The Allegory Of The People

Coming to college, I was eager to formally learn more about philosophy. As we began to study works of Plato, I found the Allegory of the Cave to be especially interesting. The thought of this specific concept lingered with me for a while as I had little time to stop and think about it. One night however, I could do some deep thinking and began unlocking a great door whose key was given to me by Plato’s allegory.

In the Allegory of the Cave there are chained prisoners in cave who can only stare at the cave wall in front of them. At the back there is a long entrance with a staircase the width of the cave and a fire burning in the distance. They see only shadows projected in front of them from a raised platform and hear an echo that they attribute to what they observe. They talk about and name the shadows of objects they see before them. To them the truth are the shadows. Then one day one of the prisoners is released. He is told that what he saw before was an illusion. Once he is outside it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sun. First he observed the shadows of thing then their reflection and finally the actual object. Remembering his previous state he goes back to the cave and tries to explain that everything is an illusion but they laugh at him and think he’s crazy. They believe it best not to ascend and they choose to remain as they are. The cave represented opinion. The shadows that are cast on to the wall represented physical objects. The prisoners represented the common people (Welles).

The process of apprehending true knowledge is a task unfit for those who cannot overcome the concepts that the truth is associated with. This task of discovering knowledge tests an individual and their dedication to the process. However, this process is grueling and does not always yield the expected or desired result. According to philosophers, such as Socrates and Plato, humans are born with innate knowledge that becomes accessible through reasoning and life experiences. Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave describes of a group of people, in a cave, that have been shielded from society for their entire lives and were given an alternate and limited education. One man is forced out of the cave and into the light of the real world, where he

Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” examines the quest, responsibility, and cost of intellectual enlightenment. The story is of a man, being held prisoner since birth, being freed and learning that his perception of reality was inaccurate. He shared his discovery, which was met with contention and anger from the people in his society when he tried to relieve them of their ignorance. The group were all born prisoners in a cave where they could not see behind them, and only could hear the echoes, and see the shadows cast of people and items moving behind them. One day, the man was released and was forced to embark out of the dwelling to see that it was actual people and inanimate objects being reflected in front of them. After having difficulty

In Plato's “The Cave” shows us a group of prisoners chained to face a wall. A fire behind them casts shadows on the wall their facing of a variety of different things however they can not see what they truly are. The prisoners only reality is the shadows and the sound they associate with these shadows. They truly have no understanding of what happening other than what they see on the wall and what they hear. This distorted view of the world

At Preston high school, it was like any other day, kids being bullied and drugs being used. This kind of stuff went on everyday inside of Preston High school, but this school was all they had in the town of Rapid City and the people got used to it. It was a more southern town, located in Alabama. Many words can describe what goes on there; hatred, abuse, and slacking. But the school is not all bad, as they had good people there, but the kind of people that were bullied. There was a girl named Jenna that was always a bully, because she was the popular girl, with the thought of being better than everyone else, especially with her amazing beauty and physique. Every day she bullied poor little Carlos. He never did anything wrong, but she was

Plato’s allegory of the cave, located in Book VII of The Republic is one of the most famous allegories in which he has created. This simile touches base on a number of philosophical ideas which Plato developed over the progression of The Republic (Plato, G.M.A Grube, 1993), the most noticeable being the dividing line. The dividing line is the point between the world of ideas where we live and the world of the forms which is in the heavens. This allegory of the cave helps people understand the theory on which philosophy is based. It is also in this Book where the education of the guardians is outlined.

These shadows in the cave are mere images, the lowest of the epistemological form of knowledge in the divided line. The objects which produce these shadows are the sense particulars. The sense particulars can then be counted e.g. three tree “puppets” this ability to count corresponds to the mathematical objects level of the divided line. Then once the person leaves the cave, he is able to see the actual forms, not just shadows or puppets, he is able to see the real object, and this conforms to the forms. Lastly, the sun is the thing that makes all life possible which is analogous to the ultimate Good which make all of the forms of knowledge even possible.

In Allegory of the Cave video file we were given (Williams, 2008), we hear about people who have spent their entire lives chained in a cave only seeing shadows

In his Allegory Plato shows us how a man ascends from the darkness of a cave to the light of the outside world. In this ascent Plato’s man passes through four distinct stages of cognition: from imagination, to belief, understanding, and finally knowledge.

In the book seven of the “ The Republic” it gives Plato’s famous story, “Allegory Of The Cave”, a protracted dialogue between a teacher and a student, where the author emphasizes that real knowledge comes from philosophical reasoning, and not through heuristic reasoning. Plato elucidates his theory by creating a utopian scenario where those who believe in heuristic reasoning are described as prisoners inside a cave, whom bodies are tied and the only view they have is a stone wall, where they see shadows of people who are outside passing by the cave carrying different objects. In this scene Plato symbolizes the cave as the world and the prisoners as the ignorant people who only believe in what they see and hear. Plato says, “To them… the truth

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave represents many things, but as a whole it represents the understanding of knowledge and what to do with the knowledge that has been gained. The Allegory of the Cave goes on to compare our growth with knowledge to prisoners coming out of a cave. The cave refers to the general amount of knowlege that everyone has. The people coming out of the cave is the ascent to gaining new knowledge.

The novel, Lord of the Flies, is an allegory for humanity meaning the characters, setting and objects have a higher meaning. An allegory is a literary work that can be interpreted to reveal a deeper, hidden message or meaning. The novel teaches a lesson on mankind and humanity through the perspective of boys stranded on an island while the outside world tells another. For example, Roger, Simon and the signal fire, each represent a different part of humanity and the way an individual responds to an unfamiliar environment.

Human condition, without education, is compared to people being trapped in a prison dwelling; only mindful the shadows, what they see, and unaware of the rest of the world. The world beyond this cave holds a higher realm that must be accessed to gain intelligible knowledge. In this allegory, one of the people in the prison dwelling is freed, forced to turn around to face the fire casting the shadows, and dragged out the cave into the light. At first, it is excruciating to take this journey until he learns to adjust to his surroundings (Brennan, J. F., 1998, p. 17). This represents the struggle, and effort involved in gaining knowledge, and learn as a philosopher would.

Socrates describes people in a cave since birth, bound so they can only see what is in front of them. There are shadows and sounds that can be observed but the source is unknown. Socrates says in 515c, “…such men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things.” Their reality is limited by their experience. Then a prisoner is freed from the bonds and is forced to look at the fire and the statues that were used to cast the shadows on the walls. He is overwhelmed by the revelations and learns that the shadows were not the reality.