Plato's Cave And Marx

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

After the prisoner has gained new found knowledge, he feels pity for those who are still imprisoned and unaware of the world around them. He knows now that their skills and perceptions are useless in the real world. Plato says “…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?” (p. 3). It is unfortunate that most people are unable to leave the cave. However, those who do have the privilege of learning the truth have an obligation to go back and share with those who remain in darkness - to share with them as much truth as they are capable of understanding. “…before his eyes had become steady would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he

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

Have you ever judged a person, an object, or even a place by what it looks like on the outside? Or maybe you have judged all of that just by what someone else has told you. Everyone in this world has either judged someone or something in their lifetime or has been judged. Many people out there in the world also believe they know many things and have tried to get the point across to someone and well, they just don’t believe them in any way. They believe there point of view is more right than the other persons and sometimes that can get a little out of hand, depending on who you are dealing with. I guess the major point in all this is to never judge a book by its cover, always learn yourself.

What this means is that a truly good person cannot be harmed but when you try to harm the good person, you actually end up harming yourself. Socrates and Plato both think that although it may not be seen that the tortured virtuous man is happier than the happy looking evil man, it can be determined that it is better to have the evil done to you than to actually do that same evil onto somebody else. Plato believes that although suffering is awful at the time, doing Good is good for you and your soul. With this idea, Plato used the life of Socrates as an example. Julia Annas believes, “Plato was influenced by the example of Socrates, who gave up worldly success for philosophy, and who ended up 54 condemned as a criminal and executed-yet who clearly

In Plato’s book, the Republic, in a story that the ancient Greek philosopher shows to his student Glaucon, by using an allegory of peoples that are condemned to live in a cave for all their lives, the philosopher shows how people can be deceived by many images that they see from the distance and when they have not enough information to judge them. The life of the people who lived in the communist Eastern Europe during the second half of the twentieth century resembled very much with Plato’s prisoners. Isolated from the rest of the world, often misinformed about what was going on behind the iron curtain, they were deprived from understanding what was going on with the rest

Dantes’s actions following his escape from prison could be seen as his attempt to serve justice that the system failed in doing. His actions, however, may be a better representation of revenge. In prison, Dantes meets Abbe Faria, another prisoner. They meet through a hole that Faria created in the wall between their cells thinking he was digging to the outside of the prison to escape. Dantes recounts to the Abbe how he came to be in the prison, and the Abbe brings to light the idea that maybe it was a plot that put Dantes there. After he helps Dante to realize this, the Abbe comes to regret it: “‘I regret having helped you in your investigation and said what I did to you … Because I have insinuated a feeling into your heart that was not previously

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato uses this to describe how we learn and what the effect of it is on our nature. Along with Socrates, this theory is also associated with the Forms (or ideas) and that these Forms are the true definition of real knowledge (Appearance). The Cave theory also shows that the beginning of the history of philosophy was very two sided. The Allegory of the Cave is divided into three sections: Being inside the cave, leaving the cave, and returning to the cave (Appearance).

For thousands of years man has tried to determine what is fact and what is fiction in the world. The Matrix movie conveys what man has been trying to do in a cinematic masterpiece. The creator’s main influences to making The Matrix were Karl Marx and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Who Inspired). Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto tries to highlight the social inequalities that have occurred during the industrial revolution between man and machine while Plato’s Allegory of the Cave tries to help inform people that they need to become more self-aware of their oppressors. The film The Matrix combines these two ideas into one experience.

I have always been stubbornly convinced that Plato is one of the best Western philosophers of the pen (in my understanding can be compared with the Chinese Confucius). For me, this philosopher's most powerful claim is not the "ideal country" that is widely regarded today as a fictional world, but is also fictitious. To me, I like his cave metaphor, the metaphor says is: a person (more often a group of people) in the cave was chained, tied to the Face to see their own image, and then that is true, and for whom the encouragement or sadness, for a fortuitous reason, was or initiative to dismantle the chain, such an inexplicable access to unfamiliar freedom of people. Suddenly, this person see the glare of the sun, he gradually liked the light, and thus consider the

When Plato wrote “The Cave”, he was talking about how the process of learning philosophy. You are in a cave where you are only shown a fraction of the truth, and you believe it to be true because you have never been shown, or have known, anything different. But then someone comes along and shows you the way to enlightenment, and brings you to a higher level of understanding by showing you that the things you have perceived as real were not real at all, but shadows of the real figures dancing along the walls. You begin to explore the outside world for the first time, absorbing this new found information; but then you think back to the others that are still stuck in the cave. You return to those people to show them this new world and its knowledge, but they do not take you seriously because you have grown unaccustomed to the conditions of the cave, your eyes cannot see well in the dark anymore; and therefore, they do not take you choose to ignore you because you are no longer like them and on their level of understanding. Or perhaps they would get angry with you because you are annoying them with knowledge they do not want, and would possibly want you out of their lives for it. But still you continue to try because that is your obligation to society, to share the knowledge to better everyone for the greater good. The cave has been discussed for the past 2000 years since Plato wrote it in his book “The Republic”. From this allegory, and the book, the philosophers after

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's 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 difficult

Plato describes this scary like cave in Allegory of the Cave. he describes the world as if there are alot of undisclosed things out there. From the day we were born we were told so many things whether they are true or not. We are so occupied into day’s society that we can’t see what truly is right and wrong. Today there is the media, military, government, school, work, shops , food, and so many other things that keep us occupied from the truth. We are even more hidden from the truth today than they were thousands of years ago. We the people are almost like the prisoners and the government, media or the military play the shadows and puppeteers. They control our life and how we act unless we break free and walk out of the cave. Once we break

Marx examines human beings from the perspective of social practices and social relationships. In his view, human nature incorporates both natural attributes and social attributes, and human characters are not solely shaped by natural attributes but are shaped by the unity of individuals and social activities, which refers to the effect of the interrelationships between human themselves and social activities.

There are few core values that both scholars and laymen alike can agree serve as integral components to understanding human existence. While these values are often broad in nature, they help build the fundamental foundations to answer common existential questions that plague mankind. One of the most prominent core values that is frequently discussed by both professionals in academic circles and inquisitive minds in casual conversations is the value of truth. Truth appears to be a simple and objective concept on the surface; however, its breadth is vast and can create numerous sub-discussions on the nature of humanity and existence. Many philosophers have expounded in the nature of truth: what it is, what it means in relation to humanity, and how understanding the essence of truth can aid in the quest to answer mankind 's existential questions. One of the most famous allegorical tales that pontificates on the reality of truth is Plato 's The Cave, using the story of two chained characters forced to understand their reality based on mere shadows of images passing through a fire behind them. This paper seeks to explode Plato 's ideas of truth in The Cave, asking questions on truth 's universal value, the absolute nature of truth, and how truth can be both a problematic and useful value when applied to society at large.