Plato's Paradox

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato both address and skirts around the issue that we don't know what we don't know, and in doing so creates a maybe unintended paradox. He describes a scenario where there are prisoners, that represent humanity, who are trapped and limited to a reality of shadows. It is impossible for them to know anything else because they are limited by the experiences of their five senses, and the only way out is to use their intelligence to process the world around us, and to eventually see the useable. Plato then goes on to describe how there are only a few who can access the world of perfect forms on there own, the philosophers, and that it is their duty to inform the general populous. But, the issue of we don't know what we don't know still remains. What if there is more than what Plato claims are "perfect forms", if there is some higher plain of existence that is simply out of our reach. Because we are human, humanity is limited; there might be things that can't be reached by our five senses or our intellect. There is just no way of knowing. This is where Plato's allegory becomes a paradox. He claims there is a way to reach the unknown, but there is truly no way to know what we don't know. As a result, Plato, nor any of us, can never really know if we could ever achieve perfect knowledge, or if we are still only just touching the surface of what is "real".