The majority of people respond to the unknown with fear and anxiety. But why is that so? Fear of the unknown is actually an instinctual human response. This survival mechanism can be a helpful tool in avoiding danger in unfamiliar environments. Past experiences, societal expectations, and cultural backgrounds can also contribute to this fear. However, this fear can also be harmful, since it can lead to the resistance to change and the refusal to accept new truths and alternative perspectives. Plato, a Greek philosopher, believed that people are born into ignorance and need to be brought to the truth through philosophy and education. In addition, he believed that few people would ever come to know the truth because of resistance to new perspectives. …show more content…
The Allegory of the Cave focuses on the changing perspective of a prisoner who realizes that there is more to the real world than just shadows. In this allegory, prisoners are kept in a cave and are only able to see images produced by shadows. One of the prisoners is freed and he realizes that what he saw in the cave were just shadows, not real objects. But when he returns to the cave to tell his fellow prisoners, they resist his knowledge and refuse to accept it. The Allegory of the Cave is meant to represent how the ignorant will respond to enlightenment. This is made clear to the reader as Plato begins the allegory with the words, “And now, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.” As well, the cave in this allegory represents ignorance, and the fire used to cast the shadows onto the walls of the cave …show more content…
Therefore, it is clear that the prisoners’ refusal to accept the reality that the shadows they saw were only silhouettes of actual objects represent the human tendency to reject truths and realities that are beyond familiar experience. I have also experienced this tendency to reject truth and reality. It happened when my grandfather passed away suddenly on July 31st, 2023. My family suddenly got a call from my uncle while we were out camping, informing us about our grandfather’s passing. None of it felt real. After all, my grandfather sent a text message to my aunt wishing her a happy birthday and another congratulatory text to my parents for their 19th marriage anniversary, just a few hours before the call. I just could not believe it. Later, when my family flew down to Galveston for the viewing and the funeral, I knew that it had to be true. But right after the phone
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato described a group of people that have lived their lives confined to a cave, tied to a pole making them face a wall. On this wall you could only see shadows of what was going on behind you, and from that they misperceived shadows from reality. One day, one of the inhabitants broke free and was able to leave the cave, only to be shocked by what “true reality” was outside of the cave and what was different from the shadows he saw on the cave wall. He was so excited that he wanted to go back into the cave and basically enlightened the other prisoners about what he saw,
The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, shows the contrast between sense experience and rationalism. The story explains that in the cave where some people have known nothing of the outside world and can only comprehend what they see based on what little they do know of their cave. The people have come to the conclusion what the shapes represent and what causes them and believe it to be correct and thus believe it as the reality of the world. However what they don’t know is that this is not the world and what they will soon find out is that the things they once saw with their eyes what they smelt, what they heard, what they felt were just shadows of real images and objects cast on the wall by fire. What this does is show that sense experience can be at fault because the one perceiving is at times is ignorant of the fact that they know nothing of the true reality of the world and its workings. One must be showed how things are in order to learn and thus no longer be ignorant but have now begun taking steps towards wisdom.
