The Allegory of the Cave Questions

1. According to Socrates, what does the Allegory of the Cave represent?

The allegory of the cave represents "how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened."

2. What are the key elements in the imagery used in the allegory?

The cave, and its set up of the wall, the fire, the chained people, and the shadow puppets.  It also makes use of the world as we know it.

3. What are some things the allegory suggests about the process of enlightenment or education?

The allegory suggests that we like to stay in our own bubble, and not learn about the outside world, or the truth about the world around us.  It also tells us that those of us who do like to learn, are seen as crazy to the majority of close minded people.

4. What do the imagery of "shackles" and the "cave" suggest about the perspective of the cave dwellers or prisoners?

Both caves and shackles are very negatively connotated things for obvious reasons, showing that the perspective of the cave dwellers is very close minded, small, and in many cases, wrong. 
5. In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?

This is going to be very controversial, but taking things literally all the time, especially things like a book of allegories written a little less than 2,000 years ago by the Greeks, not the Hebrews.  By people taking this so seriously, a book of allegories that shows the problems of humanity, or simplifications that make people understand things makes a book that was meant to teach lessons into a misinterpreted book of misunderstanding and  contempt for those who think differently from what is written in the book.  "I believed in father christmas and I looked at the sky with excited eyes 'till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn and I saw him and through his disguise."

6. Compare the perspective of the freed prisoner with the cave prisoners?

The freed prisoner has been enlightened by the actual world, while the cave prisoners are still locked in their small world of naivety.
7. According to the allegory, lack of clarity or intellectual confusion can occur in two distinct ways or contexts. What are they?

The two ways that intellectual confusion can occur are ignorance and apathy. 
8. According to the allegory, how do cave prisoners get free? What does this suggest about intellectual freedom?

The prisoners are freed by the will to break away, which in real life is curiosity, and open mindedness. 
9. The allegory presupposes that there is a distinction between appearances and reality. Do you agree? Why or why not?

I agree.  Everybody puts on a facade.  Not to many people you interact with are genuine.  It takes a while to crack people open, thus what we see of them is not who they really are.  Also, we can see trees and buildings, and we think of them as so, although they are really just complex clumps of atoms, which are in turn made up of smaller and smaller particles.  
10. If Socrates is incorrect in his assumption that there is a distinction between reality and appearances, what are the two alternative metaphysical assumptions?

The theory of alternate universes, and the theory that everybody is living their own reality that they have created for themselves.  What is real to you is not real to everybody else.