Plato 's Allegory Of The Cave Essay

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.

Because of how we live, true reality is not obvious to most of us. However, we mistake what we see and hear for reality and truth. This is the basic premise for Plato抯 Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners sit in a cave, chained down, watching images cast on the wall in front of them. They accept these views as reality and they are unable to grasp their overall situation: the cave and images are a ruse, a mere shadow show orchestrated for them by unseen men. At some point, a prisoner is set free and is forced to see the situation inside the cave. Initially, one does not want to give up the security of his or her familiar reality; the person has to be dragged past the fire and up the entranceway. This is a

The stages of Plato’s “cave journey” begin with people stuck in a dark cave. They are chained from birth, unable to move their bodies and can only see straight ahead. A fire behind them creates the shadows of objects being flashed on a wall in front of them. They have never seen the real objects, so they believe the shadows of the objects to be real. The people stuck in the cave begin a guessing game; trying to guess which objects will appear next, and whoever guess correctly would be praised by the others. At the mouth of the cave there is a glimmer of light, and the possibility of life outside the cave.

In Plato’s, Allegory of the cave, a key theory I found was the importance of education. Plato uses an “allegory to illustrate the dilemma facing the psyche in the ascent to knowledge of the imperishable and unchanging forms” (104) Based on my research of the republic, the allegory can reveal multiple hidden messages. Plato describes, ordinary mortals are chained within an underground chamber, which according to Fiero, represents the psyche imprisoned within the human body. These mortals can’t look sideways only straight ahead. They also can’t leave the cave and are facing a cave wall that they can see shadows from a fire of what they imagine are men. These mortals have been in this cave since childhood, which makes them believe the shadows themselves are the men, not a reflection of an actual man. Again, according to Fiero, the light, represents true knowledge, and the shadows on the walls of the cave represent the imperfect and perishable imitations of the forms that occupy the world of the senses.

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

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.

Many, even perhaps all of the great religious texts we have read in this class have talked and discussed about the individual human ego. Although there is no absolutely solid evidence to prove that the Bhagavad-Gita and the Tao Te Ching have a relation that influenced each other, the core ideas of these two great works from two great ancient culture have surprising similarities. This discovery can be explained by the similarity of Chinese and Indian cultural background. However, in Plato’s works (the Five Dialogues and the Republic), we are able to find pieces about importance of our ego as well. Plato is one of the most important philosophers in western history. That brings us a question, why ego is such significant for both western and eastern philosophers and religious works?

Plato’s logical strategy in the allegory of the cave is of deductive reasoning. Plato uses a cave containing people bound by chains which constrict their neck and legs in such a way that they are unable to turn around and there is a fire roaring behind them casting shadows on the wall. Since the prisoners cannot turn their heads to see what is casting the shadow the only thing they can perceive are the shadows and the sounds that seem to becoming from them. This is what Plato argues in the allegory of the cave “To them, I said, the truth would literally be nothing but the shadows of the images.”(The Allegory of the Cave Plato). Since these prisoners know nothing outside of the cave they are ignorant of the “light” and are content on

At the very beginning of Book VII, Socrates explains his allegory of the cave. Humans are placed in chains in the cave from birth. They cannot move and can only see what is directly in front of them. Behind them, hidden where they do not see, is a wall, a fire, and puppets with their handlers. The puppets cast shadows on the cave wall in front of the prisoners, and because they have never experienced anything else, they are

One of Plato’s more famous writings, The Allegory of the Cave, Plato outlines the story of a man who breaks free of his constraints and comes to learn of new ideas and levels of thought that exist outside of the human level of thinking. However, after having learned so many new concepts, he returns to his fellow beings and attempts to reveal his findings but is rejected and threatened with death. This dialogue is an apparent reference to his teacher’s theories in philosophy and his ultimate demise for his beliefs but is also a relation to the theory of the Divided Line. This essay will analyze major points in The Allegory of the Cave and see how it relates to the Theory of the Divided Line. Also, this

In society today most people live by what is call “social norms”, most people follow these norms and some choose not to follow them. Social norms are certain things in life that everyone does to be accepted by their co-workers, family, friends and even strangers. Some may feel that they have to live by these norms to get through life without being rejected and to be known as a “normal” person, hence the word “norm”. If a person were to stray from this path and just do what they felt like doing and do what made them happy as an individual, would they be criticized? In Plato’s Allegory of a Cave he describes an example of people conforming to the norm they were born into and then shows the results of a person emerging from this community

It seems to me that Socrates has set up each part of this analogy to represent a separate part of the philosophers struggle toward truly becoming a philosopher and achieving the study of philosophy. The cave itself seems to represent the societal norms that will be forced upon the upcoming philosopher from birth. While the philosopher is being brought up knowing only one thing as the truth he must find the strength to break himself free of the chains that bind him to the non-philosophical souls of society and begin to question what is known as “truth”.

When you lose the person who matters most to you in this world, time alters. Time is no longer a linear progression of events. Time becomes a memory of another life. Ten years pass within a day, then you wake up and another decade has been added to the distance, an alien life form, a foreign place, another person inhabiting your body in the past, and, yet, the memories flood the goop of your brain, as if the single greatest loss of your life happened this morning.

Since ancient times, people have looked up to the sun as an important part to their lives. For example, the Aztecs built, Teotihuacan, to be able to locate the exact point where the sun will reach its highest point. In the Egyptian civilization, Egyptians worshiped the sun as if it was a god. They named the god Horus, who they offered many sacrifices including human flesh to satisfy the god (Ahmed 2010). All of these civilizations were interactive with their environment, but imagine if one knew only of the reality they believed inside of a cave not experiencing events within the real world. In Plato’s, Allegory of the Cave, he describes the scenario of prisoners kept isolated in a cave left to come up with a reality that they comprehended with the images that they saw in front of them. This applies especially to politics, because people are left to decipher the context of the speeches many of the government leaders give, but seldom explain their motives. The policies proposed by presidential candidates obscure the reality of their motives within their campaigns by appealing to the majority 's’ opinion on specific issues that the government needs to address.