Identify Elements of Plato’s Cave Allegory Worksheet

The “Myth of the Cave” is an allegory. That is, everything in the story represents something else on many levels. On one level, the myth explains Plato’s epistemology and metaphysics. Plato’s metaphysics holds that the truth is an abstract idea, sort of like a definition. He calls these true beings Forms or Ideas. Plato’s epistemology, or theory of how we can know the truth, involves abstract reasoning that moves inductively from particular examples in order to arrive as an abstract and universal truth. For instance, what is it that all chairs have in common that makes them chairs and not desks, stools or couches?

Could you help me with these two questions below!

1. create a table identifying the major elements of the story (shadows, chains, prisoners, freed prisoner, liberator, puppeteers, puppets, fire, things themselves, moon & stars, sun, returned prisoner who is murdered) and what you think each one represents a) in general, b) in Periclean Athens, c) in 2018 USA

Put it in three different Columns. The first column a.) In General. The Second Column b.) in Periclean Athens. The third column c.) in 2018 US