Allegory of the Cave

What is truth? What is the truth, of what truth is? There are many answers to this question. Each answer may lie different, inside of each person. Only you know what truth is to you. In this essay I will describe what truth is to me, how I verify truth, and whether I believe truth to be good or bad. I will then compare and contrast my idea of truth, to that of Plato's truth, from his ideas in "Allegory Of The Cave."

First of all we have, what is truth to me? Well for my definition of truth we can turn right to Mr. Webster and see that he says, that truth is:

"sincerity or honesty"

To me truth is exactly what you think or how you feel. Truth to me is not veiled by anything, making the real truth either more positive or negative. Truth is simply what's on your mind, exactly how you feel, its just plain and simple and right down to the point. How do you arrive at my kind of truth? We'll it's simple: as stated before, you simply tell how you feel, being both honest and sincere.

Now the tougher part, how is truth verified? Truth is verified by whether it's honest and sincere by who, or where it came from. This means for example, is a person telling you really that they like your new haircut, or they just saying "yes" they do, to avoid a possibly touchy moment. Truth can only be verified by whether or not it was genuine and from the heart.

This test of verification is the only test to see whether or not the "truth" was genuine. How else could something be true, if where it came from was not genuine itself? To wrap it all up, truth is simply whether or not a person is saying what is at the bottom of their heart or not.

Now we move onto, is truth all good, like Plato believes, or can some truth be bad, evil and ugly? I personally feel that, unlike Plato, truth can be all good, bad, evil and ugly. For instance again with the haircut, you could honestly tell someone their hair cut is hideous. But is that good truth? To me that's not a "good truth". So what is a "good truth" then? A "good truth" to me is one that helps a person, supports a person, or does anything else to a person in a positive way. So then you may ask what are the "bad, evil, and ugly truths"? Well those are the exact opposite of the "good truths", they are ones that will negatively effect a person. In the end though, a "bad truth" may be the best for the person. For example, you may have to tell someone the truth even if it may hurt their feelings at first, but as long as that truth is honest, sincere and from the bottom of your heart, then it's the honest (or genuine) truth for that situation.

Now lets look at some of Plato's ideas of truth from "Allegory of The Cave". Let's start by looking at Plato's definition of what it takes to reach the genuine truth:

"And suppose once more he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun himselfÐ'...Ð'...Ð'..."

I agree with Plato on this issue. That to reach the genuine truth, the ascent, or journey it will take, may