The "Allegory of the cave "is broken down into four levels. The cave itself representing the tunnel we as humans have dug for ourselves away from the world of learning and knowledge to a world of safe answers where nothing is ever questioned . The cave represents the human's subconscious struggle to be safe and hide from the unknown. Beginning with Level one . The shadow watchers(the mystified )Illusion the figures and shadows reflection on the cave wall.This level is best described as such because the prisoners are not seeing what is real .They are seeing a copy or illusion of what is the real.They are seeing what they want to see.Level two The shadow casters .I believe the shadow casters area people who realize that the world is not as it
American’s education system has been entering crisis mode for a long time. Throughout the past few years, the overwhelming question “Is college needed or worth it?” While it is an opinion, there are facts that back up each answer. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” mentions that the enlightened must help the unenlightened and further their knowledge. The problem with America today is that high school students are given the option of college and that makes for less enlightened people. While it is possible to learn in the work force or Army, college is a better option. Mary Daly wrote the article “Is It Still Worth Going to College?” which talks about the statistical value of attending. Michelle Adam wrote the article “Is College Worth It?” which mentions the struggle young people are going through to even get into college. Caroline Bird wrote the chapter “Where College Fails Us” in her book The Case Against College where she
Portraying the prisoners inside the cave for a lifetime further describes his beliefs on how closed minded society is in his opinion. The “light outside the cave” explains how he feels knowledge is the source of light to everyone’s lives. Without knowledge, there is lack of light. Also, since society does not want to gain further knowledge, they will seem to stay stuck in the dark tunnel. Plato also uses personification to give reader insight on how someone may treat the earth and appreciate it. For example, Plato states “Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.” The reasoning behind this is to explain how a man would reason with the sun as if it were an actual speaking person. The style of Plato’s writing gives readers an understanding on why his work is named “Allegory of the Cave”. The use of his rhetorical devices give deeper meanings to the Earth and the nature it
My understanding of the cave allegory is someone who has lived his life in confinement; the only life he has ever known. Isolated from the outside world, everything that he experiences is a false reality. He sees things projected on the wall and he thinks they are real, when in fact, they are illusions. Once he is torn away from his environment, he is frightened of what he is now experiencing. As his senses awaken, he begins to see and experience the beauty all around him. He now realizes that this is how life is truly meant to live and he must go back and share his discovery with the others. However, they are not eager to leave their familiar surroundings. Upon returning to the cave, he has a hard time adjusting to his previous environment, He now knows all that he previously thought was
The Allegory of the Cave is a parable that demonstrates how humans are afraid of change and what they do not know. In this work, Plato suggests a situation in which men are living in an underground cave. The one entrance is located near the top and there, a burning fire casts shadow. The men of the cave are chained so that they can only see the wall and cannot turn around. When objects pass by it creates a shadow on the wall. The shadows are the only thing they can see and therefore is the only thing they know to exist (747). Somehow one of them gets loose and wanders outside the cave (748). When he gets out, he is astonished at what he finds. He comes back in to tell the others about what he saw. The other men think he is mad and plot to kill him (749). This illustrates how fear, inherent in the primitive nature of man, only serves to promote his ignorance.
Throughout Plato 's story "The Allegory of the cave" men are stuck in this cave with their backs turned away from the light, until one day a man turns towards the light and learns for himself what the light is about. The man than explores and begins to educate himself on everything and anything, he then tries to take everything he has learned back down to the cave to get his fellow cave members to step out and learn what the light is all about. The metaphor that Plato 's places in this story is how the cave is represents the human mind and the light represents the understanding of life
The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. He sees it as what happens when someone is educated to the level of philosopher. He contends that they must "go back into the cave" or return to the everyday world of politics, greed and power struggles. The Allegory also attacks people who rely upon or are slaves to their senses. The chains that bind the prisoners are the senses. The fun of the allegory is to try to put all the details of the cave into your interpretation. In other words, what are the models the guards carry? the fire? the struggle out of the cave? the sunlight? the shadows on the cave wall? Socrates, in Book VII of The Republic, just after the allegory told us that the cave was our world and the fire was our sun. He said the path of the prisoner was our soul's ascent to knowledge or enlightenment. He equated our world of sight with the intellect's world of opinion. Both were at the bottom of the ladder of knowledge. Our world of sight allows us to "see" things that are not real, such as parallel lines and perfect circles. He calls this higher understanding the world "abstract Reality" or the Intelligeble world. He equates this abstract reality with the knowledge that comes from reasoning and finally understanding. On the physical side, our world of sight, the stages of growth are first recognition of images (the shadows on the cave wall) then the recognition of objects (the models the guards carry) To understand abstract reality requires the understanding of mathematics and finally the forms or the Ideals of all things (the world outside the cave). But our understanding of the physical world is mirrored in our minds by our ways of thinking. First comes imagination (Socrates thought little of creativity), then our unfounded but real beliefs. Opinion gives way to knowledge through reasoning (learned though mathematics). Finally, the realization of the forms is mirrored by the level of Understanding in the Ways of Thinking. The key to the struggle for knowledge is the reasoning skills acquired through mathematics as they are applied to understanding ourselves. The shadows on the cave wall change continually and are of little worth, but the reality out side the cave never changes and that makes it important.
