Cave Allegory In Plato's The Republic

All in all, “The Allegory of the cave” by Plato, pursuits to turn people’s perception free to the hidden truth. Let alone, that truth is the only key to our salvation which will lead us to grasp the purest being of ourselves. In that respect, we will alter the life around us and the nature we live in as an infection spreading in the air for the pure genuine

The one prisoner finally escaping the cave to the outside light shows symbolism as a higher level of philosophy. Returning to the cave was the choice of the prisoner, he felt compelled to spread his new knowledge. Plato’s uses him to represent breaking free from the normal mindset shared. Plato’s argument stands since the cave represents lack of expanding on common knowledge. Even after the prisoner returns to express his findings to others, individuals with philosophies different than the norm is dismissed because of their level above previous things thought of as true.

The Republic is considered to be one of Plato’s most storied legacies. Plato recorded many different philosophical ideals in his writings. Addressing a wide variety of topics from justice in book one, to knowledge, enlightenment, and the senses as he does in book seven. In his seventh book, when discussing the concept of knowledge, he is virtually addressing the cliché “seeing is believing”, while attempting to validate the roots of our knowledge. By his use of philosophical themes, Plato is able to further his points on enlightenment, knowledge, and education. In this allegory, the depictions of humans as they are chained, their only knowledge of the world is what is seen inside the cave. Plato considers what would happen to people

The whole point of the allegory is to represent to journey to enlightenment. The prisoners represent either the unenlightened that have not had enough experience to gain great wisdom or the uneducated that have not learned enough to gain great intelligence. And being thrown out of the cave into the outside world represents the process of becoming enlightened. Once enlightened they would of course not want to leave and to make them go back into the Cave would be cruel, as is noted by Glaucon. But as is explained they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not” (873). Plato claims that these enlightened have a moral responsibility to bring their wisdom to the common people in order to help them learn more so everyone can benefit from the knowledge of an individual. This is certainly an agreeable prospect and one that is not seen enough in the real world. Once

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.

Stage Three of Plato’s allegory pushes us further along the path of enlightenment, where new wisdom is being thrust upon us as we are opened up to yet another set of truths that we have never experienced. The prisoner is being pulled from the cave

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

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

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

Socrates, which recognizes that justice is an attribute of the good person, still sees Cephalus’ view as only possible with sufficient material wealth. Cephalus is not a reflective person, it is obviously suggested when he states that a person can satisfy the requirements of a just and good life by possessing the right disposition and equipped with adequate wealth. But that is all that his life experiences have shown him and unlike Socrates, Cephalus is not a man for whom unexamined life is not worth living. Therefore Socrates’ response to Cephalus is not a direct confrontation. Socrates comments that the value of talking to old men is that they may teach us something about the life they have traversed. They may tell us the benefits of old age, however, Plato exploits Cephalus’ account of old age to suggest that old age is not a source of wisdom. The wisdom and goodness which enables Cephalus to see his age as a beneficial state need not come with old age. To most men, as Cephalus recognizes, old age is a source of misery and resentment. Only those who have order and peace with themselves can “accept old age with equanimity.”

In “Book 1” of Plato’s The Republic, Socrates asks Cephalus about the difficulty of old age, as Cephalus has reached “the threshold of death” and is therefore suited to speak upon age. Cephalus explains that older people tend to be more peaceful because youthful desires like sex, partying, and drinking constrain many people to temporal pleasure, but age releases them from those shackles. These youthful desires are later treated as shackles that constrain many people to temporal pleasures. By introducing these metaphorical shackles in the first discussion of The Republic, Plato foreshadows and parallels the cave allegory that appears in “Book 7” (Plato 3).

The cave allegory also proves that the role of education is not to teach in the sense of feeding people information they do not have, but rather to shed light on things they already know. Education "isn't the craft of putting sight into the soul. Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn't turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and it tries to redirect it properly." (2)

His Cave Allegory was about a group of men stuck in a cave, chained down and unable to look around at the cave except for a single cave wall. In the cave there is a fire on a raised platform with other people almost as if they were actors or a stage crew creating shadows of animals, plants, etc.… for the men to watch on the cave wall. These men were born in this cave and this is all they have ever known. They believe the shadows are nature and eventually begin to play a game of predicting what would appear if correct they believe they were masters of nature.

A person considering living the examined life might face several obstacles, such as disagreement, opposition from other people. If a person questions common beliefs of his or her neighborhood, people surrounding him or her might feel betrayed and turn away or they may even become a threat to the person who is making new discoveries and wants to share them with society. Plato shows that in the “Allegory of The Cave” when the prisoner comes back to the cave to let others know what he has found in the outside world. In the text Plato writes “would he not provoke laughter, and would it not be said of him that he had returned from his journey aloft with his eyes ruined and that it was not work while even to attempt the ascent? And if it were possible to lay hands on and kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him? They certainly would, he said” (Allegory 517 a), the other prisoners found the man questioning their ideas as wrong and considered him as a risk to their environment. They [the prisoners] would kill him if he tried to free them and take them out of the comfort of familiar surroundings. The chained prisoners represent people around us who are not willing to change nor have an open mind towards new information, they are very skeptical and

INTRO: When thinking of education, most children groan and whine about learning. However, they don’t realize that they have been learning for their entire life. Their education started when they were first born, and it has changed and shaped them into the character they are now. This idea was first thought of by Plato, another philosophy he had was of a cave. In this Cave Allegory, there are prisoners lined up against a wall so they can’t move their head to look elsewhere. Behind the prisoners there is a fire creating shadows on the wall where they are forced to look. A person comes in and unties one and shows him the fire, then later he shows him the outside of the cave. At first the prisoner is blinded by the light, but is later acceptant to the