Themes In The Allegory Of The Cave

“The Allegory of the cave” designed by Plato, one of the utmost eminent Western philosophers. Not only, he constructed an arch that in time will set a luminous path for the western theories to flourish in the future. Additionally, Plato viewed the world as a replica of the celestial world, which turned him to realize there is one divine being or one divine truth that humans should attempt to find. Therefore, this essay will discuss the implications of Plato’s Cave allegory in reflection on how humans might be blind to the truth, as a result of the unseen shackles that restrain them distant from the real truth, and how they might eventually feel and become more human without them.

This is he finally reaches cognitive though. He thinks about his past life and the other still living this life of lies and pities them. Plato also suggest that the prisoners play a sort of “guessing” game of naming which object was which and what would appear next. It is settled that to the freed prisoner these games would be meaningless and if he were compelled to renter the cave and go against the ways of the cave, everyone who believes the way of the cave, as life would think he is crazy and try to kill

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.

When the prisoner turns his head towards the light of the fire his eyes hurt him and he is confused because he is unable to see the objects of the shadows he had been subjected to his entire life. It is because of this pain and confusion that the prisoner wishes to return to the life that he is accustomed to, and the reality he knows, the world of the shadows. We are asked to envision the stubbornness displayed by this prisoner to leave the world of the shadows, a stubbornness which causes him to be dragged into the sunlight. Upon seeing the light of the sun the prisoner is temporarily blinded, unable to see anything around him, blinding him more than when he was a prisoner of the cave. Eventually the prisoner’s vision adjusts and he is able to see more clearly. His mind will first be able to recognize the shadows, then moving on to reflections of objects in the water, and lastly the objects themselves. This new sight leads the prisoner to question the colours and objects around him. He questions what it is that causes him to being able to see all the things he can, compared to only seeing poor reflections of objects in the cave. The prisoner eventually concludes that it is the sun which illuminates all around him and is the source of his sight.

Throughout the story, as the freed prisoner ascends to higher levels of knowledge, he is blinded because he has trouble accepting what he sees as truth. Since birth, the prisoner has only viewed shadows on the wall, and believed these to be the only true thing in the world. So to the prisoners, the truth is “literally nothing but the shadows of the images”, the images being reality. (Plato, 868) However, when he encounters, statues, fire, light, and

In the Allegory, Plato describes a cave used to hold prisoners. In the cave, each prisoner remains

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes a cave where prisoners are chained by their legs and necks. Since their motions are restricted, they can only see what is directly in front of them. By deciphering the images that are reflected on the wall in front of them; they can only imagine the outside world and create their own reality. A prisoner is released to the outside world and realizes that the items that he and the other prisoners had deciphered in the cave were only illusions. Once outside the cave, the prisoner sees the beautiful world and is not going to want to return to the cave. Plato compares the cave dwellers to men lacking education and are not fit to preside over the city. They are without a sense of purpose or duty.

According to The New York Times, “Plato’s allegory is a powerful metaphor for contemplating a divide between ignorance and enlightenment – between the ‘visible’ world and the ‘intelligible’ realm – and writers have applied it to all sorts of subjects,” (Gonchar). The cave the prisoners are living in is a representation of a place where people can become trapped by their own ignorance or lack of understanding. The objects on the wall of the bridge are the unknown truths that are discovered outside what one observes. The shadows that the prisoners see on the wall are the truth that most people consider to be based only on observation, therefore not the real truth. The escaped prisoner represents the philosopher who is on a journey to seek a deeper meaning other than what is observed. The game the prisoners play shows that although others may seem to know more about what is happening it is unwise to envy

The prisoners who had known darkness and only the shadows on the wall their entire lives would not be content in letting another person try to change their world view. The prisoners would want to kill the person dragging them up to the light because the idea

The Allegory of the Cave The Allegory of the Cave is actually a part of the Plato’s writings who is a Greek philosopher in his series of writings titled as “The Republic” (Plato, 514). The Republic was written in different parts and took different years to compile the writings together from years 514a to 520a. These series of books were written to highlight the psychology of the people individuals and how they act in different situations and era of life. It is written in the form of dialogue between Socrates and especially this writing “The Allegory of the Cave” is written in the dialogue form between Socrates and the brother of Plato named as Glaucon by Plato. Those series of Plato actually describes how the education in the lives of the people brings change.

The Allegory of the Cavern aims to reveal the state in which, with regard to education or lack of it, our nature is found, that is, the state in which most men are found in relation to the knowledge of truth or ignorance. Thus, the prisoners represent the majority of humanity, slave and prisoner of their ignorance and unconscious of it, clinging to the customs, opinions, prejudices and false beliefs of always. These prisoners, like most men, believe they know and feel happy in their ignorance, but live in error, and take for real and real what they are but simple shadows of fabricated objects and echoes of voices. This aspect of the myth serves Plato to exemplify, through a language riddled with metaphors, the distinction between sensible world and

He used to live in a dark environment, where the only little light source was the fire. When he relesases from the cave,he has to face an intense pain. At first he can not see the 'reality', but as soon as he gets used to the light, he sees everything more clear. After he has became accustomed to the light, he start regognizing all the obejcts from smaller to bigger ones. First he notices his own shadown, since that is the only thing he has been familiar with. Then moving on, he sees other things such as 'reflections', 'the obejctive themselves', 'light of the moon', 'the starts', and finally the

Plato's views are clearly seen in “The Allegory of the Cave”, where prisoners are restrained, unable to turn to see the truth, and are shown shadows of objects on a dark cave wall lit by flickering flames; the prisoners are then left to deduce the shadows before them (Plato, 2010). When the allegory is applied to our world, it is easy to determine that the prisoners are those who are ignorant and believe that knowledge comes from what is in front of us, the shadows represent what those people see, and in order to see reality you must look/think outside the box. As hard as it might sound to believe, Plato did contradict himself in his own philosophical writing. A good example is his invention of a fictional cave that he used to prove his own ideology of reality. On the other hand, Aristotle prospered in areas where Plato chose to

In the story “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, the events, told by Socrates, that occur in the lives of the chained prisoners trapped inside of a cave is a parable and reflection of various past and present day connections. Firstly, this story relates philosophically to the shadows in the cave as well as the imprisoned man who escaped. Although the imprisoned men are being manipulated by the objects that are placed in front of a burning fire and projected onto the wall, the shadows, from a philosophical standpoint, represent the reality of their lives nonetheless.1 An imprisoned man escapes the cave and begins to play the role of a philosopher by drawing the line between appearance vs. reality. The man initially feels pain by first seeing the

Sarah Harmon February 12, 2017 Ms. Stevens Colloquial Reading Reflection In Plato’s The Republic he talks about a cave and gives an allegory for the cave. Plato tells us about illusion and reality through two men who spent their whole lives living in a cave. These men spent there lives chained to pillars inside this cave.