Plato 's Allegory, And Glaucon, The Second Speaker

Imagine yourself sitting inside a dark, damp, cave where the only thing you can see are moving shadows on the cave wall in front of you. You can’t move anywhere or see anything besides the shadows, and these are the only things you’ve seen for your entire life, so these moving dark images are the most real things you’ve ever known. At some point in our childhood we were mentally in this state of darkness, we didn’t know anything about the world or have any complex thoughts. How then, were we brought out of our caves of darkness and misunderstanding? The Allegory of the Cave is a well known section of Plato’s

Plato assumed the existence of human life in a cave. In his view, human beings are tied as prisoners in a cave and they could only see the shadows of real

In Republic II, Glaucon and Socrates pose the question of whether justice is intrinsically good, or instrumentally good. Further, the two men wish to discover which life is best - the just life or the unjust one. While Glaucon argues that the unjust life is best, Socrates argues that the just life is truly better. In this paper, I will summarize both Glaucon’s and Socrates’ arguments, and provide a critical analysis of the opposing views.

In his essay, “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato, argues his idea of how to distinguish the reality and truth from that which is a falsehood. Most essentially, he finds it as important to enlighten others that may remain in that

"The Allegory of the Cave," by Plato, explains that people experience emotional and intellectual revelations throughout different stages in their lives. This excerpt, from his dialogue The Republic, is a conversation between a philosopher and his pupil. The argument made by this philosopher has been interpreted thousands of times across the world. My own interpretation of this allegory is simple enough as Plato expresses his thoughts as separate stages. The stages, very much like life, are represented by growing realizations and newfound "pains." Therefore, each stage in "The Allegory of the Cave" reveals the relation between the growth of the mind and age.

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.

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

The main idea presented by Plato in his infamous Allegory of the Cave is that the average person's perceptions are severely limited by personal perspective. Plato uses the metaphorical situation of prisoners chained together in a way that limited their visual perception to the shadows projected from behind them onto a wall in front of them. He uses that metaphor to illustrate that perspective determines perceptions and also that once an individual achieves a wider or more accurate perspective, it becomes difficult for him to communicate with those who are still limited to the narrower perspective that he may have once shared with them. Plato meant his allegory to apply to the limitations of perspective attributable to social experiences as well as to the absence of formal education and training, particularly in logical reasoning. Plato believed that logical reasoning is a skill that must be learned through formal training and that without adequate training, it is substantially impossible to understand the logical perspective.

Socrates continues the conversation with Glaucon and now focuses on the obligation of the guardians and philosophers to serve the people as a result of their education.

In the Greek society, there was enough wine and spirits for Socrates and his buddies to philosophize on the world around them, beginning the conversation of what is just and not. Ideas transform throughout the conversations of Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon in the Republic forming what justice is in the opinion of Socrates. This opinion, the city in speech, is challenged by Adeimantus and Glaucon but Socrates eloquently responds to their challenges. Socrates’ answers with his city of speech are effective against the challenges of Adeimantus and Glaucon because every human has a soul with decency that is almost impossible to deny.

Socrates points out that this allegory corresponds to the earlier discussion about the good. Hence, it relates to the analogy of the sun and the analogy of the divided line. Socrates describes analogy of the sun as "a child of the good and most similar to it". He begins with saying that there are things which we can see and feel (visible realm) and there is the good itself, something we can only think about (intelligible realm). He continues, saying that eyesight requires light in order for object to be seen. Light comes from the sun, hence, sun gives a possibility for objects to be seen. Socrates compares the relationship between sight and the sun to the intellect and the good. Good gives power to things that are known. So, just as sun enables

Humankind is filled with individuals testing each other and competing with one another to be the greatest, ignoring the reality of life. In the “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato justifies this by displaying a parable that serves as a metaphor for life. This parable teaches the reader how people wish to remain in their comfort zones and disregard the truth. It portrays the struggle of facing different realities that alter the illusion of one's life. In the story, he described a group of prisoners chained inside a dark cave; their only source of light comes from a burning fire that is used to create shadows. These shadows display images that the prisoners each interpret as the reality; however, once one is released and is struck by the light, he

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

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 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.