The passage from Plato’s myth of the cave, “For the prisoners, reality would consist of nothing but the shadows,” emphasize the nature of how people can perceive the world. Perception is key and that one could imagine anything. Being trapped as a prisoner, there are limited resources that one can understand about reality. Coming out of the cave, we can see the unrestricted world. The realization that there is more than what the cave holds, brings upon that the shadow cannot hold them further back. The world passed the caves brings opportunity for individuals to set their own standards and intellectual ideas in how they see the world because not everything is what they emerge to be. Similar to people, there might be a mask that had not yet fallen off of a face. We must discover …show more content…
Opinions are not wrong answers, but it makes an individual narrow minded. So as Plato states that prisoners’ reality are shadows is accentuating the common fact that prisoners’ mind are trapped and think a limited distance. When parents trap their kids, they are less open minded and perceive ideas based on how they were taught. Plato’s Myth of the Cave reveals that we should not make ourselves prisoners among the world. Do not think a specific way because it is shown. Discover and reach further in what was given and design your own view. Following someone makes a person lose sight of reality. We must shape our own visions and have common knowledge within our surroundings. Being trapped and secluded makes us become a shadow of an individual that bound us into shaping ourselves. Travel and hope to understand how the economy and world operates by experiencing moments yourself. Learning that we cannot rely on someone for information would help us grow into a person we were meant to become. And that facts and information are not always
Portraying the prisoners inside the cave for a lifetime further describes his beliefs on how closed minded society is in his opinion. The “light outside the cave” explains how he feels knowledge is the source of light to everyone’s lives. Without knowledge, there is lack of light. Also, since society does not want to gain further knowledge, they will seem to stay stuck in the dark tunnel. Plato also uses personification to give reader insight on how someone may treat the earth and appreciate it. For example, Plato states “Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.” The reasoning behind this is to explain how a man would reason with the sun as if it were an actual speaking person. The style of Plato’s writing gives readers an understanding on why his work is named “Allegory of the Cave”. The use of his rhetorical devices give deeper meanings to the Earth and the nature it
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
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 Book VII of The Republic, Plato tells a story entitled "The Allegory Of The Cave." He begins the story by describing a dark underground cave where a group of people are sitting in one long row with their backs to the cave's entrance. Chained to their chairs from an early age, all the humans can see is the distant cave wall in from of them. Their view of reality is soley based upon this limited view of the cave which but is a poor copy of the real world.
In his novel Being There, Jerzy Kosinski shows how present day culture has strayed away from the ideal society that Plato describes in his allegory of the cave. In his metaphor, Plato describes the different stages of life and education through the use of a cave. In the first level of the cave, Plato describes prisoners who are shackled and facing a blank wall. Behind them is a wall of fire with a partition that various objects are placed and manipulated by another group of people. These shadows are the only action that they ever see. They can only talk to the surrounding prisoners, and watch the puppet show on the wall in front of them. Naturally, the prisoners come to believe that the shadows on the wall in front of them are reality. The second level of the cave is where a prisoner is released of the chains and is forced to look at the light of the fire behind him. The light hurts his eyes, and after a moment of pain and confusion he sees the statues on the partial wall in front of him. These were what caused the shadows that he took to be reality. This enlightenment is the start of education for the prisoner. He then is taken from the cave into the light of the sun. At first the prisoner can see only shadows, then reflections, then real people and things. He understands that the statues were only copies of the things he now sees outside of the cave. Once he is adjusted to the light, he will look up to heavens to gain a true understanding of what reality is. This is what Plato refers to this understanding as the Form of Goodness. In Being There, Chance is in the deepest part of the cave, yet the world around him is too ignorant to realize this (Johnson 51-54)
The allegory of the cave represents how humans can often skew reality due to beliefs that we create in our own imagination to explain the world around us. We must free ourselves from being led to believe in things without properly seeking evidence to support or counteract our beliefs by getting out of the cave to witness the actual world with our own eyes. Plato attempts to display man’s lifestyle, as well as their entire belief system, as one of bondage to perceptions. It can be very difficult to rid our minds of all we believed originally and establish a new way of thinking. However, like the prisoner who suffers from the bright light when he first gets out the cave, we will get used to the light and be thankful to whoever brought him out of the “dark” cave and enter the world with “light”. This light is used to illustrate enlightenment, or a transition from a state of ignorance to a state of understanding. Plato highlights that education is a process of learning spiritual knowledge, but that everyone has the inherited power to learn within their soul. On the other hand, the process of enlightenment can vary drastically from person to person. However, Plato expresses the notion that in an ideal world there will be equality among the people on many levels. For example, it is believed that all of the knowledge should be known by every citizen, so that everyone has the same opportunities to seek a fulfilling life with the knowledge of their surroundings. Once the prisoners have seen the light outside of the cave, they then have the responsibility to go back into the depths of the dark cave and attempt to enlighten the ignorant prisoners who still chose to live under the shadows, because they refuse to listen to information that dif...
