Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Compared To The Human Condition Essay

His body isn’t ready for the direct sunlight and his mind cannot comprehend the world in comparison to what he felt he knew. In time, the man is able to see that all of the previously “known” information he had was completely false but also that he must start a different journey in order to find himself as the way of life he was previously use to, in which guessing was the way of judging knowledge, is ineffective and useless to him now. Finally, the prisoner returns to the cave with a new base of knowledge. He tried to share this information with his fellow prisoners but after hearing about his travels and that they were in fact wrong the prisoned men said to him that “up he went and down he came without eyes, and that it was better to not even think of ascending” ("The Simile of the Cave." Republic, 1974) . He is then met with resistance in offering them help and freedom from their binds. They threaten “if anyone tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender and put him to death”, it is as if they feel that his “loss of sight” is death to them and they are perfectly happy with the information that they know to be true ("The Simile of the Cave." Republic, 1974) .

“The world you see is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth…Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what

As Plato puts it, everyone is in a cave where reality and perceptions are distorted. Plato states:

The prisoners have been in these conditions since their earliest stages of life. The cave, the wall, and the chains are all the prisoners have ever known. Behind the prisoners, there was a raised path. Above the walkway was a platform, where there was a fire burning, and in front of the fire, was a parapet, which as Plato described it , was like that of the screens Puppeteers use to hide themselves and have the puppets be visible . Each and every day, the prisoners see nothing, but the shadows of the objects and people passing between them and the fire. For their entire lives, the prisoners are exposed to nothing but those images and the sounds made by those walking around. These shadows are all they have ever known, in essence; these shadows are their only “reality”. As time passed, the prisoners would grow accustomed to these sights, later on the prisoners would match the objects with names and the familiar sounds to the images of the shadows (514; Appendix A). In discussing the allegory with Glaucon, Socrates toys around the concept of what could happen to a prisoner should they be released after having lived their lives in the cave, with the only knowledge the possess of the world, are the images and sounds by the wall.

Moreover, “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato illustrates a civilization of physically restricted prisoners. Creating a setting in which underground prisoners are only exposed to a wall, its shadows (whom they see as beings), and the people around them, Plato displays a society of ignorant people who only know what they are able to physically see and experience every single day. However, once liberated by other freed people, these prisoners are able to attain knowledge more easily, and slowly, their individual truths become closer to reality. Despite initially being perplexed and irritated with the realization that what they saw and knew as prisoners is not the actuality of how things are, they, consequently, gain the ability to understand more about the world with their newfound knowledge. Thus, the freed people attempt to free the other prisoners from their chains, and expose them

When the prisoner begins his journey, he is reluctant, like Montag. “And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he 's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.” This shows that like Montag, the prisoner has ideas of what he will encounter. As the Allegory continues, the prisoner thinks back on his past life, in the dreary cave, chained up and begins to pity those he left behind. “And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them? Certainly, he would.” Both characters realize it is a privilege to be in the situations they are in, even if they are alone. They're grateful to know rather than be stuck in their past, ignorant ways, like those stuck in the city and the cave. In both texts, the sun is a cause of sudden realization. In the Allegory of the Cave, the prisoner realizes there is more to the world than the shackles and the shadows he was accustomed to, while Montag realizes that time continues with or without you. Both realizations are vital to the path of enlightenment both characters

Life for the prisoners goes on this way without occurrence until one of them is freed, led up outside the cave, and shown the real world. The freed person will realize that the truth of the shadowed reality is actually a falsehood. After this realization the person who visited the upper world is returned to imprisonment in the cave. Her eyes have to adjust to the darkness of the cave once again. However, this adjustment naturally takes a long time. As a result, the once free person can no longer see the shadows as well as she did before her release into the upper world. To the people who have remained in the cave, it seems as though going into the upper world has destroyed her faculty for seeing "reality." Some of the captives then say that trying to reach the outer world is harmful, and that anyone caught trying to loose themselves or another person for the purpose of reaching the outside will be punished. Plato says that the cave symbolizes the world of sight and the outside represents the world of knowledge. Plato also instructs people to "interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world." Plato's belief is that in the "world of knowledge the idea of good appears," and that humans should strive to reach this goodness through philosophical thought.

Once the cave prisoners and Neo are released from their state of ignorance, they start to become more understanding of the outside world, as represented by the cave dwellers escaping the cave, and Neo leaving the matrix. As the prisoners are in the cave, watching the shadows pass on the wall, one of their prisoners is released from the shackles. Because of his natural curiosity, the prisoners turns his head to look outside the cave. Whilst looking outside the cave, the light from outside and will cause him to “suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will not be able to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows” (33-35). Because of the looming darkness always present in the cave, the bright light of the sun blinds the prisoner momentarily.

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

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

This paper discussed The Allegory of The Cave in Plato's Republic, and tries to unfold the messages Plato wishes to convey with regard to his conception of reality, knowledge and education.

The man ran up the hill towards the light and the end of the cave where he was temporarily blinded because he was used to the darkness inside of the cave. Of course this is all very confusing to him and maybe even angers him because he does not understand what he is seeing. Eventually this man will gain knowledge of the world and everything in it, from the shadows of the objects he saw on the wall of the cave all the way up to how the sun helps the earth. He will see that was he was made to see and understand was not reality but just was he was made to believe. This freed man now pities the other prisoners that are still inside the cave because he realizes how wrong they were about everything they know. Plato describes how if the freed prisoner were to go back to the cave and tell the others what he has seen that they would criticize him, laugh at him and tell him he would have been better off if he had never escaped. They even go as far to say that if another person were to be released that they should be caught and killed so as to not follow the same fate as the released prisoner.

Once one of the prisoner’s is released, he is forced to look at the fire and the objects that once made up his perceived reality, and realizes that the new images he is made to acknowledge are now the accepted forms of reality.

In the "Allegory of the Cave," the chained down prisoners are limited with their perception on reality. At

“See human beings as though they were in an underground cave-like dwelling” (193). Although Plato’s famous allegory of the cave doesn’t appear until Book VII of The Republic, its significance cannot be understated. The meaning behind the Greek philosopher’s imagery manifests itself throughout the rest of the work, specifically Book I. After outlining the description of the cave and demonstrating how the rest of The Republic dramatizes it, I argue that Plato (or Plato’s Socrates) is revealing a relationship that posits philosophy, which can only come about through mutual respect, as critical for the city’s well-being, but ultimately not enough just by itself.