His view is Asian in that it mirrors the view that meaning is found by searching within, that imposing a specific doctrine is not the way to find enlightenment, and that a teacher is a guide rather than a figure of authority. Such ideas are expressed in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and other Asian philosophical and religious systems. Socrates takes a very self-effacing position in keeping with the way he subordinates himself to the need of society and so does not challenge the death sentence pronounced against him, nor does he escape when he can because he believes more in the right of the social order to exert its authority over him than he does in his personal welfare. The sublimation of the personal in service of the greater good is also an Asian element that Socrates expresses in his own way, and the way his followers argue with him shows that this idea was not thought common in his own society. 3. In the Republic, Plato addresses the issue of change by making a distinction between the imperfect material world and the changeless world of forms. This world, the world of the senses, is subject to change, but it is only the shadow of the changeless world of forms. Plato presented this idea graphically in the allegory of the cave, where the shadows on the walls represent the imperfect likeness of the perfection of the real objects, much as the real world in which we live is only a reflection of the world...

This refers to the world as appearance because the cavern is a representation of total unenlightenment, a void of reality, with no source of true light, the condition Socrates sees for mankind. There are only imitations of things outside the opening of the cave. This is a representation of Plato's cosmology, and it requires the Forms, the particulars modeled on those forms, and the agent who does the modeling, the Craftsman. Order is imposed on the formless reality of this world by the Craftsman, and this occurs as the four basic elements are mixed in varying proportions to form the matter of this world.
The allegory of the cave demonstrates the state in which we live, a state where our reality is enclosed as it would be by the cave and where we see only the shadows on the cave wall and not the ideal reality that produces those shadows. In the cave, appearance is what guides thought, for the man chained at the bottom of the cave only knows what he sees, not its source, not its reality, not its relationship to reality. There is a projecting wall above cutting off the view of the outside world. From the lower level, all that can be seen are shadows on the wall of the cave. The philosopher who has ascended to the surface to see more than the average would be able to return to tell others of what he had seen and would find that he was not believed. The philosopher serves as one who can force others to see.