Zachary Pumphrey
Professor Mileo
Intro to Philosophy
2/1/17
What has been a directing technique that it easy to miss, yet, so simple that many people do not notice how it is around everywhere and used in quite a few Hollywood blockbuster films? The concept of including philosophy into a movie has been in a wide range of films. Philosophy has been integrated into both US films, and many foreign films. What makes philosophy a great base for a movie is that there are so many ways include many forms of philosophy into a movie. While you may not notice it directly, your brain does notice and that is what makes you feel a connection to the movie. A common philosophy method found in movies is Plato’s cave.
Plato’s cave is the idea of people living in a cave their entire lives. It is the cave, and its surroundings are all the people of the cave have ever known. The idea of an outside world is never questioned. They are pretty much being pulled on strings, like puppets, and they don’t live their lives. The people of Plato’s cave almost represent what society would be if there was no philosophy. To just go about life as a puppet and never wonder if life could
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They are separate from all outside help and live accordingly to their own rules. Inside the city, there are different factions to separate each person in for order to be maintained. Each person is a certain way with certain qualities and that person joins the faction they find best suited for them. If they leave their faction, they are labled as factionless which is considered a dishonorable label which usually results in homelessness and starvation. The main character of divergent is Tris; when she takes the test and gets the result of being divergent, which is essentially like a jack of all trades, but an ace. She joins a faction of strength and bravery, which is called
As he talks about the prisoners, he claims that - were they not released and able to go into the outside light - they “would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects” (Plato). He describes their original life in the cave as being primitive and conjecture in nature. Once released from their chains, though, the prisoner must make his way past the fire and into the outside world because for Plato, “the entire ascent out of the cave, is a story of progress toward understanding values”
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.
The Republic is considered to be one of Plato’s most storied legacies. Plato recorded many different philosophical ideals in his writings. Addressing a wide variety of topics from justice in book one, to knowledge, enlightenment, and the senses as he does in book seven. In his seventh book, when discussing the concept of knowledge, he is virtually addressing the cliché “seeing is believing”, while attempting to validate the roots of our knowledge. By his use of philosophical themes, Plato is able to further his points on enlightenment, knowledge, and education. In this allegory, the depictions of humans as they are chained, their only knowledge of the world is what is seen inside the cave. Plato considers what would happen to people
WHY DOES PLATO COMPARE ORDINARY HUMAN EXISTENCE TO THAT OF CHAINED PRISONERS IN A CAVE?
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
It seems to me that Socrates has set up each part of this analogy to represent a separate part of the philosophers struggle toward truly becoming a philosopher and achieving the study of philosophy. The cave itself seems to represent the societal norms that will be forced upon the upcoming philosopher from birth. While the philosopher is being brought up knowing only one thing as the truth he must find the strength to break himself free of the chains that bind him to the non-philosophical souls of society and begin to question what is known as “truth”.
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.”
In order to understand the moral fabric of the world, it is important to question any information that is given to an individual, instead of blindly accepting the majority opinion and giving it full credibility and validity based on other people’s opinions. Plato’s work, The Republic introduces the allegory of the cave, which is metaphorical scenario that attempts to explain the importance of questioning norms that may seem trivial. Plato illustrates a cave where bounded prisoners have lived all their lives in seclusion, away from the outside world. In their immobile state, they can only look at the wall in front of them which is illuminated by a small fire that has been going on behind them. The wall constantly projects shadows of people
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” there are prisoners in a cave who only want freedom but when one of the prisoners becomes free he realizes that the outside world all seems so unrealistic. Everything is so different from the cave, the only life he has ever known. So when he went back to the cave to release the other prisoners, he tells them about all his discoveries and his new knowledge of the world and how it’s nothing like they have ever imagined. The prisoners do not believe him and so they tell him he is crazy and out of his mind.
The book Divergent, written by Veronica Roth, tells a story of a young girl named Beatrice ‘Tris’ Prior who struggles to live under the government’s ruling because she is what everyone calls ‘Divergent’; Someone who does not fit anywhere. The futuristic, dystopian Chicago is what everyone believes to be the last society in existence following a great world war. The society is organized into five factions, each having specific values to help support the society. There is Abnegation, which values selflessness, Amity, valuing peace, Erudite, which values knowledge, Candor, valuing honesty, and Dauntless, which values bravery. Childs are raised in the faction they were born in by their parents, but at the
actors that set up his everyday routine sets up Platos “Allegory of the Cave”. The prisoners in the
The one prisoner finally escaping the cave to the outside light shows symbolism as a higher level of philosophy. Returning to the cave was the choice of the prisoner, he felt compelled to spread his new knowledge. Plato’s uses him to represent breaking free from the normal mindset shared. Plato’s argument stands since the cave represents lack of expanding on common knowledge. Even after the prisoner returns to express his findings to others, individuals with philosophies different than the norm is dismissed because of their level above previous things thought of as true.
Divergent is a dystopian novel that takes place in a futuristic Chicago. The setting also looks like a perfect Utopia, but as you go on reading you find out that it has a lot of problems. In the novel there was a war that was caused by differences in people's ideologies. The war caused Chicago to be divided into five factions. Each faction has a virtue which they value and cultivate. The five factions are Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. The Abnegation faction values selflessness, the Amity peace, the Candor honesty, the Dauntless bravery, and the Erudite intelligence. Throughout the novel the main character is Tris which was born in Abnegation and chose to go to the Dauntless faction. Chicago in the novel is governed by a group of people from
It would never be an easy path to walk down, and it would take a lot of struggling. Only certain determined people will actually make it to the opposite side. Socrates says these most qualified people should be the ones to lead the public. I believe this is also true in today’s society. I say this because when it comes to election time, we as a country are not going to vote for an uneducated lunatic. I believe that the president should be someone intelligent with good morals and very qualified. In order to reach that high point, you must go out of your comfort zone, like the prisoner did. In life, people go out of their comfort zones all of the time. I’ve always believed that in order to achieve something you’ve never had/done, you must do something you’ve never done before, such as stepping out of your comfort zone. Only the best can be found when you make an attempt to extend yourself as a human being. I relate the cave in this story to the social norm. No one wants to step out of it because I their life, the norm is all there is. I believe the shadows would represent all of the other things that could be out there, but they have no desire to go find out what they are. They are too comfortable with what they have and haven’t gone looking for more. The cave is a comfort zone for the prisoners in Plato’s time and for teenagers today. Without the outside world, there is no curiosity, no questioning. I believe it is important to
These are the Factionless. It is a status in which a person is not welcome into any faction. These are the people who failed to complete their initiation into whatever faction they chose and live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are described as being homeless and even worse than death itself because the factionless have to suffer. They are mainly the garbage collectors. Janitors, and construction workers. It is a common practice for Abnegation to provide them food, clothes and medical attention. An aptitude test helps the residents to choose their faction. Through the aptitude test Tris finds out that she is Divergent, which means she can’t be categorized into one individual faction because she has an aptitude towards more than one faction. She has a potential to join Erudite, Abnegation and Dauntless. She comfortably doesn’t fit in any category so she decides to leave the faction in which she was reared (Abnegation) for Dauntless. Other than the themes of values like intelligence, selflessness, bravery, compassion, and honesty covered up by the five factions this novel encompasses various important themes like theme of Identity and choices, Fears and phobias, Societal class, Power, competition and bravery which Tris discovers throughout her journey in this