Education, Crisis And The Cultivation Of A Great Leader

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.

Plato claimed that “In order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical reasoning,” which means that we must study and experiment with things first. The purpose of knowledge is to help the prisoners see the real world outside the cave and learn that each thing has its own meaning depending on its use. The dystopian society of the prisoners controlled their knowledge by only allowing them to look forward at the wall inside the cave where they could only see shadows made by the fire in back of them without knowing. “When one of the prisoners of the cave was released he was able to turn his head around and see the real objects.” Other prisoners didn't believed him because they were close minded and didn't wanted to accept the truth reality but only what they thought it was.

Through time, his knowledge and body adjusted; including his eyesight to the real world. He returned to the cave to share his realization to the rest of the prisoners. However, with his body and eyesight calibrated for the real world, he was unable to see and view shadows in the cave properly. The rest of the prisoners then concluded that his exploration affected him, viewed him as idiotic and refused to be freed from the cave. In my view, Plato’s message here is how people are comfortable with their own point of view; belief system that they prefer to stay behind that belief or viewpoint as opposed to exploring the possibility of the real truth.

The Allegory of the Cave is to envision a group of prisoners who have been affixed in an underground cave. Their hands, feet, and necks are tied with the constraint that they can't move. What they believe to be the truth is just a shadow depicted on the wall of the cave. “Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along with puppets of various animals, plants, and other things moved along” (Allegory of the Cave). These obscurities are the only objects the prisoners have known of during their lives, so they do not question them which leaves them in a blissful ignorance of the world around them. These prisoners are living in their own reality and are unaware of the actual reality that is ongoing in the background. The idea of “ignorance is bliss” is presented in Allegory of the Cave because the prisoners are living a life of ignorance. They live in a superficial world which they are perfectly content with. As this ignorance is presented, Plato shapes the prisoners to blissfully live in their surroundings. If one of the prisoners were suddenly released from the chains that hold his/her in his/her current state of ignorance, the movement would be uncomfortable, even agonizing. The prisoners would be released from their normal habitat. Plato revealed symbolism about the unknown in his work Allegory of the Cave. The shadows on the wall symbolize the

“Allegory of the Cave” is a renowned piece that has affected many opinions throughout the span of history. The purpose of this complex piece was to persuade philosophers of his views on the importance of education. Plato states many opinions about how education however he doesn’t back the opinions up with supporting facts. Plato lacks supporting facts in this essay, however his abundance of intelligence helps persuade the audience to consider his theories. Plato claims that knowledge gained through perception is all opinionated and to have real knowledge we must go through reasoning. He believed that the truth could only be seen through the eyes of an educated and non-materialistic philosopher. Plato wanted his fellow philosophers to see that

We first learn about Plato’s cave in book seven of the Republic. In his book, Plato describes a conversation he has with Socrates. He tells Socrates the story of some men who had lived their entire lives in a cave. These men knew nothing beyond what they could see on the cave wall. One day, a man is freed. At first he rejected his new found knowledge of the world but, once he accepted what he learned outside of the cave, he could never go back to his sheltered existence. The cave is an allegory, a story that has a hidden meaning. Plato is attempting to describe the difference between conventional opinion and getting educated. Plato says “compare the effect of education and of the lack of it” (Plato 175).

The second stage of the Allegory of the Cave consists of the process leading up to enlightenment. Plato represents the difficulties of leaving a comfortable reality where you are content with your own ideas by comparing it to the harshness of a flickering flame. The bright light of the fire that you are newly being exposed to after being held in the dark for so long can be painful, and hard to cope with or understand. The journey from ignorance to a better understanding can be confusing. As humans, we naturally don’t want to be forced to question our own ideas and the things we know to be true, but it is this uncomfortable, driving force that can lead us out of our own contentment and onto the path of better understanding. Plato so eloquently describes this challenging journey by comparing it to that of a prisoner being forced to visually take in all of this new information that he had not previously been exposed to. It takes a great deal of strength to be able to challenge the world around you and develop your own ideas, rather than taking everything around you in on a surface value.

Plato who was a Greek philosopher was born around the year 428 BCE, where he was known for opening an academy. The academy was considered the first university in the western world. In “The Allegory of the Cave”, three prisoners were tied up and could only see the shadows that reflected from the wall. They have been living in the same cave as prisoner for practically there whole life. The shad`ows represent things that are believed to be true. One prisoner got free and experienced the reality of the world but the other prisoners just laugh at him when he comes back. Plato is telling people In “The Allegory of the Cave”, the rhetorical appeal is a metaphor of the sun and symbolism.

In Plato 's "The Allegory of the Cave," Socrates tells an allegory of the hardship of understanding reality. Using metaphors Socrates compares a prisoner in an underground cave who is exploring a new strange world he never knew of to people who are trying to find a position of knowledge in reality. Through it, Plato attempts to map a man 's journey through education and describes what is needed to achieve a perfect society. According to Socrates, most people tend to rely on their senses excessively and accept the world as it is appears to them in their vision as truth. So that we can liberate our souls from this mental prison, Socrates suggests that we should go through a stage that prepares ourselves for the real world and at the same

As a student just out of high school, due for at least four more years of higher-education, the problems in education addressed during Chapter 8 are especially pertinent to my own life. However, that’s not to say that the problems in the education system aren’t important on a society-wide level as the quality of education is a major indicator for a society’s level of development and by extension the knowledge and to a degree the values of its citizens. The rhetorical question the textbook asks is a good summary of the flaws of the education system, “education is often claimed as a panacea – the cure-all for poverty and prejudice, drugs and violence, war and hatred, and the like. Can one institution, riddled with problems, be a solution for

In Plato’s Allegory of the cave, Plato describes the human condition as being like we are prisoners in a cave being forced to watch shadows on a cave wall. When one of us breaks free on these chains and figures out life is more than these shadows on the wall we are surprised and stuned and our eyes are not adjusted to the light that faces us outside of the cave. When we go back to tell others about our discovery, they just call us crazy or blinded to realty. They do not what to think that there is more than those images on the wall that they thought to be everything.

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 relationship between a liberal education and the suggestion of being in a cave is that the cave is the symbol for inability to understand and that human kind dwells within it unless the prisoners are able to break the bonds by knowing that knowledge does not make them free. Knowledge without reflection makes it easy for mankind to succumb to the unfortunate and flat appearance of substance without truth. Furthermore Plato plays on hidden virtues of reason which is "above all to something more divine" (pg. 53), because it never loses the benefit in influencing the reflection on the silhouettes that stand before those tethered. Reflection comprehension is a main component that is practiced in liberal arts so I can break the fetters that binds

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

The authors came to this conclusion because education itself was created to help, and develop the capalist order in society. Education was used provided to