Allegory of the Cave Essay

Plato believes that it is proper to tell falsehoods to children because it is preventing them from becoming disrespectful. Because good is coming out, it would be a moral thing to lie in this situation. Plato also thinks this type of verbal falsehood is just because we really don’t know what happened in the past with the Gods, therefore by making the lie as mush like the truth,

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).

The definition of truth is something that is always valid and cannot be proved invalid. Radiolab's podcast “Truth Warriors”, is about people who pursue the truth. In this podcast Neil deGrasse Tyson proves to a barista that he didn’t put whip cream in his hot cocoa and Errol Morris proves whether a photo of the Crimean War was staged or authentic. Neil believed that the barista did not put in whip cream, but the barista insisted otherwise. To prove him wrong, Neil then made the barista put more whip cream into his hot cocoa and the whip cream dipped once then stayed afloat on the hot cocoa proving to the barista that he did not put in the whip cream originally. Neil did not think the truth was that the cream sank to the bottom so he “fought”

Truth is a word that can mean so much to one person. Truth to many people is the object of our understanding as a person just like “good” which is the object of our good intentions. Truth is a word that you believe is when a person tells you a fact or something that actually happened, but can the truth actually be true? This is what Ken Kesey's book One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest questions. Kesey’s use of the fog and machinery suggest that Chiefs character uses his dreams and hallucinations to tell the truth.

“This is true.” (O’Brien, 420) – with this simple statement which also represents a first, three-word introductory paragraph to Tim O’Brien’s short story, “How to Tell a True War Story”, the author reveals the main problem of what will follow. “Truth” – when looked up in a dictionary, we would probably find definitions similar to sincerity and honesty on the one hand, and correctness, accuracy or reality on the other hand. When looking at these definitions, one can make out two groups of meaning: While sincerity and honesty are very subjective, correctness or accuracy are supposed to be objective by nature. One can be sincere and still not report the truth, due to the simple fact

What do you believe truth is? There probably are a few different definitions of truth. I consider truth being honesty and facts. “I don’t care about truth. I want some happiness.” said Fitzgerald’s version of truth. Hansberry says, “Perhaps I will be a great man… I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of the truth and find my way always with the right course.” O’Brien’s truth is, “I want you to know what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” These three have some decent definitions, but truth itself doesn't really have just one right definition, it's more open-ended.

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

However, Petruzzi explains that Plato's dialogical strategy leads to an assumption of the indeterminate nature of truth and a “philosophical rhetor who "knows" that she is not able to know with any certainty” (Petruzzi 16). He insists that the primary quality of Plato's texts is “that dialogue and dialectic express neither a technical skill nor a method, but rather a mode of being-in-the-world: Dialectic is not so much a techne-that is, an ability and knowledge-as a way of being" (Petruzzi 17). For Plato, rhetoric is is agreement between participants where its success is reliant upon them presenting opposing sides or bringing a problem under consideration. Petruzzi explains that Plato searched for a stable definition that would anchor a concept in “"one" unified and temporary intellectual position.” However, he struggled because the disclosure of truth, through dialogue and dialectic, “explicitly contains the perspectival and relational quality of aletheia, or unconcealment” (Petruzzi 17). As we see, Plato strove for truth, but his error with in thinking that there were absolute truths that don’t change. William Benoit said that Plato’s views stand in sharp relief against those of the Sophists because he believed in certain knowledge, for he declares rather bluntly in the Gorgias that "truth, you see, can never be refuted." In the Phaedrus, he

This paper discussed The Allegory of The Cave in Plato's Republic, and tries to unfold the messages Plato wishes to convey with regard to his conception of reality, knowledge and education.

Plato starts with the analogy of the sun, which points out the contrast between the visible and the intelligible worlds. Within the visible world man has eyes and objects to be seen, but man needs another object for the eyes to see the object. This object is the sun, which provides the light that is required by the eye to view the visible world. In correspondence, the Form of the Good in the intelligible world is equal to the sun by the way that the Good allows the forms to be known. Plato specifically states, “What gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the Form of the Good. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge” (508e). Along with

In The Republic, Plato introduces a philosophy that transcends the exclusivity of the contemplative and the active lives. He defines the ultimate truth as “aletheia”, which literally translates to mean “unhidden” or “that which does not remain unnoticed”. Through his use of the term and his allegory of the cave, Plato makes the strong implication that philosophers must actively seek to discover the absolute truth, rather than relying on traditional methods of contemplation and the persuasive tone of rhetoric to prove its existence. To better explain his reasoning, Plato constructs a metaphor between the sun and the ultimate good. He argues that “the soul is like the eye” in that it requires an exterior force to establish clarity of

The Evasiveness of Truth It is in our best interests to preserve the gentle balance of our relationships with others, as the bitter reality can easily topple the balance; we strive to bend the truth as it staves off the worst of the disparity. Through the poem “truth” said a traveller by Stephen Crane, the elusiveness of truth is described and compared to many incomprehensible things within our everyday world. The truth disguises itself behind a veil, a shadow, a phantom, never clearly graspable and always blurry and un- focused. Within Stephen Crane’s poem he describes two travellers, one stating that truth is a rock, a mighty fortress as to say that truth is always so clear, unmovable and strong, it will always be found with ease if one wishes to look for it.

The truth, something that has been searched for since the beginning of time. Throughout history, man has been on a mission to discover the truth. To discover something that can bring greater value to our lives and reform the way we experience the world. It is through our quest for validity and authenticity that we find ourselves straying onto what we consider the opposite of truth, fiction. A place where anything is possible and everything is somewhat unexplainable. However as we examine fiction, we can’t help but realize that the emotional truth which becomes possible through fiction is not possible without facts. It is through analyzing parts of fiction that we are able gain access to truths that relate to the ethics, arithmetic, and synthetics of life.

The first issue is what actually is truth? There are many things that we perceive to be true, depending on perspective or our beliefs, which differ from one person to the next, known as

The quality of being true is related to something clear, without any uncertainty. This is perfectly summarized by the Greek word for truth is ἀλήθεια (alétheia), from the privative prefix ἀ- (a-), meaning 'not', and -λήθε (-lethe), 'oblivion', which, as Martin Heidegger (2001) explained by analysing its etymology, refers to "the state of not being hidden". Truth is a cross issue, that embraces everything related to humans, from the most ordinary aspect of daily life, to the most deep religious thought. The need to find what is true is part of the human nature, but as the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1965) stated, that same nature, which gave us the need of knowledge, at the same time bound us to subjectivity, limiting our understanding to judgement and interpretation, thus, truth can only be obtained gradually, through a never ending task. This process of understanding finds its ancient roots in Greece, in the VII-VI century B.C., when philosophy was born and the slow loss of universal certainties has started. The very first interest of philosophers was that to define the concept of Being, a wide notion that embraces objective and subjective features of reality. Throughout the philosophy of truth, objectivism and subjectivism lead to the development of the two major approaches to reality, Relativism and Universalism.