R SENSE, EXPERIENCES WOULD BE RELATIVE AN NOT ABSOLUTE, BUT HE WOULD NOT ACCEPT THE SOPHISTS' NOTION THAT ALL KNOWLEDGE IS RELATIVE, "THE IGNORANT" (ACCEPT THE SOPHISTS) WRITES PLATO, HAVE NO SINGLE MARK BEFORE THEIR EYES AT WHICH THEY MUST AIM IN ALL THE CONDUCT OF THEIR LIVES..." IF ALL WE COULD KNOW WERE THE SHADOWS, WE COULD NEVER HAVE RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE, FOR THESE SHADOWS WOULD ALWAYS CHANGE IN SIZE AND SHAPE DEPENDING UPON, THE TO US, UNKNOWN MOTIONS OF THE REAL OBJECTS, PLATO WAS CONVINCED THAT THE HUMAN MIND COULD DISCOVER THAT, "SINGLE MARK" THAT "REAL" OBJECT BEHIND ALL THE MULTITUDE OF SHADOWS, SO THAT THE MIND COULD ATTAIN TRUE KNOWLEDGE. THERE IS HE BELIEVED A TRUE IDEA OF JUSTICE, AND IDEA THAT CAN BE BLURRED BY RULERS AND COMMUNITIES. THIS LINE OF REASONING LAY BEHIND PLATO'S DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE WORLD OF SENSE AN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT, BETWEEN THE VISIBLE WORLD AND THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD. WHEREAS THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE ILLUSTRATES THESE DISTINCTIONS IN DRAMATIC TERMS, PLATO'S METAPHOR OF THE DIVIDED LINE SETS FORTH THE STAGES OR LEVELS OF KNOWLEDGE IN MORE SYSTEMATIC FORM. The second idea in tHis Allegory of the Cave2 describes how most people are trapped in their own little world, oblivious to what is really going on around them. The story is basically made up of five parts, the shadow, the fire, the common man, the ascending man, and the descending man. The shadow represents what is perhaps Plato's most difficult philosophy to understand. The idea of "forms" was an original idea of Plato that has held up under the scrutiny of many until even the present day. According to Plato, things you can see, feel, or touch for example, a chair, are not a genuine article, but merely a shadow of the real thing. He believed that these forms existed in parallel somewhere, and had was the essence of the real thing. For example, the form of a chair exists somewhere, and embodies everything that all chairs have in common. It doesn't...
