Why Nothing Is Truly Alive, And Aristotle 's Allegory Of The Cave

Allegory of the cave is basically about education and its importance. A story that lets us reconsider what education is and what it can do for us as rational beings. To question the value of reading the “Allegory of the Cave” is to question why we should ever try to teach ourselves at all. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato was a classical Greek philosopher. A student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. He is a well-thought-out founder of Western Philosophy. By the Wikipedia, Allegory is an extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are associated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The important meaning has moral, social, religious or political meaning. “Allegory of the cave” has two significances, the literal significance and the symbolic significance.

This existence we often call life is something we never chose to experience. Everyone is forced into a cage into a body that is materialized so that there is no chance of escape. Our will is not capable of resisting this unforgiving reality. Strangely, this is exactly what has allowed humans to each formulate their own views on life. By many it is seen as a torturous path of endurance and others as an object that should be cherished and allowed to blossom. People have these thoughts because their experiences have provoked them to think in such a way. Humans go through experiences but very rarely take time to reflect on themselves. Thus we never truly

A leader’s actions do not always follow popular opinion or the opinion of one’s superiors. In “The Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates says “Human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been since childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads.” Only one of the prisoners, the leader, breaks the pattern of what the prisoners have done their entire lives when he goes on “the journey upwards to be the advent of the soul into the intellectual world” after being “liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light.” This does not follow the beliefs or opinions of the other prisoners who believe “it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.” The actions of the prisoner that leaves the

Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave relates to modern day politics because it addresses the issue of state authorized censorship. The story shows a world in which prisoners are bound and forced to see the world only in the way their masters intend. In today’s society, the media has become the master that guides and controls the masses. Information outlets now regulate the ways in which individuals perceive and respond to the outside world. This is concerning because every source of information has its own biases which can easily influence the consumer and shape his or her opinion, much like the masters do in The Allegory of the Cave. This ties into current governments because nations can use their country’s media to manipulate their populace. For example, a country, like North Korea, that only has state run publications has full command over its people’s knowledge of global

Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” represents how people identify and process everything around us. People rely on their immediate senses to understand and make their own opinion of reality. We have to touch, hear, or smell something in order to believe it. Our biggest misconception come from our sight. The posters and advertisements are real but it does not mean that what’s in them is real as well. The models on the advertisements we know are real but the photo may not be real. There are many tools they use to make the model look exactly how we think she should look. In reality it took a lot of work and effort to make that image seem real. Reality is we all have flaws, but flaws are not advertised. Perfection appears to be reality and the

At the last stage of learning, In the story, “Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates mentions, “But I think that finally, he would be in the condition to look at the sun itself, not just at its reflection whether in water or wherever else it might appear, but at the sun itself, as it is in and of itself and the place proper to it and to contemplate of what sort it is” (19). Eventually, the prisoner could see things easily through the shadows under the sunlight. He would try to understand the structure of the objects and at the end, he would start to begin to look for the real objects when his eyes no longer in pain under the sunlight. Socrates also says, “And then what? If he again recalled his first dwelling, and the “knowing” that passes as the

In “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato relates humankind to a group of chained prisoners being held in a dark cave underground. Within this parable, Plato attempts to inspire his audience to explore and expand their minds past what they are told or taught. This piece of literature discusses the fact that people tend to depend too often on the word of their leaders and blindly follow their instruction. This common approach to life causes society to become close-minded and leads them to follow what others do rather than expanding their own knowledge and ways of thinking. In Plato’s opinion, refraining from creating one’s own ideas is similar to being a prisoner in life, never exploring what goes beyond “the cave.”

The classic work, “Plato, The Allegory of the Cave” vividly represents an individual’s mastery of enlightenment or failure thereof. The work serves as an extended metaphor in an attempt to demonstrate how one accomplishes knowledge or is defeated by his or her own self-bondage, perception of truth, discovery of reality, and the attempt to educate others. Furthermore, the piece attempts to facilitate learning in hopes of encouraging or expanding deep-thinking among society. Additionally, there are four key symbols presented in the work that I interpret to depict self-bondage, perception, discovery, and education which are the cave, chains, shadows and the escapee. From this translation, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave demonstrates a notable interest and most importantly provides a detailed illustration of how one can achieve knowledge or miscarry it altogether.

