Analyzing The Allegory Of The Cave In Plato's The Republic

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.

In the ‘The Allegory of the Cave’, Plato uses a philosophical situation to help us as the reader to examine our perception of life by what is around us. Plato uses such an abstract situation to show that we can mistake the information that we gain due to our position in a situation for truth.

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.

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.

Imagery used by Plato as part of his writing style of allegory examines the shadows of the cave as ideas offered at surface level. Plato is showing people are there to believe what is given to them because they do not know anything else to be true. The shadows are explained, as “truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (Plato 450). Shadows are a brilliant use of imagery because they resemble something dark, indescribable, and hard to recognize. This helps support Plato’s argument because the truth can only be seen at the basic level without any complex details; it is just known to be true. His philosophy is that people can only see beyond the surface if they have to capability to do so and believe, what others think is crazy.

Plato describes the vision of the real truth to be "aching" to the eyes of the prisoners, and how they would naturally be inclined to going back and viewing what they have always seen as a pleasant and painless acceptance of truth. This stage of thinking is noted as "belief." The comfort of the perceivement, and the fear of the unrecognized outside world would result in the prisoner being forced to climb the steep ascent of the cave and step outside into the bright sun.

Reality versus illusion is described by Plato in chapter seven of The Republic. Plato creates an allegorical view of what it means to be alive, and the journey of gaining a sense of reality. He begins setting the scene by describing a dimly lit cave containing the men who have lived there since the beginning of life. The men are chained up and unable to turn their heads, only facing a a stone wall. They have not seen the source of light within the cave (which is both a burning fire and sunlight), nor the objects that depict the shadows on the wall. They know only what they see, ignorant to the world just beyond the cave. Plato continues by questioning what would happen if one man were to become free from his restraints and exposed to the sunlight outside the cave,

“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light, or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye…” (Plato). In this quote from Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” an instance in which a person comes face to face with something that confounds them, it can be due to two factors. First, it could be that they are knowledgeable and are paying attention and go to seeing ignorance. Or it could be that they are not knowledgeable and are faced with veracity. A situation such as this takes place in Plato’s

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.

One of Plato’s more famous writings, The Allegory of the Cave, Plato outlines the story of a man who breaks free of his constraints and comes to learn of new ideas and levels of thought that exist outside of the human level of thinking. However, after having learned so many new concepts, he returns to his fellow beings and attempts to reveal his findings but is rejected and threatened with death. This dialogue is an apparent reference to his teacher’s theories in philosophy and his ultimate demise for his beliefs but is also a relation to the theory of the Divided Line. This essay will analyze major points in The Allegory of the Cave and see how it relates to the Theory of the Divided Line. Also, this

Plato is known to many as one of the most influential and greatest philosophers to have lived. Plato represents his idea of reality and the truth about what we perceive through one of his famous writings, “The Allegory of the Cave”. The philosophical writing is in the form of an allegory, which is “a story in which the characters and situations actually represent people and situations in another context”(Pg. 448). In the story, Plato uses the technique of creating a conversation between his teacher Socrates and his brother Glaucon.

Plato’s “Allegory of a Cave” draws many parallels to events and characters in Bradbury’s dystopian novel, Farenheit 451. Chiefly, Plato would disapprove of the style of government in which citizens do not possess the right to think for themselves. Plato’s Cave Theory emphasizes the ability to think and experience new events in order to gain knowledge and learn, which allows the “prisoners” to escape from their binding chains of ignorance and enter a world of enlightenment. A blatant similarity between the two works lies in the characters of Clarisse, Faber, and Granger. These characters have escaped the “cave” of ignorance and have the ability to perceive true reality rather than the technology-induced one forced upon the society. Two

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.

The “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato represents the differences in the way we perceive reality and what we believe is real. In his story, Plato starts by saying that in a cave, there are prisoners chained down and are forced to look at a wall. The prisoners are unable to turn their heads to see what is going on behind them and are completely bound to the floor. Behind the prisoners, puppeteers hide and cast shadows on the wall in line with the prisoners’ sight, thus giving the prisoners their only sense of reality. What happens in the passage is not told from the prisoners’ point of view but is actually a conversation held between Socrates and Glaucon (Plato’s brother).

Plato's main goal in the Allegory of the Cave is to communicate the relevance and importance of the concept of intellectual perspective. His real agenda is to illustrate that most people are likely perceiving the world around them in a much more limited manner than they realize and that most of us are, to some degree, living our lives in the same circumstances as the prisoners he