How can Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" be used to help understand "Euthyphro?"
             I chose this form of the question assuming the shorter story would help unlock the lengthier one. Normally an allegory is filled with symbols that have meaning on a higher level, so despite its shortness may be more complex. However, after Socrates tells his story about the prisoner in the cave, he is helpful enough to explain how we should interpret the objects, and events, to understand Plato's view of the structure of reality, the relationship between the philosopher and society, the stages of enlightenment, and the questioning nature and doubts that are features of the philosophical temperament.
             For Plato, two realms of reality exist. The lower level, he symbolizes by the world of the cave. But there is a higher realm symbolized by the world outside the cave. Say you are the prisoner and witnessed the fire, then extinguished it. It has changed. But the burning fire was a symbol for fire itself; the idea of fire in your mind was not erased. There are two "fires". One which you see, touch, taste, feel, and smell, is part of the lower, changing realm. The other is unchanging, the idea of fire that is different from the physical symbol of fire you just put out. Plato called these ideas "forms". If you and all sentient beings died, the idea, or form, of fire, would still exist in the higher, nonphysical realm of reality. Everything you know with your senses are copies of forms. Plato's symbols for these imperfect copies were the shadows of the objects behind the prisoners. To be enlightened is to escape from the lower world of the cave (the world of the senses), and ascend into a higher, unchanging realm of the perfect forms. The highest form was the Form of the Good. Symbolized by the sun, the Good was the last thing seen by the prisoner, and the most difficult to see. Furthermore, just as the sun was experienced as the source of warmth and...