The “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato represents the differences in the way we perceive reality and what we believe is real. In his story, Plato starts by saying that in a cave, there are prisoners chained down and are forced to look at a wall. The prisoners are unable to turn their heads to see what is going on behind them and are completely bound to the floor. Behind the prisoners, puppeteers hide and cast shadows on the wall in line with the prisoners’ sight, thus giving the prisoners their only sense of reality. What happens in the passage is not told from the prisoners’ point of view but is actually a conversation held between Socrates and Glaucon (Plato’s brother).

What is life? This is the one question that to this day still cannot be answered. Over the years millions of people have had there own interpretation of what is means to live. However the quest to answer this rhetorical question goes back to the golden days of Greek civilization when the worlds greatest philosophers first attempted to find the answers to this question. "As his position takes form in the Republic, Plato claims that only a very few individuals are capable of understanding how human life is to be lived. If it could be done, the rest of us would be best off it we were to let out lives be controlled by such individuals". This position held by Plato has been one of much discussion and disagreement over the years. In this paper I

In Genesis 1-3, the conception of creation can be determined as supernatural, in which it could be seen as a miracle. Throughout the first three chapter of Genesis we are given images describing what had happened during the beginning of mankind’s doings on this earth in sequential order. The book of Genesis (1-3), Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and Aristotle’s Ethics 1/ “The End” all coincide with the idea of the relationship between the natural world and humanity, and all connect to one of the four or all of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition claims and core questions.

Abstract Thesis: In The Republic, Plato argues that kings should become philosophers or that philosophers should become kings, or philosopher kings, as they possess a unique level of knowledge, which is required to rule the Republic successfully. The purpose of this essay is to examine whether or how far Plato’s argument that philosophers should be the rulers of the Republic is valid and persuasive. The majority of the essay will strictly be a survey Plato’s model of the Philosopher-King and the States function, and their salient features. ________________________________________ But it's a false argument, because it assumes somehow that government is a way in which you put unselfish and un-greedy men in charge of selfish

In Allegory of the Cave, Plato talks about how everyone has their own cave and I agree with him. People don’t really think that how they’re so caught up in their own cave life that they forget to try and experience new things that they’re so afraid of, mostly because they’re scared of failing and losing the life that they’ve build and the life that they’re so comfortable with. I realized that I was also doing the same thing that everyone else is doing, the life I thought was so free is not free but it’s in cave that I never tried to escape. One of the reason that I didn’t try was because I’m so used to things that I do every day that I almost forgot to live my life to fullest, experience new things, meet new people, and explore out of my cave. I know that I have to explore and experience new things and more opportunity that life has to offer me, because if I don’t then I won’t be able to accomplish my goals in life. Sometimes, you have to get out of your comfortable life to make things happen and I didn’t really try to do that till now.

The unexamined life is not worth living, the individual, special, and unique personality and life, and the realization of the value of life can only create based on self-examination. Also, if we want to self-examine, we cannot without reading and thinking.

The universal question since the onset of civilization has always been what the meaning of life is. The answers put forward by people in today's society greatly differ from the answers of the Roman and Greek civilizations of the past. As much as everyone will always question themselves at one point in life about life’s purpose, the contributions of great philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Roman Stoics cannot be left out in the beliefs and theories that give life value. Each of the theories gives a different perspective on the meaning of life. Life without meaning is arguably equivalent to death; in other words, if life has no meaning why live when you will eventually die and just vanish. Over the years philosophers have been occupied in finding the ultimate meaning of life. This paper analyses three major philosophical views; Theism Nihilism and Subjectivism, and personal opinions on the meaning of life. Life without meaning is arguably equivalent to death; in other words, if life has no meaning why live when you will eventually die and just vanish.