Brandon Hanna
PHIL115
May 1, 2014
Plato’s Cave and Inception
Although many forms of philosophical entries have shed light in Hollywood, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is most vividly seen in the movie Inception. The theme of understanding reality in Inception, can be related to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the motion picture, the main character Dom Cobb deceives his victims by trapping them in “dreamboxes,” similar to the chains in the allegory. Along the way, these victims believe that the world they are dreaming of is reality, a parallel to the shadows that are casted by the puppeteers in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Furthermore, signs of the truth (noumenal realm) outside the characters limited knowledge (phenomenal realm) is presented in various forms throughout the movie, however, the actors in Inception refuse to believe what these individuals have to say, quite identically to the Allegory of the Cave’s interpretation of a prisoner’s return back to the cave after experiencing what the true source of the prisoners interpretations have been all along.
Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, a professional thief who spies on corporate leaders by infiltrating their subconscious. Cobb is wanted in the United States for being involved in the death of his wife, Mal, by performing these acts of entering in her subconscious. He is offered a chance to have his charges dropped as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious. To perform this task he hires an aspiring architect who is said to be one of the smartest in Ecole D'Architecture in Paris.
In the movie Inception, characters are fooled into a false reality as if they were interpreti...
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...enge that needs to overcome by Ariadne is how she will control her mind and let her compare all the happenings in her dreams to reality.
In sum, the film Inception was loosely based off the philosophy presented in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Although the story was quite similar, the plot contrasted with Plato’s and allowed the public to experience a different side of Plato’s interpretations in a scientific fictional perspective. As the similarities are presentable by means of prisoners and actors alike being trapped in the cave or dreams, respectively, they both are limited to this capacity of truth and have trouble understanding whether or not the interpretations of some people’s idea in the noumenal realm is valid. To be able to continue mentioning Plato’s philosophy in modern day suggests how influential his work is since it still applies to the world today.
The two worlds between the “Allegory of the cave” and “The Giver” are very similar. The giver represents the intellectual world. He had
The influence of Plato’s “Allegory of the cave” is very evident in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. The allegory illustrates are inability to look beyond our immediate reality; to look beyond ou...
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the pinnacle of philosophy, many future philosophers based their own philosophies from Plato’s Allegory. A simple Allegory questioning truth and reality has also shaped current pop culture. The past shapes the future, it is surreal knowing how a single man from the past with his love for wisdom influenced modern films. The Allegory is a simple story that makes people question their truth and their morals in which they live by. The Allegory tells a story of a prisoner who has escaped the “fake” reality and has seen “truth”; the informed prisoner attempts to return to his fake world to enlighten other prisoners of their ignorance. This same plot concept can be seen in the movie The Truman Show.
the prisoners in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The imagery used in Young Goodman Brown amplifies the theme of the loss of
Freedom in mind, freedom in nature, and freedom in subjectivity of individual are three kinds of freedoms. However, freedom should be expressed within the limits of reason and morality. Having freedom equals having the power to think, to speak, and to act without externally imposed restrains. As a matter of fact, finding freedom in order to live free is the common idea in Plato with "The Allegory of the Cave"; Henry David Thoreau with " Where I lived and What I lived for"; and Jean Paul Sartre with " Existentialism". Generally, Plato, Thoreau, and Sartre suggested that human life should be free. They differ in what that freedom is. Plato thinks it is found in the world of intellect, Thoreau thinks freedom is found in nature, and Sartre thinks freedom is found in subjectivity of individual.
What is reality? An enduring question, philosophers have struggled to identify its definition and basic concept since the beginning of time. Plato, in his provocative essay, The Cave, used symbols and images to ridicule and explain how humanity easily justifies their current reality while showing us that true wisdom and enlightenment lies outside this fabricated version of reality. If he were alive in modern times, he would find society unchanged; still uneducated and silently trapped in our own hallucination of reality with only the glimmer of educational paths available. While this may be a bleak comparison, it is an accurate one as the media influences of today present a contrasting picture of education and ignorance that keeps us trapped
The Allegory of the Cave is a parable that demonstrates how humans are afraid of change and what they do not know. In this work, Plato suggests a situation in which men are living in an underground cave. The one entrance is located near the top and there, a burning fire casts shadow. The men of the cave are chained so that they can only see the wall and cannot turn around. When objects pass by it creates a shadow on the wall. The shadows are the only thing they can see and therefore is the only thing they know to exist (747). Somehow one of them gets loose and wanders outside the cave (748). When he gets out, he is astonished at what he finds. He comes back in to tell the others about what he saw. The other men think he is mad and plot to kill him (749). This illustrates how fear, inherent in the primitive nature of man, only serves to promote his ignorance.
Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a symbol for the contrasts between ideas and what we perceive as reality. The Allegory of the Cave is that we are chained to a wall. Behind us is another wall with figures walking across it, behind that wall is a pit of fire. The firelight casts shadows upon the wall in front of those chained to the wall. Because we are chained to the wall we believe the figures are what they represent. Plato says there times when one tries to break away from the wall but others encourage him to join back the wall as he experiences what the world truly is. Because we are chained to the wall we are afraid of the unknown. But breaking free could change the perception about the world and feel truly free. Plato also argues that we are the cave slaves. We live in a world of shadows, where we don't see the reality of ideas. However, it is possible to climb out of the cave, to be released from our shackles but it’s difficult. And when we ( s...
In his dialogue ‘The Republic” Plato offered the “Allegory of the cave” one of the first meditations on nature and reality. In his allegory Plato imagined a group of slaves who from birth have been changed up and can only face forward, towards a rocky wall. To the slaves, their entire world was that wall and all of the shapes and shadows on it. Oblivious to the slaves was that behind them there was a simulator projecting shadows and shapes onto the wall. The images and shapes that the slaves were seeing was their whole reality, and thusly their reality was merely a projection of the images and shapes on the simulator. Platos po...
Do we really understand the world we live in and see everyday? Is our everyday perception of reality a misinterpretation, which somehow we can’t break free from? A famous Greek philosopher by the name of Plato sought out to explain this in an experiment he called the Cave Allegory. I will discuss what the Cave Allegory is as well as talk about the movie Interstellar, which is a great example of Plato’s Cave Allegory and how it relates to Plato’s ideas. The question we have to answer first is, what is Plato’s Cave Allegory?
As people, we tend to believe everything we see. Do we ever take the time to stop and think about what is around us? Is it reality, or are we being deceived? Reality is not necessarily what is in front of us, or what is presented to us. The environment that we are placed or brought up has a great impact on what we perceive to be the truth or perceive to be reality. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is one of the most significant attempts to explain the nature of reality. The cave represents the prisoners, also known as the people. They are trapped inside of a cave. They are presented with shadows of figures, and they perceive that to be reality. The cave can be used as a
In "The Allegory of the Cave," prisoners in a cave are forced to watch shadows as people behind them are forced to accept these shadows as reality -- "To them... the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. One prisoner, however, is released, and stumbles into the real world, containing more depth and complexity than they had ever known. At first, the prisoner will be pained at the bright, piercing light, but will eventually recover. According to Plato, the freed prisoner is then obligated to return to the shadows of the cave, to inform the shackled prisoners left behind of the real world. The prisoners, however, will not believe the freed prisoner, and may even go as afra s to kill him for such "lies" contrary to their "reality." The pursuit of the truth is, therefor, a painstaking but rewarding process. According to Plato, the physical world is a world of sight, one that lacks meaning if left alone. Only those who manage to break into the sunlight from the cave will ascend to the intellectual world. The prisoners in the shadows only know of the dull physical world, while those who ascend into the sunlight learn of the spiritual world, and are exposed to the first hints of truth. The soul ascends upward into the realm of goodness and of the truth, where "... souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell.." The pursuit of goodness and of the truth, then, improves the soul, as the soul desires to be elevated to a higher state of knowledge and morality. Caring for the self and the soul involves freeing the shackles of the physical world and ascending to the "... world of knowledge... the universal author of all things beautiful and right... and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual..." The soul yearns to dwell in a world of morality and knowledge, and only the pursuit of
To sum up, Plato’s allegory of cave depicts the human condition, each of us is a prisoner chained down with distorted illusion of reality. To gain individual autonomy one must awaken the unconsciousness, we must kill our imperfection and liberate one’s senses. We cannot accomplish individual autonomy by watching what’s on the screen, but rather using our own consciousness, begin a Gnostic path, and enlightened each other, hence we can build our own philosophical ideologies and get out of the ignorance, that is the cave.
It really gave us the impression that we were watching a James Bond movie. As there weren’t much heartwarming scenes in Inception, the film felt kinda cold. However, Hans Zimmer’s composition managed to save the film from being completely frozen. Although the film was pretty long, you won’t be able to stop yourself from wanting to see more of Inception’s puzzling plot. There will still be a large missing piece in this film especially on Dom’s pasts. Anyway, Christopher Nolan did a great job in producing Inception as it is a well layered complex film with no gaps around. With the skillful cinematography and cool visual effects of the film, Inception will definitely join the top list of recommended science fiction films. We bet you will never be able to watch a well-crafted film in many years to come. Inception is truly a logical thinking film which even psychology students or lecturers will give a nod to its accurate scientific explanations.
Plato, a student of Socrates, in his book “The Republic” wrote an allegory known as “Plato's Cave”. In Plato's allegory humans are trapped within a dark cave where they can only catch glimpses of the world above through shadows on the wall.2 Plato is describing how the typical human is. They have little knowledge and what they think they know has very little basis in fact. He describes these people as prisoners, in his allegory, and they are only free when they gain knowledge of the world above the cave.