Escaping the Cave: Beauty Essay

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Escaping the Cave In Plato’s Cave allegory, man is painted as only experiencing a lesser form of reality; those in the cave only see the shadows of objects and not the object itself. It is necessary to escape this cave to experience the truth and gain wisdom. There are many interpretations of this allegory, but the most common is that the cave represents the narrow perception of reality that is forced upon the individual by social constructs. By transcending the close-mindedness of society, it is possible to reach a more enlightened worldview. This can be aptly observed in the world of art; where artists toil tirelessly to create works that are beautiful. This has always been the goal for most artists; however, as constant as this goal is, the definition of beauty has changed with each passing era and at times had multiple contrasting definitions because of the disparate art movements that might exist concurrently. For example, the Classical Greeks believed that the human was the ideal and to symbolize this, greek sculptures such as Doryphoros or the Discus Thrower had chiseled, muscled bodies with a perfect pose and form. One and a half millennia later, the cubists rejected Greek perfection and instead found the breaking apart and abstraction of the human form into geometric figures to be beautiful. As vast as the differences between each art movement is, each is guilty of adopting a narrow viewpoint on beauty; they did not leave the cave and realize the true, overarching definition of beauty. Everyone is mortal -- we were born, we are living, and we will die and in the grand scheme of the universe, our entire existence is less than a fraction of a portion of a speck. Within this infinitesimal crumb, there is much suffering and pain. Logically, if our existence is so inconsequential, then there is no point in enduring the immense amount of pain life
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