Plato's cave...

In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates suggests that, without philosophical education, we are all like the prisoners in the cave. What are your thoughts on this? How is philosophy supposed to be liberating? Do you think Socrates is right to be so pessimistic about life without philosophy?


The prisoners in the cave are the people that are chained down to see nothing but dark, blinded by the darkness and have no knowledge of what is going on in the outside world. The fire represents their only light which may not even be enough to see walls, only shadows that casts by it. In reality, we are like prisoners of our own thoughts, beliefs and perspective. We can apply what we learn from our parents and teachers, priests, or community leaders but we literally dont have to chain ourselves with only that. A person's mind is like a crops field that keeps growing, plant a seed and it'll grow. We can't just stick to what one person will say, in realization its just an opinion.


I believe philosophy is liberating because we are our own philosophers. We learn, and we apply. We teach and people apply. But whats liberating to it is that we can add soemthing to it, we can put a design to make it our own. Humor it a little bit.