Enlightenment In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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.

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.

The narrative of the world claims that the purpose of life is in reaching enlightenment. Whether it be religious or spiritual, many approach this long and often difficult process in hopes of discovering the ultimate truth of life. Unfortunately, not everyone is successful in achieving this salvation. The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury depicts the journey of Guy Montag, a fireman, from illusion toward enlightenment. Similarly, the essay “Allegory of the Cave,” from Plato’s longer work The Republic, illustrates a prisoner’s climb toward enlightenment, beginning with an escape from illusion.

Enlightenment is defined as the understanding and knowledge with the lack of hope and pain. The idea of enlightenment can be found I different situations that can be connected through the spiritual awakening of one’s self. Siddhartha and the little boy from The Ocean at the End of the Lane are worlds apart in age, creed, culture and historical era, they are similar in that they are both on a journey of spiritual awakening.

Enlightenment can have various meanings but in the book Letters from a Peruvian Woman by Francoise De Gaffigny the definition of Enlightenment would be the attainment of spiritual knowledge or insight, which gives an individual a new perspective of another world/culture. In the book the main character Zilia is abducted from her Peruvian Empire where she has grown custom to their culture and lifestyle and taken to eighteenth century Europe. On her journey to Europe Zilia has many pleasant and frightful experiences as she records her adventure in a series of letters to her love Aza who remains in Peru. Unlike a frightened capture, Zilia is willing to learn the European ways and constantly compares the

The man decides to accept the world as his new reality, showing a great amount of bravery by accepting a young truth versus a lifelong, comforting lie. By continuing the process of discovery, the man continues to make brave decisions by opening his mind, accepting new things, and eventually becoming aware and conscious. Dedication to continue the exploration of the unknown shows both bravery of the man, and also loyalty to himself to continue to make himself a better man. Plato uses this to Plato goes on to explain how the goal is to educate people with the right natures, those who will turn their minds toward the “Form of the Good,” or the sun; this determines the philosophers from the clever but wicked men. Once they do

According to James Schmidt's article "Civility, Enlightenment, and Society: Conceptual Confessions of Kantian Remedies," "The Enlightenment is routinely characterized as embracing a conception of reason that is held to be insufficiently sensitive to its own limits" (Schmidt 421). The term enlighten means to clarify or clear things up, many times a reason is given to enlighten a situation. The Enlightenment period was all about reasoning and this is why it is also known as the Age of Reason. The name of the Enlightenment period is misleading, a person may think that it was times of happiness, joy, and understanding, but in truth, it was the opposite. Voltaire wrote one of his greatest stories based on the Enlightenment period.

In his Allegory Plato shows us how a man ascends from the darkness of a cave to the light of the outside world. In this ascent Plato’s man passes through four distinct stages of cognition: from imagination, to belief, understanding, and finally knowledge.

Enlightenment is a word to loop in the ideas of gaining insight into the mind and achieving peace with in ourselves, with releasing ourselves from the harshness of life (Wikipedia). In our current time, many people now are still trying to reach enlightenment as many religions that bring up the idea of becoming at peace with ourselves spreads to new people. In the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, we experience the journey of a man who strives to reach enlightenment. He comes across many different characters, but here, we focus on four people, including Siddhartha, himself. Siddhartha, Govinda, Gotama, and Vasudeva don’t all reach true peace the same way. Instead, they find their own ways to be purely content with their different lives. Though

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).

The myth implies that education is a long and costly process, fraught with obstacles and therefore not accessible to anyone. The liberated prisoner must gradually abandon his old and false beliefs, prejudices linked to custom; He must break with his former life, comfortable and comfortable, but based on deceit; He has to overcome fears and difficulties to be able to understand the new reality that has before his eyes, more true and authentic than the previous one. Hence the prisoner must be "obliged", "forced", "dragged", by a "rough and steep rise", and accustomed little by little to the light of the outside, until reaching the knowledge of the authentically real, the eternal, immaterial and immutable: the Ideas. But it does not end here the task of the philosopher: once formed in the knowledge of the truth, it must "descend again into the cavern" and, although at the beginning it is clumsy and needs also a period of adaptation, it must take care of the human affairs, the own of the Sensitive world (politics, the organization of the State, the courts of justice,

In the beginning of Emmanuel Kant’s What is Enlightenment, he stays true to his title and gives his definition of enlightenment. By his understanding, enlightenment is ones "release from self-incurred tutelage." By this he is implying for one to reach enlightenment they must be able to free themselves from the superintendence of others and their reason, while harnessing the ability to successfully use their own reason. In other words, it is movement towards a reliance on self-reason. According to Kant an enlightened person comes to his ideas on his own.

Plato once said that, “Ignorance [is] the root and stem of all evil”. Ignorance is the cause of everything that is wrong and bad in the world since people are unable to see the truth. If people start breaking free from ignorance, mankind will become happier and more transparent. In the short story, “Allegory of The Cave” by Plato and The Matrix by the Wachowskis, they portray the idea that in order to gain enlightenment, one must break free from ignorance; which opens himself to knowledge; this new truth must then be shared with others for the good of mankind.

Socrates, in skepticism, began a search for those with a reputation of wisdom. After studying men and their knowledge, he reasoned that the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing. Although one may have extensive understanding in one area, there is way too much knowledge in the world to be contained by one man. Socrates stated, “I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish, and that some inferior men were really wiser and better” (Plato, 23). Those who believed that they knew it all could not be more ignorant, and those who admitted ignorance achieved the highest wisdom attainable on earth. Socrates accepted the idea that he, just like all men, contained very little or no wisdom at all. He was content with knowing this, and upon meeting others that lacked this philosophy, felt he was superior to them. He was unsure of the limitations the afterlife had on wisdom, but he was aware of it’s constraints on earth. This self awareness is what gifted him with the highest sense of enlightenment.

Sometimes enlightenment of the truth is overwhelming and not easy to adapt or understand. Plato’s excerpt asks if the prisoner could see the truth would that not cause pain and he would reject the new truth he is shown. The prisoner would eventually come to understand and believe the truth and enjoy the knowledge gained, but also feel sad for the others who are living in the darkness as he once was. Equivalent to Plato’s excerpt, Descartes’s story regards the enlightenment of reality as wakefulness, darkness and the new truth as difficulties brought forth. Similarly, in the Matrix, Neo is having a hard time adjusting to the realization that everything he has known to be true was all distortion of reality and even Cypher wants to return to the past before the gained knowledge of true reality.