Allegory Of The Cave Analysis

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When I first read the passage from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in Book 7 of the Republic, 518D-E, many questions have come to my mind. Such as where it “there” that is mentioned in the passage, and what is “this art”? To come up with ideas and interpretation of this passage, I read the whole section and come up with the thought of true, beauty, and the reality. This passage involves the meaning of true and beauty. In this way, the Socrates also mentions that the prisoners are in the cave and only seeing the shadow of the things that pass by and reflected by the sun. One of the prisoner gets the chance to come out and see the reality and tries to show the others, but they refuse the true and believe in their ignorance. What I interpret is that people are used to what they know and feel comfortable with the existence of …show more content…

Moreover, when other people try to show them the other way around or the true, they will be hostile to them. In fact, Socrates was sentenced to death when he was trying to point out others’ ignorance by the charges of disrupting the social order and corrupting the youth. Another point is that things in the physical world are the reflection of our ideal images in human mind, such as beauty. In this way, the cave directs people to think of a fundamental question, the real reality of nature itself. Nature might deceive human mind, and some people might be able to and escape from the and see the truth; however, the truth might not be accepted by others. Socrates mentions that“ And if he once more had to compete with those perpetual prisoners in forming judgments about those shadows while his vision was still dim, before his eyes recovered, and if the time needed for getting accustomed were not at all short, wouldn’t he be the source of laughter , and wouldn’t it be said of him

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