Plato's Influence On The Allegory Of The Cave

We may think that we come up we ideas and theories because is something that happened in our mind and that nobody had to do something with it but all our surround environment influence us in how we take decision, in what we believe and much more. Philosophers had been influence throughout their life by other people in order to come up with their works. The philosophical work of some of the great philosophers of all time such as Plato, Marx, Freud and Carnegie were also influenced by the environment in which they were living. In the “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato was influenced by several events that happened in his life that lead to him writing this essay in a way to express his feeling on what society do to people that can show them reality.

As it is for Karl Marx, he was influenced by several historical and present events that were taking place when he was writing “Communist Manifiesto”. Sigmund Freud and Carnegie were influenced by people from the past and from their period of time.

Furthermore, according to Philosophers.co.uk, Plato was influenced by Socrates, he become his teacher. The influence that Socrates give to Plato were basically about religion and sciences. His work was divided into three period dialogues, the early, middle and the late period. In his early and middle dialogue, Plato is all about Socrates life and how Socrates used to defend himself. When Plato wrote the “Allegory of the Cave” after the death of Socrates many scholars believe that that was the main reason that influence Plato on writing it. Plato wrote about the trial of Socrates in the Republic with the title “The Apology” in other word a defence. In this work based on Plato, Socrates was being accused by past and present accuser, the past accuser was accusing Socrates of not believing in God and making the weaker argument the stronger, and the present accuser were accusing Socrates of not believing in God and corrupting the youth. Socrates was found guilty of all the charges since he questioned the Oracle and he would talk in public places where he would question the people and corrupt the youth. Socrates was sentenced to death, and was forced to drink poison. If we connect this event to

the Allegory of the Cave we can say that Plato was trying to show what they did to Socrates from his point of view. In the “Allegory of the Cave” a slave is free and is able to go outside of the cave and see what a real tree looks like since they only recognized a tree in the cave by the shadows that people behind a wall is making them see. In order for this slave to acknowledge this he has to go through a lot of pain, this slave is now wise he knows how things really work and how they really looks like, so he decided to go back into the cave and pass through all the pain that we went through coming out of the cave just to be a leader and lead the other to knowledge and wisdom of reality. However the other slave in the cave doesn’t believe him and categorized him as crazy and decide to kill him. This is what happen to Socrates. Socrates was the wiser man of Athena and the people of Athen decide to kill him just because he wanted them to enjoy and see reality as it is not as an illusion. Plato was also influenced by other philosopher and school such as Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno and the Pythagoreans. Heraclitus influence Plato by the idea of world changing. Parmenides influence him by the idea of knowing the reality of life. In other hand, Pythagoras influence Plato by the ideas of politics and mathematics. However, Socrates were the biggest influence on Plato.
Karl Marx was influenced by several historical events in which he saw how every revolution that took place in history only benefit a group of people while the other group stayed in misery. According to Department of Anthropology of the University of Alabama, Morgan influenced Marx by his theory of social evolution. Both of them believe that people need to have some steps to become a better person or a better society. Looking at the historical event that just happened year before the “Communist Manifiesto” was published we can say that Marx was influenced by the Industrial Revolution. In the other hand as we ready throughout the essay we can notice that Marx explain how a group of people is able to survive several situation/events while another group of people cannot be benefit as the other group. According to darwinthenandnow, Darwin influences on Marx were very strong. They said that Marx take his idea of “class struggle” from the ideas of Darwin. As Engels once said, “Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history.” A class take control over the other, over the weak class. In the “Communist Manifiesto” Marx give the example of how the class that was able to survive the feudal revolution was the manufacturing middle class (Bourgeoisie) and take the control over the other class because of it industrial technology that lead to the industrial revolution. If we connect Darwin theory of evolution in organism is the almost the same thing as the evolution of human history, one class goes down in other for the other class to come up and the one that will succeed is the one that has the essential characteristics to survive. This concept can be also linked with Lewis H. Morgan. According to Department of Anthropology of the University of Alabama, Morgan influenced Marx by his theory of social evolution; both of them believe that people need to have some steps to become a better person or a better society. As Morgan believe that societies moved from a primitive stage of living to a more civilized lifestyle; but when we compare this to Marx, he stated the development of historical communities and their way of production.
According to Jerry Bergman, Freud were influenced by Darwin and the theory of evolution. Darwin believe that the drive that help animals survive is sex. Freud adopt this idea by his theory of behavior that the child is in love with the opposite-sex parent and enemy of the same-sex parent, and this lead to the writing of “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Also, Freud came to the idea that the human body all alone with the mind can be explained using the scientific method of observation and analysis. Based of Ian Taylor, Freud decided to be in a scientific career because of Darwin “Origin and his Descent of Man” works which Fascinated him and he went to a medical school where he studies the relationship between experiences and sex. Furthermore Freud was also influenced by Viennese and Josef Breuer in his early career as a psychiatrist, this influence lead to the idea that neuroses is a cause of traumatic experiences and that the original occurrences is forgotten and hidden from consciousness.
According to PBS, Frick influenced Carnegie by the idea that peacefully and helping people is the best to become better as person or society. After this influence he spent time and money creating a building with a library and others attractions. Also in another article of this same website Carnegie claimed to be largely influenced by Herbert Spencer since he found in Spencer writing all he needed to know in order to be free of moral reservation about financial acquisition. He was also influenced by Darwin and he expressed it in his autobiography. However Carnegie did not follow all Spencer’s ideas/ teaching.
There are many thing that influence our way of living some of those influence may not be directly, they may be from historical events or from events that affect our life and make us think in a different way when it comes to an specific topic. We are surrounded by people and people that influence us, there is no way that you can be in this world without somebody influencing you. Even the greatest philosopher of all time, men that are suppose to be wise and come up with their own idea of living are influence in either way for them to come up with those ideas.