How Does Plato Rely On The Senses

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

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.

Though the escapee has seen the outside world and gained experience the others do not have; when the prisoner returns to the cave, the others do not believe him. The escaped prisoner is said to be a metaphoric character for a wise man or philosopher, and the prisoners are supposedly metaphoric for people in society who only see what they want too. Plato creates a metaphor that a man has wisdom and knowledge of reality, but others do not want to believe in reality, but in their own idea of what is

The flaw that Plato speaks about is trusting as real, what one sees - believing absolutely that what one sees is true. In The Allegory of the Cave, the slaves in the caves know that the shadows, thrown on the wall by the fire behind them, are real. If they were to

After that, we have Plato and the Allegory of the Cave. In this text Plato distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who really do see the truth. The story begins in the cave where there are three prisoners, those three prisoners have never seen life outside the cave and have stayed in the cave since their birth day. Outside the cave people carry animals, plants, and etc. The only thing the people inside the cave see are the shadows, not the real object itself. Plato along with the prisoners guess the objects they will see next. Then, one of prisoners escapes from their bindings and leaves the cave. When he is out he is very surprised to what is outside the cave and then realizes that his former view of reality

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.

In Plato's The Republic book VII he tells a story about prisoners in cave that were held captive. “Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets.” (Plato PP) In today's society, it is not a cave rather a state of mind and the puppeteers are rather everything that we are exposed to. Every culture is stuck in a bubble, made to believe their values and traditions are above anyone's who are different. Socrates is explaining to the student how we only accept what we know to be true. The way society functions can be explained by us imagining a group of people whose existence has been inside of a cave. He explains that these prisoners are chained in a way that they are unable to turn to see in any other direction. There is a fire behind them that provides light which casts shadows that the captives believe to be entities. The prisoners way of making sense of it all is to give names and meaning to these shadows. One of the prisoners gets unlocked by her chains and

In "The Allegory of the Cave,” by Plato, there are prisoners in a cave with a fire that is located behind them. They have always faced the wall of the cave and have only seen what was outside of the cave from the shadows. They believe that the shadows of the objects carried are real but in reality, it 's just a shadow of the truth. The prisoners play a game where they guess what the shadows are and end up believing that it is the truth. However, when one prisoner escapes and faces reality, where the sun is a source of life, he realizes that the game was pointless. He seeks for meaning and truth from his journey outside of the cave. Socrates then insists that he must return to the cave and share what he has found with the prisoners because it will benefit everyone as a whole. However, when he returns and informs the prisoners, they react by not believing him and threatening to kill him if he set them free, because they are scared of the change that would occur after knowing the truth. Socrates believes that knowledge gained

While Plato speaks of "prisoners" and "shadows", explaining that the truth is in the outside world and that happiness consists in knowing this truth, skepticism says that appearances and impressions cannot be alleged to be true or untrue. Skepticism therefore does not decide if the prisoners who believe in what they see on the wall of the cave are right or wrong; it simply says that we have no reason to believe the truthfulness or the falsehood of our impressions. Therefore, better suspend judgment to find peace and happiness. But on the contrary, the allegory continues with describing that the prisoner who actually got to see the real world did not want to go back to the cave. What he saw made him happier. Maybe, he still has not attained the real truth. However, what he saw still made him ataraxic. If he did decide to suspend judgement, he probably would have not felt happiness. Furthermore, we can argue that our perception of happiness may not be exact (but this goes beyond the scope of the

In the allegory of the cave Socrates said to Glaucon "Imagine human beings living in an underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light which reaches into the den; here a group of men have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move." In modern times, Socrates' point of view remains true because people can be "blind" to the outside world and live their lives in and box never knowing what consists of the

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’s anecdote of the cave presents a ghastly image: people who “are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds so that they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond to turn their heads all the way around” (193). Also inside the cave is a “fire burning” which allows certain objects (out of sight and controlled by others) to project shadows (193). Consequently, the prisoners believe that the shadows are the most real things. When a prisoner is released, he experiences pain due to the light of the fire. In time, he recognizes the truth and becomes accustomed to it. He is then “dragged out into the light of the sun” (194). After a few moments, he tolerates its rays. Most importantly though, he grasps “the sun itself” (195). Finally, the escapee is not content with keeping this

of forms before it was planted in the body. The soul is made up of non

Plato’s theory of knowledge claims that knowledge is only achieved in what is eternal and unchanging. True knowledge is distinguished from all else by its unique nature of being perceived by intellection and without hypothesis. Throughout the Republic, Plato attempts to explain through several images of speech and conceptual examples the essence of what is and what is not true knowledge. Plato’s model of education is reflective of his belief that the purpose of education is to point towards knowledge of the form of the good and the formation of a good soul. How is knowledge achieved? Music and gymnastics in the process of working towards positive formation of the soul

What appears to be so to me is true for me, and what appears to be so to you is true for you. It follows that everyone’s perceptions are equally true. This of course is the extreme form of relativism that Protagoras claims when he asserts that man is the measure of all things in regards to truth. It seems that if all perceptions (e.g. judgments and beliefs) are equally true, there can be no room for expertise. But what is Protagoras to say of our natural inclination that such things as wisdom and the wise really do exist among individuals? If Protagoras’ relativism is to be accepted, he must explain how expertise is possible. Protagoras does not deny that some men are wiser than others, but he disagrees that