In "The Allegory of the Cave," prisoners in a cave are forced to watch shadows as people behind them are forced to accept these shadows as reality -- "To them... the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. One prisoner, however, is released, and stumbles into the real world, containing more depth and complexity than they had ever known. At first, the prisoner will be pained at the bright, piercing light, but will eventually recover. According to Plato, the freed prisoner is then obligated to return to the shadows of the cave, to inform the shackled prisoners left behind of the real world. The prisoners, however, will not believe the freed prisoner, and may even go as afra s to kill him for such "lies" contrary to their "reality." The pursuit of the truth is, therefor, a painstaking but rewarding process. According to Plato, the physical world is a world of sight, one that lacks meaning if left alone. Only those who manage to break into the sunlight from the cave will ascend to the intellectual world. The prisoners in the shadows only know of the dull physical world, while those who ascend into the sunlight learn of the spiritual world, and are exposed to the first hints of truth. The soul ascends upward into the realm of goodness and of the truth, where "... souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell.." The pursuit of goodness and of the truth, then, improves the soul, as the soul desires to be elevated to a higher state of knowledge and morality. Caring for the self and the soul involves freeing the shackles of the physical world and ascending to the "... world of knowledge... the universal author of all things beautiful and right... and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual..." The soul yearns to dwell in a world of morality and knowledge, and only the pursuit of
To begin, Plato’s Allegory of the cave is a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon and its main purpose, as Plato states is to, “show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.”(Plato) The dialogue includes a group of prisoners who are captive in a cave and chained down, only with the ability to stare straight at a wall. This wall, with the help of a fire, walkway, and people carrying different artifacts and making sounds, create a shadow and false perception of what is real. This concept here is one of the fundamental issues that Plato brings up in the reading. “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.” (Plato). These prisoners, being stuck in this cave their entire life have no other option but to believe what they see on the wall to be true. If they were to experience a real representation of the outside world they would find it implausible and hard to understand. “When any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up a...
Plato’s concept of The Allegory of the Cave is an idea based on his theory of forms. The theory argues that our knowledge of reality/forms is not real knowledge; only our knowledge of these forms can be considered as real knowledge. The Allegory of the Cave is a conversation between Glaucon and Socrates. Socrates explained the cave to Glaucon. There’s a group of prisoners who are bound by chains on their hands, legs, and even neck....
Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a symbol for the contrasts between ideas and what we perceive as reality. The Allegory of the Cave is that we are chained to a wall. Behind us is another wall with figures walking across it, behind that wall is a pit of fire. The firelight casts shadows upon the wall in front of those chained to the wall. Because we are chained to the wall we believe the figures are what they represent. Plato says there times when one tries to break away from the wall but others encourage him to join back the wall as he experiences what the world truly is. Because we are chained to the wall we are afraid of the unknown. But breaking free could change the perception about the world and feel truly free. Plato also argues that we are the cave slaves. We live in a world of shadows, where we don't see the reality of ideas. However, it is possible to climb out of the cave, to be released from our shackles but it’s difficult. And when we ( s...
The basic premise of Plato's allegory of the cave is to depict the nature of the human being, where true reality is hidden, false images and information are perceived as reality. In the allegory Plato tells a story about a man put on a Gnostics path. Prisoners seating in a cave with their legs and necks chained down since childhood, in such way that they cannot move or see each other, only look into the shadows on the wall in front of them; not realizing they have three-dimensional bodies. These images are of men and animals, carried by an unseen men on the background. Now imagine one of the prisoners is liberated into the light, the Gnostic path will become painful and difficult, but slowly his eyes will begin to accommodate what he sees and his fundamentalist view about the world will begin to change; he sees everything through an anarchic thinking and reasons. When he returns into the cave, his fellow prisoners will not recognize him or understand anything he says because he has develop a new senses and capability of perception. This is the representation of the human nature, we live in a cave with false perception of reality that we've been told since childhood, but we must realize that these present perception are incomplete.
In book seven of ‘The Republic’, Plato presents possibly one of the most prominent metaphors in Western philosophy to date titled ‘Allegory of the Cave’.