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Analysis of plato's allegory of the cave
Analysis of plato's allegory of the cave
Analysis of plato's allegory of the cave
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Michelle Bernal Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave September 15, 2017
Plato's allegory of the cave is a metaphysical illustration of the philosopher’s view of the humanity. We are represented by the prisoners, who are mired and held captive by an extremely limited view of the world, and prevented by their chains from viewing the actual Truth of existence. We are each locked up in our own worldview, living our lives unknowingly in the shadow of actual truth. Having nothing else to rely upon but our meager eyesight and hearing, capable of only believing in shadows and whispering disembodied voices, once exposed to truth, it is blinding to us. We are dazzled and disoriented, afraid of the glaring sight that has been so rudely forced upon us.
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Nothing has truly changed, only our perception. The shadows were always shadows, and will continue to be. Just as the light will always be light, and just as there will always be people that sit in darkness, whether by force or of their own volition. Our ability to perceive and understand our world was merely restricted by the cave. The prisoner is emerging from an illusion he thought was real, and finally able to see the actual reality reveal to him by the light. Only by using our senses and intellect together can we achieve …show more content…
In the beginning, they have no other choice but to form some kind of way of describing or identifying what little they could sense from their limited perspective. Their fate in life was chosen for them by whomever chained them. At the end of the allegory, however, they were so afraid of what they didn't know and clung stubbornly to their limited beliefs so that they would even harm or kill whoever would try to force them out of their comfort zone of limited views. The choice now lies fully upon their own heads. They have an opportunity to be set free by the one who escaped, an opportunity to come out of the darkness into the light of wisdom and truth. Did they choose to remain enslaved, and would bitterly refuse, on pain of death, anyone who tried to educate or convince them otherwise. Parallels for Plato's mentor, Socrates, can be found in this section of the allegory. Socrates was a philosopher who promoted or entertained thoughts and ideas that were viewed by others to be controversial. Instead of allowing him to speak his mind, he was forced to commit suicide for promoting his unconventional philosophies and his contrary political views. As he was, like the prisoner, attempting to bring light to his unenlightened fellows. Instead of hearing him out or tolerating his opposing views, they forced him commit suicide by drinking hemlock. According to Plato,
I think the prisoner is pulled out of the cave by the enlightened ones, the ones who have reached this essential wisdom They also might stand as deities asserting there power over the prisoner because according to Socrates Plato's teacher only a diety or auricle has the wisdom of the gods and as a result the beings that pulled the prisoner out of the cave and into the light must be deities seeking to grant humankind the wisdom they
As people, we tend to believe everything we see. Do we ever take the time to stop and think about what is around us? Is it reality, or are we being deceived? Reality is not necessarily what is in front of us, or what is presented to us. The environment that we are placed or brought up has a great impact on what we perceive to be the truth or perceive to be reality. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is one of the most significant attempts to explain the nature of reality. The cave represents the prisoners, also known as the people. They are trapped inside of a cave. They are presented with shadows of figures, and they perceive that to be reality. The cave can be used as a
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.
Plato’s logical strategy in the allegory of the cave is of deductive reasoning. Plato uses a cave containing people bound by chains which constrict their neck and legs in such a way that they are unable to turn around and there is a fire roaring behind them casting shadows on the wall. Since the prisoners cannot turn their heads to see what is casting the shadow the only thing they can perceive are the shadows and the sounds that seem to becoming from them. This is what Plato argues in the allegory of the cave “To them, I said, the truth would literally be nothing but the shadows of the images.”(The Allegory of the Cave Plato). Since these prisoners know nothing outside of the cave they are ignorant of the “light” and are content on seeing the shadows before them. Plato describes what it would be like for a prisoner to be released and forced to go out of the cave into the light Plato describes it as being “blinding”. Once the freed prisoner became accustomed to the light outside the cave it is believed by Socrates and Glaucon, inside Plato’s allegory that the prisoner would not want to return to the darkness from which he had “ascended”. Once the prisoner has become accustomed to the light Socrates said “I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed, they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not”. (The Allegory of the Cave Plato) This is where Plato begins to start on the topic of leadership. Although Plato uses some cause and effect elements in his allegory, such as “Where as if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after their own private advantage, thinking that henc...
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a story being told by Socrates to Plato’s brother, Glaucon. Socrates tells of prisoners in an underground cave who are made to look upon the front wall of the cave. To the rear of the prisoners, below the protection of the parapet, lie the puppeteers whom are casting the shadows on the wall in that the prisoners are perceiving reality. Once a prisoner is free, he's forced to look upon the fire and objects that once determined his perception of reality, and he so realizes these new pictures before of him are now the accepted forms of reality. Plato describes the vision of the real truth to be "aching" to the eyes of the prisoners, and the way they might naturally be inclined to going back and viewing what they need perpetually seen as a pleasing and painless acceptance of truth. This stage of thinking is noted as "belief."