Plato's Allegory of a Cave is a story about prisoners that are chained underground, who can not see anything except for shadows caste on a wall by a fire. The only thing that these prisoners can see is the shadows of people. Eventually, one of the prisoners breaks free of the chain and ventures out into the real world. In the real world the freed prisoner discovers that the shadows in the cave are created from light diverge off people. He recognizes there is a whole new world filled with light. The freed prisoner is very confused and blinded by the light so he decides to return to the cave. When the prisoner returns to the cave, he shares what he saw in the real world with the other prisoners. The remaining prisoners treat the freed prisoner like he is crazy and they tell the freed prisoner that the real world does not exist. The prisoners in the cave do not believe in the real world because the cave is all that they know exists.
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
The shadows in Plato's cave represent us, humans, and it is important to get out of the cave. We must be like the freed prisoner. The first step for the shadow is to "stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains." (Plato 317) From total darkness to seeing light will cause great discomfort for the shadow at first. This is a change that will help the shadow to step out and later on to see the reality. We have to take the first step, or in order words realize the change that is happening. By accepting change we can then gradually start to improve and grow our knowledge. For the shadow, the change showed him truth and reality. For us, a change should also be something that we can learn from and seek truth. To do something we are not use to or new can be difficult, therefore we must learn to get use to and adapt to changes.
The basic premise of Plato’s allegory of the cave is to depict the nature of the human being, where true reality is hidden, false images and information are perceive as reality. In the allegory Plato tells a story of a man who is put on a Gnostics path. Prisoners seating in a cave with their legs and necks chained down since childhood. They are chained in such a way that they cannot move or see each other, only look into the shadows on the wall in front of them; not realizing they have three dimensional bodies. These images are of men and animals, carried by an unseen men on the background. Now imagine one of the prisoners is liberated into the light, the Gnostic path will become painful and difficult, but slowly his eyes will begin to accommodate what he sees and his fundamentalist view about the world will begin to change; soon he sees everything through anarchic thinking and reasons. When he return into the cave, his fellow prisoners don’t recognize him or understand anything he said. He has developed a new senses and capability of perception. This is the representation of the condition of the human nature, we live in a cave with false perception of reality that we’ve been told since childhood, these includes bias belief; but we must realize these present perception are incomplete.
The circumstances that are described by Plato have a metaphorical meaning to them. The allegory attacks individuals who rely solely upon; or in other words are slaves to their senses. The shackles and chains that bind the prisoners are in fact their senses .In Plato’s theory, the cave itself represents the individuals whom believe that knowledge derives from what we can hear and see in the world around us; in other words, empirical knowledge. The cave attempts to show that believers of empirical knowledge are essentially ...
In the story “Allegory Of The Cave” it shows a life lesson on how individuals can act stubborn in the world because they are not educated or aware of certain artifacts. In this essay i will give you examples of how real life situations relate to the story “Allegory Of The Cave”. In Plato’s story “Allegory Of the Cave” there are a group of prisoners that have been chained in a dark cave their whole life not being able to turn back at all. The only contact they have with the outside world is seeing the shadows of the things that pass behind them. Then one prisoner becomes free and is able to explore the outside world. When the freed prisoner steps outside for the first time in his life the beaming sun blinds him but then gets used to the sun
I understand much has changed since 380 BC, so it would be unusual if someone had been in a cave “dwelling since childhood, shackled by the legs and neck”. (Plato). However, it is not unusual for people to live a full life without ever stepping out of the dark, or shadows. I can certainly testify to the last statement. Plato used the prisoners in the cave as a metaphor for inexperience, or ignorance. Fortunately, I didn’t spend my first twenty-eight years living in a cave, but standing where I am now I might as well have been living underground. When I first read this story all I could think about was the prisoner and how I had been just like him. Completely satisfied and oblivious of the knowledge around
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.