The Cave
So many things that we read have a deeper meaning and it takes a special analysis and interpretation to find that deeper meaning. After reading “The Allegory of The Cave” by Plato at first glance you understand that it is about men imprisoned in a cave with nothing to look at but shadows on a wall and to them this is reality because it is all they have ever seen in life. The interpretation of just this one sentence to Pluto’s is very different and has a much deeper meaning that only in time will I figure out. In this essay I will break down my understanding of Pluto’s deeper meaning and try to figure out where his stance would be today.
The movement of the prisoner in the cave starts with him watching shadows and I perceive this as the prison is seeing shadows and because this is all her knows that he believes this is reality and how the world is for everyone around. He then gets out of the cave and this is him getting out on a journey for knowledge to learn beyond what he believes he already knows. As the prisoner is now out in the world and stares up into the sun for the first time this is the moment he begins to understand that what he thought was reality was in fact what was only a perception of reality, it was just darkness casting shadows of a true reality. After exploring the true world in some versions the prison returns to the cave to teach his new knowledge and stories of reality to the other prisoners where they do not believe him because to them there is not reality other then shadows on a wall and fain noises that they can not make out. They are deaf to reality and cannot understand how to begin to conceive it without experiencing it for themselves.
The stages in this movement involve imagination and this i...
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...I am today expanding my knowledge by going back to school in order to learn more.
Works Cited
Ashford University (Producer). (2013). Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” [Video file]. Retrieved from http://ashford.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Plato%27s+%22Allegory+of+the+Cave%22/0_aeqdnkmr
Ciaron Rosenberg-Fisher. (2009, Nov. 16). The Allegory of the Cave - Plato [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTWwY8Ok5I0
B.R. (2006, March 1). Plato's Allegory of the Cave: Analysis and Summary - Yahoo Voices - voices.yahoo.com. Retrieved from http://voices.yahoo.com/platos-allegory-cave-analysis-summary-25170.html
WordPress.com (2012, September 21). ‘The Allegory of The Cave’ by Plato: Summary and Meaning | Welcome to the Philosophyzer! Retrieved from http://philosophyzer.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/the-allegory-of-the-cave-by-plato-summary-and-meaning/
In conclusion, the relevance of the “Allegory of the Cave” lies in the fact that its culmination continues to reoccur throughout history. Socrates, Galileo, and Martin Luther King Jr. are examples of important historical figures that have been condemned for their ability to make the journey out of the cave and return to deliver their community from the bonds that limit human growth. I believe the most important lessons to be found in Plato’s allegory are that we must learn to look beyond our immediate reality and that our actions should be geared toward unifying our communities. Only then will we arrive at the ultimate goal of living for the greater good.
Plato. Allegory of the Cave. Comp. Tom Ferderer. Mendota Heights: Saint Thomas Academy, n.d. Print.
The Allegory of the Cave is a representation of Plato's perfect world, or the world of the Forms. The Forms can be defined as an abstract or the essence of an object, like Oddness or Beauty. The allegory depicts a visual of a cave that hold prisoners bound by chains. The prisoners can only see what it is in front of them, shadows that are enlightened by fire. One breaks free of what is considered the physical world (world as we know it) and enters to the ideational world (world of the Forms). When the former prisoner sees this world for the first time, it is rather painful and challenging to get acquainted with its surroundings. A movie that I found to be the best representation of the Allegory of the Cave is Avatar. Avatar fully illustrates the Allegory of the Cave by representing both worlds the political maneuvers used in the movie.
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.
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.
The Cave Allegory was Plato’s attempt to compare what he called “the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature”. Plato had another Greek philosopher by the name of Socrates describe a group of people who lived
Plato. The Allegory of the Cave. A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee Jacobus. 9th e. Boston: Bedford, 2013.
My understanding of the cave allegory is someone who has lived his life in confinement; the only life he has ever known. Isolated from the outside world, everything that he experiences is a false reality. He sees things projected on the wall and he thinks they are real, when in fact, they are illusions. Once he is torn away from his environment, he is frightened of what he is now experiencing. As his senses awaken, he begins to see and experience the beauty all around him. He now realizes that this is how life is truly meant to live and he must go back and share his discovery with the others. However, they are not eager to leave their familiar surroundings. Upon returning to the cave, he has a hard time adjusting to his previous environment, He now knows all that he previously thought was
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 begin, Plato’s Allegory of the cave is a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon and its main purpose, as Plato states is to, “show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.”(Plato) The dialogue includes a group of prisoners who are captive in a cave and chained down, only with the ability to stare straight at a wall. This wall, with the help of a fire, walkway, and people carrying different artifacts and making sounds, create a shadow and false perception of what is real. This concept here is one of the fundamental issues that Plato brings up in the reading. “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.” (Plato). These prisoners, being stuck in this cave their entire life have no other option but to believe what they see on the wall to be true. If they were to experience a real representation of the outside world they would find it implausible and hard to understand. “When any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up a...
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 perceived as reality. In the allegory Plato tells a story about a man put on a Gnostics path. Prisoners seating in a cave with their legs and necks chained down since childhood, in such 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; he sees everything through an anarchic thinking and reasons. When he returns into the cave, his fellow prisoners will not recognize him or understand anything he says because he has develop a new senses and capability of perception. This is the representation of the human nature, we live in a cave with false perception of reality that we've been told since childhood, but we must realize that these present perception are incomplete.
In book seven of ‘The Republic’, Plato presents possibly one of the most prominent metaphors in Western philosophy to date titled ‘Allegory of the Cave’.
Plato's Theory of Forms draws parallels to The Allegory of the Cave, highlighting the concept of human beings being ignorant to true perfection. In the writing Plato uses symbols to convey a veiled meaning. The philosopher says, “The prisoners s...
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.