Plato : Art, Poetry And The Theory Of Forms

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.

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is just one small part of his work The Republic. In this piece, in particular his use of allegory and dialogue become the two main rhetorical devices he uses to

The drawings that appear repeatedly as you research into the many interpretations of Plato’s words create a signified representation based on the signifiers Plato escribed in his writings – the words he used. The existence of such a variety of images, from different times, drawn in different ways, for different reasons, all depicting the same scenario but with different views on the cave Plato describes in his dialogue with Socrates, is testament the existence of the metaphysical world. All the images are different, yet all have a certain caveness, atmosphere of a cave, which makes them undoubtedly the visual depictions of Plato’s theory of

Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" presents a vision of humans as slaves chained in front of a fire observing the shadows of things on the cave wall in front of them. The shadows are the only "reality" the slaves know. Plato argues that there is a basic flaw in how we humans mistake our limited perceptions as reality, truth and goodness. The allegory reveals how that flaw affects our education, our spirituality and our politics.

Plato's views on Forms, Ideas, and Knowledge are all expressed beautifully in the allegory of

In his allegory of the cave, Plato describes a scenario in which chained-up prisoners in a cave understand the reality of their world by observing the shadows on a cave wall. Unable to turn around, what seems to be reality are but cast shadows of puppets meant to deceive the prisoners. In the allegory, a prisoner is released from his chains and allowed to leave the cave. On his way out, he sees the fire, he sees the puppets, and then he sees the sun. Blinded by the sunlight, he could only stare down to view the shadows cast onto the floor. He gradually looks up to see the reflections of objects and people in the water and then the objects and people themselves. Angered and aware of reality, the freed prisoner begins to understand illusion

In Plato’s essay, “Allegory of The Cave” Plato creates a story about three prisoners in a cave, through this he further makes his point that without knowledge our view of the truth is askew. Plato explains that the three hostages have been shackled in the dark cave their whole lives unable to see the real world. The only piece of actuality they can see are shadows of people crossing in front of the opening of the cave. These figures can drive anyone insane without having any real truth to what the images could be. Without any awareness of the real world just outside of the cave they are forced to adapt and therefore accept their own reality. Plato goes on to say that, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (122). The obscurities are significant because they are the only apprehension the prisoners have, they have nothing to compare it to. The actuality of it to the captives is something other than the truth would be outside of the cave. The forms on the wall are only just shadows, but to them that is everything they have ever known. Plato through his legend portrays

Plato's theory of forms, also called his theory of ideas, states that there is another world, separate from the material world that we live in called the "eternal world of forms". This world, to Plato, is more real than the one we live in. His theory is shown in his Allegory of the Cave (from The Republic, Book VII), where the prisoners only live in what they think is a real world, but really it is a shadow of reality. According to Plato, to the prisoners in the allegory and to humanity in the material world "truth would be literally nothing but shadows" and he believes us to be as ignorant as the people in the cave. Plato followed the belief that in order for something to be real it has to be permanent, and as everything in the world we

Plato, being a Socratic apprentice, followed and transcribed the experiences Socrates had in his teachings and search of understanding. In Plato’s first work, The Allegory of the Cave, Socrates forms the understanding between appearance vs. reality and the deceptions we are subject to by the use of forms. In the cave, the prisoners’ experiences are limited to what their senses can tell them, the shadows on the walls, and their shackles; these appearances are all that they have to form their ideas. When one of the prisoners begins to question his reality he makes his way out of the cave and into the day light. This prisoners understanding of his reality has now expanded, thus the theory of forms; when he returns to the cave to spread the news, the others do not believe him. They have been deceived by their reality and what

Plato, arguably one of the most famous philosophers in history is known for his dialogues and theory of Forms. The theory of Forms argues that ideas (non-physical forms) are more real than tangible objects or what our senses perceive. According to Plato, there is the visible realm and intelligible realm. Reality could be divided into three different levels; the level of appearances, the real level, and the ideal level which he explains through the analogy of the ‘Divided Line’ in The Republic.

“Everything which exist in this world and all things that we see around us are not as they appear to us” this is the core idea behind plato’s theory of forms.From this idea only he moves towards explaining his world of forms or ideas.

What Socrates is attempting to explain to Glaucon in the above passage is that all the forms arise out of The Form of Good. The Form of Good is essentially the Ideal world. Everything in the Phenomenal world, or the world that each individual person and society as a whole exists physically in, is a less-Good representation of the Ideal Realm; in the allegory of "The Cave", the Phenomenal world is represented by shadows of actual things being thrown onto a wall. So, Socrates is saying to Glaucon that the Ideal realm is a perfected, real version of our own world, and that each thing contained within our world has an Ideal form, of which the physical objects are merely bad representations. Interpreters of Plato should be careful not to think of the Phenomenal world as evil in comparison to the Ideal realm; that idea would be akin to thinking of a broken bicycle as evil in comparison to a working bicycle. Neoplatonists do not believe in good or evil, only 'good' or 'less good'. Plato's forms have suffered many different interpretations over the years, but one can safely say in simple terms that The Forms result from the imagination taking a stab at perfection. Whether or not Plato considered their existence as a reality is beside the point. Many Renaissance philosophers, often called theologians by

Plato recognizes that knowledge and understanding of the Forms is of momentous value, because they are pre-eminent and transcendent goods. Possession of the Forms, in a sense that does not imply ownership, is the product of reason — visualised as the most worthwhile attribute of the human soul — and it is this possession which leads to human happiness. A happiness shared by all of those who arrive at a true realisation of the Forms, through the supremacy and superiority of human reason [12]. For Plato, an action is approved of not simply because it is preferred by reason, but because reason will prefer it when reason has succeeded in apprehending the Good, and applying that apprehension to the task of choosing actions [13].

Plato's theory of The Forms argued that everything in the natural world is representative of the ideal of that form. For example, a table is representative of the ideal form Table. The form is the perfect ideal on which the physical table is modeled. These forms do not exist in the natural world, as they are perfect, and there is nothing perfect in the natural world. Rather the forms exist in the invisible realm,