Analysis Of Plato's 'Allegory Of The Cave'

While interpreting Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave’’ in which is a representation that described a narrative of the society of people in before Christ years. I realized how there was a major comparison of people in today’s society that reflected the same prisoner traits as the prisoners that were described in the dialogue. According to the Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” It described conditions of people chained at birth unable to function as independent individuals that were locked in a protracted dark cave. They were allowed to rotate their necks but could not stand up unless told to or leave the cave. Within this cave they could only watch a wall showing flash images and objects as if the prisoners were watching a play or movies at a theater. They believed that the pictures shown on the wall were factual in which they were just shadows of objects that were behind them. The objects reflected forms and puppet that were placed up by puppeteers to create shadows on the wall. The prisoners were unable to see the puppeteers and seemed as if they were watching a puppet show in the dark.

The stages of Plato’s “cave journey” begin with people stuck in a dark cave. They are chained from birth, unable to move their bodies and can only see straight ahead. A fire behind them creates the shadows of objects being flashed on a wall in front of them. They have never seen the real objects, so they believe the shadows of the objects to be real. The people stuck in the cave begin a guessing game; trying to guess which objects will appear next, and whoever guess correctly would be praised by the others. At the mouth of the cave there is a glimmer of light, and the possibility of life outside the cave.

In Plato's Cave, the prisoners are tied down with chains, hand, and foot under bondage. In fact they have been there since their childhood, which much like matrix people are seen as in reality being bound within a pad whereby they are feed images/illusions which keep them in a dreamlike state and they have been in this bondage by virtue of the virtual reality pads in the fields since their youth and like the allegory of the Cave they are completely unaware of such a predicament since in regards to the Cave they have become conditioned to the shadows that dance upon the wall and do not see the true forms of which the shadow is a mere non-substantial pattern of. In the Matrix, within the person of the virtual world, it is a non-substantial pattern of the world, it is reflective of the real world, it is a shadow in its form and nature being a simulation of the world at a particular point in history. Like the prisoners in the cave, those who are prisoners in the system of a matrix are held in their calm state by reason of the illusion that stimulates them and tricks them into remaining asleep or rather into being ignorant of the fact that they are prisoners in pads so the machines can feed on their bio-energy. The shadows on the wall which are reflective is to keep the prisoners on the Cave unaware of the fact that they are prisoners, that they are under bondage and have never truly seen life outside of the Cave. The shadows on the walls are by puppets, perchance puppeteers. They could be seen as the agents, whom within the Matrix being programs are to maintain that the humans asleep in the matrix remain in their comatose state, they are to support the illusion, by keeping man actively ignorant of what is truly happening, so they never wake up. The puppeteers of the puppets which are seen on the wall to keep the mind of the prisoners stimulated so they never realize that they are chained, and only have a vision that is straightforward, which is basically saying their minds are only subjected to a single perspective and they are blind to the degree of seeing within other perspectives, broader perspectives and this in and of itself is a limitation.

Prompt: Define Plato 's “Allegory of the Cave”. What is the central message? Is he describing education alone? Where does politics come in?

In the allegory written by Plato titled “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato discusses the concept of seeking knowledge and gaining wisdom. He uses a story of prisoners trapped into a cave to represent the confines of reality that humans are put into, and a lone prisoner exiting the cave to represent a philosopher seeking a greater understanding. Plato’s writing tells of the flaw that all humans share, which is the fact that we believe our perceptions to be the absolute, incontestable truth. It is this flaw that can easily affect our spiritual, educational, and political knowledge, hindering us from having a full grasp on actual reality beyond what we visually see. His rhetorical devices, tone, symbolism, and imagery all lend themselves to giving

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is also termed as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave. It was used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education". It comprises of a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon. Socrates gives a description of a group of people who spent their lifetime facing a blank wall chained to the wall of a cave. These people saw and tried to assign forms of the shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them. These shadows as put by Socrates, are what the prisoners can view close to reality (Law 2003). He further compares a philosopher to the prisoner who is freed from the cave and comprehends that he can envision the true form of reality instead of the shadows which the prisoners saw in the cave and these shadows do not depict reality at all.

After having seen the people and objects around him, the man still cannot bear to look at the sun itself, which is ultimately the source of everything. However, he desires to learn more and can look

In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he portrays a world where detainees live fastened in a cave. The chains that the prisoner wear speak to their assumptions and numbness, which they have had since birth. The prisoner can just observe a duplicate, or shadows, of reality. In their cave, the prisoners trust that the shadows on the divider are genuine articles; they aren't mindful that there is a whole world outside that comprises of genuine items. In any case, once one of the detainees breaks free and leaves the give in, he is presented to reality and understands that his previous encounters were just shabby duplicates of the genuine article: the fire in the sanctum changes into the sun, or the type of the great, and the shadows change into real things or genuine items.

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’s “Allegory of the Cave” explains how prisoners are chained in a cave since childhood with their back to the entrance, unable to turn their necks around. The prisoners have no knowledge of the outside world. Along the cave wall people are carrying different artifacts that cast shadows and echoes. The prisoners would try to identify and name the passing objects. One of the prisoners was freed, however when he stepped outside of the cave the sunlight hurt his eyes.

In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, for me it talks about how a person is being blind to know the truth because of the people who are higher than them. It says that the allegory is a cave of men chained with their heads forced to remained forward facing toward a wall; I can say that it talks about us, the people who become prisoners to know the truth. And the shadow that forms through the help of fire and wall are the false information or truth that we get from other people. In today’s generation, I think it’s still happening because we are still fed by lies and being forced to live a life accepting this false reality as truth.

Plato's story Allegory Of The Cave, suggests that in the world many aspects hold us back. This includes fear, standers, and getting too comfortable. We as people fear everything from failure to being let down all the way to death In the store it states “from the beginning people like this have never managed whether on their own or with help by others, to see anything besides the shadows that are projected on the wall opposite them by the glow of the fire”. People will not help themselves if they do not feel or see the need they are not willing to put in the work even if someone is willing to help them. Now in today’s society most of us expect things to be handed to us compared to back then when they had to work for it.

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.

The "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato represents an extended metaphor that is to contrast the way in which we perceive and believe in what is reality. The thesis behind his allegory is the basic opinion that all we perceive are imperfect "reflections" of the ultimate Forms, which subsequently represent truth and reality. In his story, Plato establishes a cave in which prisoners are chained down and forced to look upon the front wall of the cave. In "Allegory of the Cave" there there are two elements to the story; the fictional metaphor of the prisoners, and the philosophical opinion in that the allegory is supposed to represent, hence presenting us with the allegory itself.

Plato was an upper-class Athenian who lived from 427-347 BC, and was regarded as one of the earliest great philosophers of the ‘Classical Period’. He was known as being “a firm critic of democracy” (Heywood, 2002) and was a great admirer of the Spartan political system, which was a totalitarian state which relied heavily of military power and slave labour. Plato had created his version of the idealistic society, which was known as the ‘Kallipolis’, which was structured around the belief that there are three different classes. These are the Rulers, the Guardians and the Producers.