When a human makes a decision based in relativism rather than in knowledge of the truth, their decision often fails pushing them into a further state of misery. Unlike Hesiod and his use of mythology, Plato uses intellect in order to offer a solution to living in a false reality. For instance, when speaking of the uneducated, or rather those who live in ignorance, Plato states, “They will not act at all except upon compulsion” (Plato 49). Plato implies that in order to pull out of a state of ignorance, humans must become educated to gain perspective on the world. Through gained perspective, humans can make
Freedom in mind, freedom in nature, and freedom in subjectivity of individual are three kinds of freedoms. However, freedom should be expressed within the limits of reason and morality. Having freedom equals having the power to think, to speak, and to act without externally imposed restrains. As a matter of fact, finding freedom in order to live free is the common idea in Plato with "The Allegory of the Cave"; Henry David Thoreau with " Where I lived and What I lived for"; and Jean Paul Sartre with " Existentialism". Generally, Plato, Thoreau, and Sartre suggested that human life should be free. They differ in what that freedom is. Plato thinks it is found in the world of intellect, Thoreau thinks freedom is found in nature, and Sartre thinks freedom is found in subjectivity of individual.
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...
To awaken the unconsciousness one must experience reality and develop new senses. The cave overall incorporates the idea of a movie theatre, where individuals watch life unfold on a screen, with no knowledge or desire to want to know who is playing the movie; only to sit in the darkness and watch the screen. Many of us take what they see in the movie as reality, not distinguishing between, story and fantasy; soon they begin to behave like the characters in the movie. For instance the twil...
Socrates says that “the freed person had to engage in the business of asserting and maintaining opinions about the shadows-- while his eyes are still weak and before they have readjusted, an adjustment that would require quite a bit of time -- would he not then be exposed to ridicule down there?” (Plato). The free prisoner is trying to convince other prisoner that what they saw before just a reflection and the shadow of the true knowledge. But they do not believe in his words and thinks that he is insane.at the end of the Allegory of the Cave Glaucon agree that Socrates if these prisoner can hold of this person, “they certainly will” kill the freed prison (Plato).This is similar to the Black because after Black believe in God, he thinks his life no longer become shaded. He tells White that “How come you cant see yourself, honey? You plain as glass. I can see the wheels turnin in there. The gears. And I can see the light too. Good light”(McCarthy,17). However White does not believe in his words. White stills thinks that his life is full of darkness and there is no such light in his life. So he ends up walk out from Black’s house and suicide. Black becomes lost and feels that he falls back to the darkness by asks the God after White leaves. He
In the Apology, the cave is Athens, Greece and the prisoners represents the Athenian citizens, who are captive to ignorance about justice or virtue. They are unable to question what they see and hear. They accept what comes in front of them as the truth without questioning it.The chains are the willingness to believe the conventional beliefs and reluctance/resistance to questioning that the Athenian population lack. The shadows/ shadow makers are the people in power who are the storytellers that created those conventional beliefs of reality. Those conventional beliefs include wealth/material possessions, reputation/status, bodily goods(sex, confort, desire, etc), and power. If these are our guiding values, they may mislead us quite profoundly becuase people is just manipulating the process to benefit themselves and hurt others. Socrates notices that that these values are held as ultimate by Athenians;however, these things leave out many other things such as justice, virtue, and friendship. The liberator/liberating message was Socrates, who challenged the conventional notion of well-being/human flourishing of the Athenians. Socrates also believed that a commitment to these things are a barrier to knowing reality as it is. Both Plato’s Apology and the “Cave Parable” elevates our need for a liberator because our hunger for knowledge can clash with other hungers and lead us to embrace non truths. The Apology describes how the Athenians(prisoners) were unable to turn their head away from what they see or what society presents them with. Socrates awakes from this illusion and throughout his life he tries to tell others, who are chained that there is another reality outside the cave and their conditional beliefs of a well-being. Socrates
In "Allegory of the Cave" Plato's describes the journey, which individuals must embark on in order to achieve enlightenment. Plato depicts a comprehensive metaphor that aims to outline the disadvantages we face as a result of a lack of education. When analyzing the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ it's imperative to remember that there are two elements to the story. The first element is the fictional metaphor of the prisoners and the second element is the philosophical view in which the story is supposed to portray, therefore presenting us with the allegory itself.
The events that happen, such as the freed prisoner returning to tell the others what life outside the cave is like, and he attempts to free them, but they refuse to believe him. The hostility shown by the prisoners is displayed when Socrates and Glaucon exchange dialogue: “SOCRATES: And if they can get hold of this person who takes it in hand to free them from their chains and to lead them up, and if they could kill him, will they not actually kill him? GLAUCON: They certainly will.” (Socrates 6) The hostility shown by the prisoners toward what is actually their reality is, represents us when we are faced with reality and truth. Plato is using them as an example to show what the cave mentality can truly do to
Plato, a student of Socrates, in his book “The Republic” wrote an allegory known as “Plato's Cave”. In Plato's allegory humans are trapped within a dark cave where they can only catch glimpses of the world above through shadows on the wall.2 Plato is describing how the typical human is. They have little knowledge and what they think they know has very little basis in fact. He describes these people as prisoners, in his allegory, and they are only free when they gain knowledge of the world above the cave.