Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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 Cave, the prisoners are tied down with chains, hand, and foot under bondage. In fact they have been there since their childhood, which much like matrix people are seen as in reality being bound within a pad whereby they are feed images/illusions which keep them in a dreamlike state and they have been in this bondage by virtue of the virtual reality pads in the fields since their youth and like the allegory of the Cave they are completely unaware of such a predicament since in regards to the Cave they have become conditioned to the shadows that dance upon the wall and do not see the true forms of which the shadow is a mere non-substantial pattern of. In the Matrix, within the person of the virtual world, it is a non-substantial pattern of the world, it is reflective of the real world, it is a shadow in its form and nature being a simulation of the world at a particular point in history. Like the prisoners in the cave, those who are prisoners in the system of a matrix are held in their calm state by reason of the illusion that stimulates them and tricks them into remaining asleep or rather into being ignorant of the fact that they are prisoners in pads so the machines can feed on their bio-energy. The shadows on the wall which are reflective is to keep the prisoners on the Cave unaware of the fact that they are prisoners, that they are under bondage and have never truly seen life outside of the Cave. The shadows on the walls are by puppets, perchance puppeteers. They could be seen as the agents, whom within the Matrix being programs are to maintain that the humans asleep in the matrix remain in their comatose state, they are to support the illusion, by keeping man actively ignorant of what is truly happening, so they never wake up. The puppeteers of the puppets which are seen on the wall to keep the mind of the prisoners stimulated so they never realize that they are chained, and only have a vision that is straightforward, which is basically saying their minds are only subjected to a single perspective and they are blind to the degree of seeing within other perspectives, broader perspectives and this in and of itself is a limitation.

Prompt: Define Plato 's “Allegory of the Cave”. What is the central message? Is he describing education alone? Where does politics come in?

On the surface of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” it is just a simple piece, but the main purpose of the piece is to explain people living in a world of face value and having individuals break free from the main idea to create a new sense of what the world is truly about. In here, Plato uses the writing style of allegory to encompass the use of imagery and symbolism to explain his purpose. He also uses very clever dialogue with constant repetition to represent a bigger idea about the philosophy with chained up people living in a cave of shadows.

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

As Socrates is describing the cave and the situation, he stresses the point that the prisoners are completely oblivious as to what is reality as they would know nothing but the shadows casted by items held by the puppeteers, and believe this to be their own reality. This is important to the story as it shows that what we believe is real from the moment we are born is completely wrong based on our own flawed interpretations of reality. The point so far is that it is not what we can see but what we can’t see is what grasps our minds and Plato describes this thinking as “imagination.”

Ideas from the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy states that major questions philosophers ask themselves is what is reality, knowledge or the meaning of life. Topics they tend to take on figuratively. Explaining existence as a journey or any other sort of opportunity. The philosopher plato explains this idea in the allegory of the cave and somewhat of the simile of the divided line. This topic of life and knowledge can also be analyzed in the movie Hilary and Jackie.

In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” the allegory implies that for the people living in a world of the senses, there is this idea that they blindly follow and accept the things that they are acquainted with. The prisoners in the cave have been bound to chains and forced to face only one direction their entire lives and that is at the wall. Because they cannot turn around and see the world that is behind them they only have knowledge of the things they have been exposed to (the shadows) so they believe that the shadows are the truest things of the world. Once they are set free from the chains and can finally turn around they realize that there was more to their world than they had originally thought.

Knowledge is the perception by sentient beings of an upper world filled with ideas and pure forms of objects instead of the material, real-world forms that these sentient beings sense. Plato, in his Allegory of the Cave, uses an analogy between prisoners chained in a cave who can only see reality as shadows on the wall. In his story, one escapes, and discovers the “true” world of reality above, but when he returns, none of his friends believe him and they say that one would be a fool for going to the true world of perception. Plato claims through Socrates, “The world of our sight is like the habitation in prison, the fire-light there to the sunlight here, the ascent and the view of the upper world is the rising of the soul into the world of

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave where the prisoners have been since their childhood. One of the prisoners breaks free and leaves the cave. The sun blinds him because his eyes were accustomed to the dark. When the prisoner was removed from the cave and brought into the world, the disorientation would be even harsher; the light of the sun would be even more vivid than the fire. But as his eye adjust, the freed prisoner would be able to observe beyond the shadows. As he begins to comprehend his new world, and sees that the sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning. He sees aspects and reflections in the water. I would believe after he spends some

He goes on to suggest that the prisoner would not be able to perceive the nature of this new reality until he studies his surroundings: the moon and the sun, the earth and its seasons. This prisoner has not only become freed, but educated as well. Plato’s other main point is that only once we receive true education of the nature of things around us, we will become free. Lastly, Socrates hypothesizes that if the prisoner were to return back to the cave, he would not be able to function in its society because he now knows that guessing the next shadow isn’t really understanding

Self-reliance Everything seems to be too good to be true, from candidates’ political campaigns to stores “incredibly low” prices, creating the question, is this real? In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” he illustrates the notion that the world we see is not the “real” world, as it really exists. He describes his idea with prisoners living in a cave all of their lives without knowing that the outside world exists until one of them is released and encountered the outside world.

Most individuals have something that hinders them from increasing their knowledge, whether it be a mental or physical issue. Some people are afraid of growth, some people scare others so they will not learn more, and some people have reached the limits of their intellectual capabilities. Whatever the issue might be, society’s rules, normalities, and the people in it play a major role in the overall extensive grasp for knowledge. Throughout life almost all people search for information, how that information is attained and what is learned from it differs from person to person. For example, in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, people are chained inside of a cave since childhood by their captors who distort the prisoner’s sense of reality by playing

In this allegory, Plato displays a hypothetical situation of Socrates speaking with Glaucon about the importance of knowledge and how a lack of it can severely affect a person or group of people. He does this by describing prisoners in a cave whose necks and legs are fettered making them unable to move. There is a wall behind them with a fire behind that. Things are moved in between the fire and the wall so shadows are cast on the wall the prisoners are facing. Since the prisoners only see the shadows, that is what they view as real.

This then reminds me of the one prisoner that was released who later returns back after experiencing reality. The other prisoners could not believe him either the same way Mariama could not believe me. So in other words, most people live their lives pretty much like those prisoners in Plato’s Cave, A cave that has been constructed by the people around them, the media, government, schools, entertainment industries. This people have played a major role in putting millions of people in caves, since it’s difficult for people to face reality in today’s society, we can only become