Plato As Contemporary

                             



                                 Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

                                                                A contemporary approach



       ''There Is Only One Good: Knowledge, And One Evil, Ignorance.''- Socrates


           Image shows the inner space of Plato's Cave which gave rise to that famous allegory

Plato's (Socrates’s student) insights from his treatise “Allegory of the Cave'' demonstrate a profound knowledge of human nature and condition. Human affairs now and then differ only in external things, while the most fundamental issues have so much in common that one might think no time has passed ever since. The location of the cave could be everywhere at work, office, a government's or the company's headquarters etc. People in chains totally captivated, and overly manipulated becoming mere puppets are everywhere nowadays and human rights violations are taking place in many parts of the world and not only in Plato's Cave in Athens more than 2,500 years ago.

He stigmatises the system's practices that violate basic human rights and values like freedom, equality and fairness, etc. However, compared to our time, modern age slavery exists almost everywhere disguised in different forms to bypass legal restrictions, but apparently still applied. Modern slavery appears everywhere, and we hear how it is applied in countries of the Far and Middle East, Africa, but also in the Western societies. Let us only think of the position of the woman in many of those societies and feel shame and disgrace about such practices. Of course, ignorance, Socrates would say, is an insurmountable evil which operates in our lives even today, but where is the expected resistance to suppress and overcome such a foe? Women are unprotected and man's world powerless.

Within the bounds of our responsibility, one cannot accept in this new millennium and after such a long time after the time of Plato to maintain and preserve such practices of slavery and trampling on human values and rights and get into a comfortable routine of complacency. Otherwise, this would be a compromise and complicity. And this should never happen, and such tolerance to evil is an outrage.