Byc asked:

I have been assigned to read Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave", from The Republic and have come
to a thought that I would like further opinion of. In today's world of inundation of information and
misinformation, how do you think this allegory pertains to everyone?

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Plato's analogy is in one way very optimistic, in that it implies that the 'real' world isattainable, that we
can know things in a way that is more than just 'appearances'. But, as Nietzsche pointed out, Plato is
deeply pessimistic in seeing the majority of the human race as clinging to nothing but shadows.

I think the allegory could be used profitably to explain the propaganda and misinformation that seems
to control modern western culture, but I also think that this would be to distort what Plato was saying.
Plato was not making any kind of practical point about human life, but was instead talking
metaphysics.

To suppose, as Plato does, that what I see around me is not the 'real' world is just to make a linguistic
error, i.e. a confusion over the meaning of the word "real". Plato looked for certain truth, like truth in
mathematics. When he didn't find it, he made up a world which did have it, and said that only it was
real. The allegory of the cave is just a powerful way in which he expressed this delusion. (Most
normal people have always realised that Plato's realworld was a joke, and I think (and I hope) that
philosophers are now not too far behind.)

Will Greenwood