Plato's "Myth of the cave"

Plato's "Myth of the cave" is an argument that we can't be sure we know reality. This story illustrates Plato's idealism. The objects we see, hear, touch are shadows of the real things. The reason is human beings don't have a full sense of a real and complete life because of the world. In this story, Plato use a dialog between a teacher and student, it describes a group of prisoners chained inside a cave, …

…to the nature of reality, it is not easy to explain this to others. Humans in their unenlightened beginnings are symbolized as imprisoned at the back of a dark cave. The shadowy environment of the cave symbolizes for Plato the physical world of appearances. Escape into the outside the cave symbolizes the transition to the real world, the world of full and perfect being, the world of forms, which is the proper object of knowledge.