Allegory Of The Cave Essay

Reality is the most intriguing concept in philosophy; throughout the ages, philosophers have been trying to understand the difference between real and unreal things. Philosophers allocate a whole branch of philosophy, Metaphysics, to study the nature of reality and existence. However, Greek philosophers, like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, were the first to question the nature of reality and its ultimate form. In the “Republic”, Plato tried to explain the idea of reality throughout his allegory of the cave; the allegory represents various philosophical ideas about the metaphysics of reality, epistemology, and education.

In the Allegory of the Cave there are chained prisoners in cave who can only stare at the cave wall in front of them. At the back there is a long entrance with a staircase the width of the cave and a fire burning in the distance. They see only shadows projected in front of them from a raised platform and hear an echo that they attribute to what they observe. They talk about and name the shadows of objects they see before them. To them the truth are the shadows. Then one day one of the prisoners is released. He is told that what he saw before was an illusion. Once he is outside it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sun. First he observed the shadows of thing then their reflection and finally the actual object. Remembering his previous state he goes back to the cave and tries to explain that everything is an illusion but they laugh at him and think he’s crazy. They believe it best not to ascend and they choose to remain as they are. The cave represented opinion. The shadows that are cast on to the wall represented physical objects. The prisoners represented the common people (Welles).

Has someone ever looked at you and immediately disregard you for you are just because of your ethnicity? Have you ever done it someone? Racism is a huge culture issue that we have not only in America, but in other parts of the world, but it does not matter the color of one’s. What really matters is the character they have withheld inside but are not given a chance to express because someone didn’t even bother to give them a chance. This is idea comes from the book written by Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave” where in the book Socrates speaks of man being in a dark cave all their lives not realizing the truth until once they reach the end of the cave to see that the light is the truth. The truth is the reality of life.

In “The Allegory of the Cave”, the focus is based on prisoners who are chained up in a cave and can only see the shadows of the real world. In this story one prisoner is released into the “real world” and tries to enlighten the other prisoners. In The Matrix, the main character Neo is living in a world controlled by a computer program and he does not know. He is brought into the real world by people that have been enlightened and he plans to help the other people. Even though The Matrix and “The Allegory of the Cave are set in different points in time and show some different points of view , they also have comparable plots, characters, and symbols.

The Allegory of the Cave presents a juxtaposition appropriate to this: what is the truth and what is The Truth, or what is fact and what is opinion, or what is reality and what is fiction? The former all have in common the innate desire of man (humankind) to want to make sense of things, to put something in context, to relate it to something they already know and understand. This then goes back to Socrates desire for individuals to think for themselves and not blindly follow the herd. Most people, however, prefer the comfort of the known compared to the dark, shadowy figures in the cave of the unknown that make them uncomfortable, anxious, unable to sit still and focus. They would rather the shackle round their necks if only to know that routine,

The Allegory of the Cave or also known as, Myth of the Cave, is a good example of explaining the feature of the way people think. It is a concept that demonstrates how humans are fearful of change and what they don’t know. Plato says that men are living in an underground cave and it is a situation. The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. Plato talks about being free, everyday life, knowledge, and essentially what he wrote to be true. I think that he was very unique with his writings because there are so many ways to look at the world and his way was just one. He was educated highly and is recognized as a philosopher to this day.

In his essay, “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato, argues his idea of how to distinguish the reality and truth from that which is a falsehood. Most essentially, he finds it as important to enlighten others that may remain in that

Exegesis Paper Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" offers an argument that aims to explain how humans mistake their perceptions as reality. The allegory explains how this mistake affects different aspects in our lives, like education. The capacity to learn exists in the soul. Humans need to use their whole soul to learn, not just use their eyes. Socrates offers different examples of symbolism to support his argument.

Within this text, Plato explains that

Plato has influenced our lives and actions more than we realize. This paper shall attempt to demonstrate the similarities between Plato’s theory of “Innate Ideas” and “The Allegory of the Cave” via the film The Matrix. In the 21st century, robots waged war on humans. When humans fought back, they took the robots solar power source away.

In Plato’s Republic, there are a several key passages including “The Good”, “The Sun”, “The Divided Line”, “The Cave”, “The Summoners”, “ The Curriculum”, and “The Model Recruit” that help us better understand the four main points of this reading. The four main points are intelligibility, the good, and dialectic and how these things make people more moral individuals.

In the allegory of the cave Plato tries to show us two scenarios where the prisoners experience emotional and intellectual revelations throughout their lives. Plato’s theory was that the ones who truly understand knowledge should guide the ignorant people out of their unenlightened states of being and into true knowledge. The cave symbolizes the people who think that knowledge come from what they see and hear in the world. It also indicates people that make assumptions about life based on the substantial things they experience through hearing and seeing. Plato’s main focus was to convey a story to the world about the difference between beliefs and truth. Anyone can believe in something they see, but that belief is really just a shadow of the truth.

Philosophers have always believed that gaining more knowledge is a must. To them, asking a question is a never ending process. One’s curiosity will lead him or her to intellectual freedom. Many people assume that their opinion is the only thing that matters. Plato on the other hand believes how any individual is capable of seeing and accepting others’ perspective. He exemplifies this idea through his work called “Allegory of the Cave.” In this piece, Plato depicts the concept of people limit themselves from intellectual freedom. I strongly agree with his ideas because anyone can make a decision for themselves. In today’s society, people tend to stay in their comfort zone and disregard other possibilities in the world. They misinterpret shadows from reality because they choose to be ignorant.

The main idea presented by Plato in his infamous Allegory of the Cave is that the average person's perceptions are severely limited by personal perspective. Plato uses the metaphorical situation of prisoners chained together in a way that limited their visual perception to the shadows projected from behind them onto a wall in front of them. He uses that metaphor to illustrate that perspective determines perceptions and also that once an individual achieves a wider or more accurate perspective, it becomes difficult for him to communicate with those who are still limited to the narrower perspective that he may have once shared with them. Plato meant his allegory to apply to the limitations of perspective attributable to social experiences as well as to the absence of formal education and training, particularly in logical reasoning. Plato believed that logical reasoning is a skill that must be learned through formal training and that without adequate training, it is substantially impossible to understand the logical perspective.

Plato was a protégé of Socrates and an idealist philosopher during the classical Greek period that helped to form the base of philosophy as is known in today’s western world. He formed his own ideology called “Platonic Idealism” which is the idea that basic reality is not the most real form of reality placing the truest form of reality on unchanging, eternal and objectively existing forms. Plato often wrote allegories to express his world view and to allow his audience to realize Plato’s ideas on their own terms. One of his most famous allegories is called the “Myth of the Cave”. In the “Myth of the Cave”, Plato tries to show the journey of someone as they attempt to become enlightened and their downfall once they