Epistemology and Plato's Cave

One standard contemporary reading of the passage in Plato's Republic, often referred to as 'the parable of the cave', is Epistemological. It interprets the prisoners' belief that the shadows on the cave wall are real objects as Plato's attempt to demonstrate the unreliability of the senses for the attainment of Knowledge, and, hence, as a defense of Epistemological Rationalism. However, this interpretation does not accommodate three further details of the imagery--the violent reaction of the prisoners to the escapee who has perceived real objects; that the shadows are deliberately produced; and, that the prisoners' fetters are the irrational desires that are the products of their upbringing. Hence, what Plato is actually expressing is how what one believes is conditioned by what one wants to believe, which makes one susceptible to manipulation by political rhetoric. Acccordingly, it is only when one is guided by the objective Good that belief is veridical, i. e. that one attains Knowledge, and that one is politically free. Aristotle's theory of Knowledge, a branch of his Psychology, and, hence, systematically integrated with his theories of Ethics and Politics, is adequate to what Plato is presenting in these passages. Contemporary Epistemology, which isolates Knowledge from Psychological, Ethical, and Political considerations, is not. Furthermore, this passage in the Republic refutes a prevalent contention among Epistemologists, that a hypothesis that Plato examines in the Theatetus, that Knowledge=Justified True Belief, only to explicitly reject it, is the theory of Knowledge to which Plato definitively subscribes.