“Cogito ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am.

Allegory of the cave is a multidimensional story that presents wide spectrum of ideas about human progress of discovering reality, acquiring knowledge and facing own limitation and challenges of one’s assumptions. Socrates forces us to reflect about the reality and our existence within it and provokes us to rediscover our potential of thinking as a powerful key to gain wisdom.
To understand the true massage of this allegory, Socrates gives us some clues by pointing at the key subjects such as people as prisoners, shadow on the wall, dark cave and fire behind the prisoners. Those figurative images are linked together to reveal deeper, hidden idea of dimness in human society. In my own reflection, people are representing prisoners of their own physical existence which is their body and lack of foresight for important values in their lives. The chains which do not allow them to move are the sets of rules learned and accepted from and by the society they grew up in. People are imprisoned in their own shallow reality of perceiving world through senses and see only what is in the front of them. Cave is the reality of known rules and learned way of thinking, therefore people are isolated in this ironic world of playing shadows and they are not aware of the fire that is behind them that create shadow. They live in the world of false pretence and in the gleam of fire; however they are sincere about the images on the wall that represent their true reality. The human beings are concerned only about the material world that in fact is elusive, mortal and imperfect. Socrates is pessimistic about humans who waste their potential of becoming aware of the soul that represent real, true person. He thinks that our existence has no value without philosophical education. Our true identity should be refined from the earthy drives and desires by the process of acquiring knowledge about the spirit through learning and questioning. Soul is eternal, perfect and is a real person that stimulates our true self by means of intellectual enlightening. Therefore philosophy has an imperative role and should be a part of our everyday lives because it opens our inner eye to search and question. Only critical view of reality can set us free and help us to find the truth about us. Everyone is able to liberated oneself only if the ideas and creativity is a purpose of achieving happiness and fulfillment.