In Plato’s Republic, Book 7, he introduces the famous philosophical concept The

Allegory of the Cave, and explains how this concept is applied to the process of
cognizing real truth and educating.

The Allegory of the Cave is about a prisoner, who has considered the shadows on the
cave wall as the real world getting difficulty understanding the fact that sunlight is the
source of all real lives on earth. Plato, through the narrator Socrates, indicates that,
just as the prisoner can’t believe the existence of sunlight immediately, it can be hard
for common people to access the intelligible realm, namely the “form of good” (517).
Plato makes his claim by stating that “in the knowable realm, the last thing to be seen
is the form of good, and it is seen only with toil and trouble.” (517) The realm of true
knowledge is not easily accessible to humans, and only through strenuous exploration
can people comprehend the good.

Plato then further elaborates the application of this allegory to education. He thinks
that instead of infusing knowledge into souls, everyone is actually equipped with the
ability to learn; thus, one of the goals of education should be setting people’s “sight”,
namely the way with which they gain knowledge, right. According to Plato, he
(Socrates) explains this claim by saying: “The virtue of wisdom……is either useful
and beneficial or useless and harmful, depending on the way it is lead around.” (518)
Plato also gives an example of how educators can achieve this education goal: “if this
element of this sort of nature had been hammered at right from childhood, and struck
free of the leaden weights……which have been fastened to it by eating and other
pleasures and indulgences……if, I say, it got rid of these and turned toward truly real
things, then the same element of the same people would see them most sharply”.
Therefore, in order to see the good most sharply and beneficially, people’s sight with
which they see must be directed to the appropriate way, which can be achieved by
controlling worldly desires.

What is most importantly of education, however, is to cultivate those well-educated to

be leaders. In order to achieve this, those who have already seen the good must stick
to this superior realm, and then go down to the inferior one to educate others. Plato
put his idea in this way: “You are better and more completely educated than the
others, and better able to share in both types of life. So each of you in turn must go
down to live in the common dwelling place of the other citizens and grow accustomed
to seeing in the dark.” The thought, therefore, is that the ultimate goal is not to make
the educated outstanding, but to make them be responsible for enlightening others.
This should be the way the leaders govern the city: govern for benefit for all, not for
power.

To conclude, the main points of view in this excerpt of Book 7 are about the gap
between the realm we see and the realm of good, and how people should be educated
to see the good, and then to lead, in a way that is beneficial to all.
Plato. Republic. Translated by C.D.C. Reeve. Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing
Company. ProQuest Ebook Central. Accessed July 12, 2021.