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Stephen Law says the must there even be a form of the bogey?
Richard Dawkins criticises that it is preposterous to talk about The World of
Forms.
The start of the essay.
"Plato's allegory of the cave tells us nothing about reality."
Plato’s allegory of the cave is an analogy of mankind’s ignorance; it informs us that
there once were three men shackled by the chains of deceit, being ‘spoon-fed’
shadows of the perfect form of animate and inanimate objects. These shadows
were created by the puppet-master. One prisoner escapes this misery and has a
revelation: that everything he was taught was a lie. He sees he real sun for the very
first time (all he ever knew was a blazing fire), everything was perfect. This is the
World of Forms. He returns to the cave (World of Particulars) and tries to explain to
the prisoners of the real world. He can no longer recognise the shadows – the
prisoners think the prisoner is crazy and try to murder him.
In all essence, it is indeed that Plato’s cave is improbable, improbable, and irrational.
For this reason, I agree with the statement. It is theatrical – as it overdramatises our
world by inferring that we are shackled. We are neither physically nor mentally
shackled to anything: we have our own free will to do what we desire. There is no
one governing us against our will.
There are others who think that this disagreement is absurd, since the allegory
represented Socrates’ death for influencing young people to think for themselves
and escape the mental ‘shackles’ the authorities gave them. This inference allows us
to realise that Plato’s cave is a political allegory – those in power and royalty want us
all to be weak in mind and body: they want to keep us distracted with wars, famine,
and entertainment – these are what the shadows symbolise, they are trying to keep
us distracted from realising the true nature of reality. So, it is logical to think that the
world is imperfect – so this allegory gives us hope that there is a better future out
there – that there will be no sorrow and agony – for everything shall be perfect. The
cave symbolised the current situation we are in, a wretched doomed apocalypse.
As the escaped prisoner represents a philosopher, and the other prisoners represent
everyone else, could Plato’s Cave be an allegory of despair? To think that at
present, everyone thinks philosophy is confusing and ridiculous, no one ever pursues
finding the truth. There is no hope for humanity as we are all content with living a life
of deception, for we are condemned and damned. However, these points are
dubious at best since they are based on a priori knowledge and not a posteriori
knowledge: our reasoning may be a fallacy.
This statement is wholly correct, as Richard Dawkins criticises that it is preposterous to
talk about The World of Forms. Have we ever witnessed a perfect world using our
empirical senses? We have not, we can observe that reality is not perfect, however
there are some charms to it. We can see the beauty of nature in all its glory, we can
see humankind uniting as one against the world’s destruction (for example when we
saved the ozone layer). We can think for ourselves, there are a plethora of resources
that have been created with perfect evidence that is not a ‘shadow’ of the real
story. There is a passion in humanity to make the world a better place, we have the
power to support the world to a brighter future, so we do it. There are free ideas
propagating around, our questions of the nature of reality are thought provoking
and well supported. It is time to change our perceptions brought forward from
philosophers such as Plato and embrace the new. The philosopher Stephen Law
even held the view that ‘must there be even a perfect form of the bogey?’ The term
‘form of the bogey’ is hilarious – as not all inanimate objects can be perfect, for
example the perfect form for a prisoner, murder or stealing. This makes the
statement appear more convincing and significant.
My final verdict is that human ideas are always changing, however we improve and
perfect them. Even if Plato’s theory was disproven, he made a significant
contribution to the field of philosophy.