Knowledge, that certain indescribable thing that everyone thinks they have a little of, is an elusive concept that almost all philosophers, from ancient Greece to modern times the day has given at least a nod. How, after all, can we know that we are right about something if we don't know what knowledge is? This question, and the sometimes futile attempt to answer it, is called epistemology. More specifically, it is the study of how we know and what that knowledge actually is. Is knowledge objective, subjective, something else, or even possible? In ancient Greece, a group of men known as the Sophists sold their "knowledge" without ever believing that absolute knowledge was possible. According to them, the only things that could be known were the subjective skills of the user. Skepticism of this nature was encountered by one of the great minds of philosophy, Socrates, who spent much of his life, as we know it through Plato, arguing against fallacy and its many forms in his quest to try to truly discover what could be known. and if anyone actually knew anything. Knowledge, for Socrates, was a thing called arête or virtue, and the only thing Socrates knew was that he knew nothing, which made him, ironically, the most learned man in Athens, at least if we believe his account of his visit to the Oracle. at Delphi. It is questionable whether Socrates ever succeeded in establishing what knowledge is or is not, but his student and disciple, Plato, makes Socrates' case in The Republic and, with a combination of the ideas of Socrates and some of his own, attempts to show in "The Allegory of the Cave", what different types of knowledge are possible and how we achieve them.2Plato's work,...... middle of article ... ...a journey of discovery for me to approach the sun, if not the sun. Like them, I began with something, a desire, and, freed from my chains, I labored through my own cave in search of what I could call real. Whether or not there is a universal real no longer matters because, ultimately, it all depends on the seemingly endless journey itself and, like Camus, the appreciation that the journey belongs to me and that I do with it what I want.8Works CitedNeuleib, Janice, Kathleen Shine Cain and Stephen Ruffus, eds. The Mercury Reader: Advancing Composition, English 103. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.Bacon, Francis. “Of Studies”. Neuleib, Cain and Ruffus 7-10. Camus, Albert. “The Myth of Sisyphus”. Neulieb, Cain and Ruffus 11-15.Plato. “The Allegory of the Cave”. Neulieb, Cain and Ruffus 1-6.