What Is Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is a story that conveys his theory of how we come to know, or how we attain true knowledge. It is also an introduction into his metaphysical and ethical system. In short, it is a symbolic explanation of his "Theory of the Forms" (or eidos).

Plato's main goal in the Allegory of the Cave is to communicate the relevance and importance of the concept of intellectual perspective. His real agenda is to illustrate that most people are likely perceiving the world around them in a much more limited manner than they realize and that most of us are, to some degree, living our lives in the same circumstances as the prisoners he

The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it. The importance of the allegory lies in Plato's belief that there are invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp. Used to the world of illusion in the cave, the prisoners at first resist enlightenment, as students resist education. But those who can achieve enlightenment deserve to be the leaders and rulers of all the rest. At the end of the passage, Plato expresses another of his favorite ideas: that education is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that which they already know. This notion that truth is somehow embedded in our minds was also powerfully influential for many centuries. A report I had to do on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Plato was born 427 B.C. and died 347 B.C. He was a pupil under Socrates. During his studies, Plato wrote the Dialogues, which are a collection of Socrates' teachings. One of the parables included in the Dialogues is "The Allegory of the Cave". "The Allegory..." symbolizes man's struggle to reach understanding and enlightenment. First of all, Plato believed that one can only learn through dialectic reasoning and open-mindedness. Humans had to travel from the visible realm of image-making and

I. INTRODUCTION Plato's Allegory of the Cave describes a situation involving all people seeking knowledge and the truth, unified by this goal. The citizens chained together never see the reality, but instead the shadows being cast by it. Furthermore, they cannot speak with those around them regarding their suspicions, as the chains prevent them from doing so. To a college student, the Allegory of the Cave describes the goal that is sought after from education. College is a place students go to become critical thinkers, to question assumptions, and to master knowledge in order to move towards understanding.

The Allegory of the Cave is a theory put forward by Plato but it is a theory kind of like a metaphor They were stuck in the cave and thought the shadows on the wall were their reality. People are locked in a dark cave. They are chained from birth, they are unable to move their bodies and can only stare straight ahead at the wall of the cave. On the fall objects flash like images being projected onto the wall by objects from the prisoners. A fire shows behind these objects that creates the shadows.

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave where the prisoners have been since their childhood. One of the prisoners breaks free and leaves the cave. The sun blinds him because his eyes were accustomed to the dark. When the prisoner was removed from the cave and brought into the world, the disorientation would be even harsher; the light of the sun would be even more vivid than the fire. But as his eye adjust, the freed prisoner would be able to observe beyond the shadows. As he begins to comprehend his new world, and sees that the sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning. He sees aspects and reflections in the water. I would believe after he spends some

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, a famous Greek philosopher who wrote the 'Allegory of the Cave', attempted to answer some of these philosophical questions, most notably about the nature of reality. He tells the 'Allegory of the Cave' as a conversation between his mentor, Socrates, who inspired many of Plato's philosophical theories, and one of Socrates' students, Glaucon. They discuss the meaning of reality and how we as humans can be blinded by the dark shadows of reality. The shadows of the objects in the story represented society’s way of telling us what is real, and what is normal.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave Plato uses the allegory of the cave to aid understanding on his philosophical knowledge on the differences between the realm of the particulars and the realm of Forms. He believed that his analogy would explain why in the physical world, sense experience was nothing but an illusion; and that true reality must be found in the realm of Forms, which is eternal and unchanging. Plato’s analogy inaugurates in a cave; meant to represent the physical world, or the world we experience through our senses.

1.) Socrates Nietzsche’s critique that Socrates suffered life is fair. He wrote that Socrates put on a good demeanor towards life. The Allegory of the cave shows that actually Socrates suffered life. Plato has Socrates describe prisoners who lived bounded near the barrier of the cave.

The Greek philosopher, Plato, explored many themes in his writings, including justice, beauty, and equality, as well as sub-discussions within each work. Throughout The Republic, he seeks to define justice in its purest form and provide solutions to unanswered questions. In early books, Plato identifies political justice as harmony in a structured political body. Ideally, this perfect, harmonious society would be composed of three primary classes. The first being producers, the second warriors, and the last rulers. Specifically in Books V and VII, Plato focuses on the rulers of society, referring to them as philosopher-kings. Using three distinct analogies, these being the allegories of the sun, the line, and the cave, Plato explains who these individuals are while simultaneously defining his Theory of Forms. In Book VII of The Republic, Plato presents the last of the analogies—the allegory of the cave—through the dialogue of Socrates.

Plato’s allegory of the cave has so many meanings with everything he talks about when it is broken down piece by piece. A posteriori is knowledge only derived from sensory input (Palmer 40.) The cave itself represents the people who believe that all knowledge derives only from what we can hear and see in the world (empirical evidence.) Plato is saying that the people who believe in empirical knowledge are trapped as prisoners inside of a cave of misunderstanding and that they need to free themselves from it. When it comes to the shadows that the prisoners are looking at Plato is saying that what you see right in front of you isn’t the truth, its merely just a shadow of the truth.

In Plato’s, “Allegory of the Cave”, “a group of philosophically unenlightened prisoners are thrown in chains and imprisoned at birth in an underground cave. From their point of view, they are able to see nothing but moving shadows cast on a back wall. In time, the prisoners started to believe that each new shadow seen is a part of reality. Plato, being a philosopher, is not content with this situation. So he breaks his chains and walks towards the light at the cave exit.

The Allegory of the Cave demonstrates true knowledge and evidence. The moral of the story is about people in a cave bound to a wall. They only see shadows on the walls of humans carrying artifacts. They believe what they can see and what they know, nothing else. It would be impossible to create new ideas in your mind or imagine a new color. A man is released, no longer seeing the shadows he saw, but new things he had never seen or known. He was overwhelmed knowing the sun could be creating the shadows on the walls or seeing a color he had never seen before. The prisoner would most likely return to the cave to tell the other prisoners what he saw. The other prisoners most likely would not believe him. They have believed the same thing forever

Throughout the Socratic dialogues, Plato’s method of philosophy follows the same general form. Socrates first asks his fellow interlocutors a specific question that will be the main point of the dialogue at hand. Then because the people in the dialogues are seen to be people who are respected in their fields, the people begin to answer Socrates question. After they answer this question to the best of their ability, Socrates finds a flaw in their answer to the prompt. This cycle continues until the end of the dialogue, where the reader has a clearer sense of the definition but not a complete answer.