Allegory of Cave Response - Eric Zimmermann

Through a visual representation Plato explains to Glaucon that throughout everyones life what we think of as reality is far from the truth and will eventually find this out.  This would be hard to grasp for anyone, but still we must learn the reality of things and not be fooled by the false illusions of the reality we believe to be true.  Plato explains how every man and woman at some point in their life comes to realize this and must go and find the truth for themselves and begin to see the truth, and Plato describes obtaining this truth as a truly trying feat.

Plato challenges individuals to challenge typical thinking and really force oneself to separate from what we are shown as reality and find our own.  Then Plato goes one step further and asks Glaucon, what if you went back?  You would have already learned the truths of the world and he forced with "blindness" again.  Except we will not be blind, we will have retained our knowledge from "seeing the light" and we will know the truths of what we are being shown.