Allegory Essay

In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato uses a vast spectrum of imagery to explain ones descent from the cave to the light. While Plato uses this Allegory to explain his point through Socrates to Glaucon. This allegory has many different meanings. The Allegory can be used in many different ways, from religion to politics to ones own intellectual enlightenment, or it can be interpreted as the blinded person in a colt like reality. Are we all prisoners in a world that is forced on us through the media? How do we really know that we are not just pawns in some one’s chess game. What meaning was Plato trying to introduce to Glaucon? This cave can represent many aspects in the world. And the prisoners can be any one. The

The Allegory of the Cave, also know as The Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave or Parable of the Cave is presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work “The Republic “ as a theory concerning the perceptions of human kind and compares the effects of education to the lack of education on our observations. The passage is written as dialogue between Plato’s brother Glaucon and his teacher Socrates.

Events going on around at this time was the Peloponnesian war which may have been the setting of the dialogue. Plato may have been influenced by the war to write Allegory of the Cave. He could have been trying to find the reason for why the war started which led to the broad belief that mankind, just assumes and doesn't know what the truth is because he probably got different answers. Also around that time Socrates died and he wrote this piece of writing in honor of

On the surface of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” it is just a simple piece, but the main purpose of the piece is to explain people living in a world of face value and having individuals break free from the main idea to create a new sense of what the world is truly about. In here, Plato uses the writing style of allegory to encompass the use of imagery and symbolism to explain his purpose. He also uses very clever dialogue with constant repetition to represent a bigger idea about the philosophy with chained up people living in a cave of shadows.

In book VII of Plato's most popular work, The Republic, Plato symbolically describes a fictitious story in the form of dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, in which prisoners have been chained in an underground cave and have been restricted to only viewing the cave wall in front of them. Far off behind them, men are carrying figures of animals and different objects so that their shadows are casted on a wall ahead of them. One of the prisoners are liberated and walks toward the mouth of the cave into the light. He begins to notice that the shadows he has seen his entire life are not real; there is a world other than the cave.

In the story The Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes the perception of reality. He explains how to interpret ideas or objects in different perspectives. The story he tells about the cave could have influenced different modern day ideas. Some ideal examples might include religion, abuse, and imprisonment. Plato’s cave theory applies to all of these ideas and can show many different perspectives.

Plato’s allegory of the cave, located in Book VII of The Republic is one of the most famous allegories in which he has created. This simile touches base on a number of philosophical ideas which Plato developed over the progression of The Republic (Plato, G.M.A Grube, 1993), the most noticeable being the dividing line. The dividing line is the point between the world of ideas where we live and the world of the forms which is in the heavens. This allegory of the cave helps people understand the theory on which philosophy is based. It is also in this Book where the education of the guardians is outlined.

In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato and his student contemplate the idea of cave dwellers who are confined to life inside of the cave. They wonder what would happen if one of the cave dwellers became enlightened by stepping out into the world outside of the cave. When the enlightened cave dweller returned to tell the others about his discovery, the philosophers speculated that those in the cave would be in complete denial and may even go as far as to kill the enlightened cave dweller.

To begin with, "The Allegory of the Cave" is a parable written by the Greek Philosopher Plato. This theory essentially explains how people are blinded by a number of factors such as morals, beliefs and rules that are accepted without question. These blinded people tend to only see the surface of the situations surrounding them, and do not care to look deeper. They are known in "The Allegory of the Cave" as the prisoners. They are the members of society, which do not tend to change and/or are close-minded. On the contrary, there is always someone in each social system who is different. Someone who either questions or does not always accept the norm. According to "The Allegory of the Cave", this person is the enlightened one. The enlightened one constantly tries to help others or "free" them in order to let them see the world the way that they do. The final aspect to this parable is the cave. The cave represents

In the allegory of the cave Socrates said to Glaucon "Imagine human beings living in an underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light which reaches into the den; here a group of men have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move." In modern times, Socrates' point of view remains true because people can be "blind" to the outside world and live their lives in and box never knowing what consists of the

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a piece of social commentary that explores humanity's seemingly inherent desire to revel in the bliss of ignorance and the plight that awaits those insurgents who dare to attempt to expose them to the harsh light of the truth. In the metaphor Socrates uses, the chained prisoners represent the population of Athens, the puppeteers manipulating the shadows represent those in power who the people misguidedly revered, and the man who was blinded to the darkness after seeing the truth was none other than Socrates himself. The shadows the prisoners considered reality were in truth lies told by those in power in order to manipulate the masses. Socrates loved to use his wisdom to unmask these pretenders, and because of

The "Allegory of The Cave" is a story that describes life and how the physical world we live in is not the reflection of the real world. It suggests that life is similar to being chained up in a cave forced to watch shadows on a stone wall behind you. You cannot turn around and all you can do is spectate the shadows on the wall which are representative of things in the real world, that of which you have no knowledge of.

As Socrates is describing the cave and the situation, he stresses the point that the prisoners are completely oblivious as to what is reality as they would know nothing but the shadows casted by items held by the puppeteers, and believe this to be their own reality. This is important to the story as it shows that what we believe is real from the moment we are born is completely wrong based on our own flawed interpretations of reality. The point so far is that it is not what we can see but what we can’t see is what grasps our minds and Plato describes this thinking as “imagination.”

In the "Allegory of the Cave," the chained down prisoners are limited with their perception on reality. At

It seems to me that Socrates has set up each part of this analogy to represent a separate part of the philosophers struggle toward truly becoming a philosopher and achieving the study of philosophy. The cave itself seems to represent the societal norms that will be forced upon the upcoming philosopher from birth. While the philosopher is being brought up knowing only one thing as the truth he must find the strength to break himself free of the chains that bind him to the non-philosophical souls of society and begin to question what is known as “truth”.