the form. So, how this relates to the Allegory of the Cave is that each level corresponds to the prisoner’s venture outside of the cave. The bodies are the statues, the shadow is the actual shadow of the statues, and the forms are the things he sees when he leaves the cave since they are what the statues are based off of. Finally, we have the Good, which isn’t a part of the line. It is the most real, what all objects to be. For the cave allegory, this would be the sun because its light is how everything in the world becomes visible.

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