Plato's Cave Analysis

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.

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.

We first learn about Plato’s cave in book seven of the Republic. In his book, Plato describes a conversation he has with Socrates. He tells Socrates the story of some men who had lived their entire lives in a cave. These men knew nothing beyond what they could see on the cave wall. One day, a man is freed. At first he rejected his new found knowledge of the world but, once he accepted what he learned outside of the cave, he could never go back to his sheltered existence. The cave is an allegory, a story that has a hidden meaning. Plato is attempting to describe the difference between conventional opinion and getting educated. Plato says “compare the effect of education and of the lack of it” (Plato 175).

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 Plato’s “Allegory of a Cave,” a prisoner trapped in a cave wants freedom. Escaping the cave, he discovers the reality of the world. He is able to see beyond shadows; he can see dimensions and reflections in the water (of himself). Then, he realizes how mournful his former partners in the cave really are and returns to the cave to rejoin them. When he returns the other prisoners see him as deranged and say he returned with corrupted eyes.

Plato was born into a wealthy noble family and was set for a political career until the execution of his mentor, Socrates, completely changed his life course. When Socrates was executed, Plato turned to philosophy and opened a school dedicated to the Socratic search for wisdom in honor of his former mentor. In his teachings, Plato used Allegory’s to allow his students to use their critical thinking abilities to see what is real and important. What is an allegory, you ask? An allegory is simply a story with two different levels, first there are the characters and the surface story and then there is the symbolic or moral meaning that is hidden in the story.

Humankind was created with an innate curiosity about the world it inhabits. Do we know what reality is? The meaning of knowledge? The meaning of life? One might tackle the idea metaphorically. Explaining existing as a journey down the road. Or one who is diligent about understanding what things makes up the world. An example, as a kid, a curious person would take things apart like a piano and sometimes we put it back together. Building creative confidence in people requires strategy and time, and that’s what unlocks the nature within them to reach their potential. Allegory is to reveal a hidden meaning, normally a moral, based on fictional stories. Plato Allegory of the Cave reminds us that the theory of Forms is real and suggests

In the “Allegory of the Cave” the Greek philosopher Plato was a student of Socrates, and was devastated by his mentor’s death. Plato's purpose is to help humanity understand philosophy, the process of enlightenment. He believed that humans are exposed to two worlds at once. He found this difficult to explain to people so he created the story “Allegory of the Cave”. In his allegory, he describes three prisoners that are chained together and want to escape but are afraid because the cave is all they knew. So, one of the prisoners manages to escape and explore the outside world. Then, the prisoner returns back to the cave to tell the other what he saw in the outside world and the prisoners do not believe him. They think it is

The Matrix is a film that delves into many philosophical ideas, one of which is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the allegory, prisoners are chained to the cave wall. They cannot move and are only allowed to see the wall in front of them. Behind them is a burning fire, and puppeteers control the puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners can only perceive what they see on the cave wall, and their conception of reality is based on this incomplete view, which is an imperfect copy of the real world.

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato uses a cave as an analogy between humans and the outside world. Plato describes humans living underground in a dark cave, and not really being able to move. The only thing the humans in the cave can see is shadows along the wall. Maybe the point of this is to show that not many people think outside of the box and are just used to the same schedule day in and day out. When people do “go out of the cave” and branch out, they have to adapt to the change because they are not used to the new found freedom. Once they become familiar with the surroundings and their new abilities, people try to encourage others to think the way they do. Maybe in thinking this way they are trying to bring awareness to the fact that

The Allegory of the Cave ties in with our world and society we live in today in many ways. One way would be that our world we live in values education a lot, more than a lot of things. In Plato: “Allegory of the Cave” the prisoners value education just as much as we do in the modern century. The prisoners praise one another if they guess the right shadow that is going to be displayed. If they guess the wrong shadow then they make fun of one another. As they sit there in the little cave for most of their life they do not really understand or know what education is but they do think the shadow game makes them smarter than the other prisoners. The prisoners think the shadows are real so they feel smart when they guess right as to what they are.

In Plato’s article The Republic he describes that we all exist as part of a society in which he refers to as a cave. Plato says in the opening of this article “Let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened and unenlightened”. With our heads restrained to a wall and not capable to perceive our surrounding, we accept as true the shadows to be reality. He then goes on to explain that with a teacher is the only way that we can move from our state of being a prisoner and moving into a new reality beyond the cave and that we would discover the true reality to be painful, and then want to return to the state of deception of the cave. He explains this by saying “Plato also believes that we are all have the ability within ourselves to

In the story “Allegory of the cave,” Plato, makes a great understanding by telling an allegory of three men stuck in a cave since their childhood and never could see what really is out in the world. Until one of them is let loose and gets to experience, understand, and have a better visual of the world. He then returns to the two men that are still in the cave to tell them everything that is out there but they didn’t recognize him or his voice. Plato illustrates the meaning of the story by highlighting what he wants people to understand, How it impacts literature,and lastly why it is important today .

Plato talks about a cave where prisoners are kept. The prisoners have been in the cave since childhood. They are chained so that their legs and neck won't be able to move around. They are forced to look at a wall in front of them. Then behind the prisoners, there is a fire and between the fire and the prisoners, there is a walkway where people walk. Those people walking is carrying objects. The prisoners see the images on the wall and they believe the images are real since they can't move their heads. Then, if one prisoner were to be freed the fire would hurt his eye for a bit, but then he would notice the images on the wall are not real. The images on the wall are just shadows of the real object in the walkway. Then the freed prisoner goes

He describes the chained prisoners seated inside an isolated cave. The prisoners are made to only see shadows casted by a fire inside the cave. The chains of the prisoners illustrate the boundaries and the prisoners’ lack of understanding of reality, as they are kept restrained by an outside force. The shadows shown to the prisoners are an imperfect representation of what they presume reality to be. Their reality is the casted shadows as it is all they can see being bound by chains. Hence, Plato concludes that we should not trust our senses like the prisoners, as what they see is not