Analysis Of Republic And The Allegory Of The Cave

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The Republic and The Allegory of the Cave
In the Allegory of the Cave there are prisoners are chained up together in which they are all facing the back wall. There is a firing behind the prisoners and the only thing that they can see are the shadows of the people behind them. The fire casts shadows on the wall so this is the only thing that they see. Their entire lives have been based on these shadows on the wall. These prisoners have been chained up since birth, so what they see on the walls is all they know. In the Allegory of the Cave, they let one of the prisoners free and finally able to see the world and feel the heat of the sun. The prisoner has never seen the sun or the colors of the world so once he steps outside; the sun hurts his …show more content…

One belief is that the philosophers are the only members of society fit to rule because they are the highest educated. He believes they are able to use the Form of the Good for perception and are better qualified than the rest of the people in the state. In the Allegory of the cave these philosophers represent the freed prisoner who came across the form of good, the light of the sun. Because of the philosopher’s ability to access the intelligible realm they should lead the state through politics and philosophy. They have also seen the truth; therefore their decisions are not clouded by things that are not known in the physical realm. Plato 's idea is that knowledge is what the truth is. So he believes that those who do not have knowledge are not fit to rule a state, as they do not know about what is good or what is the truth. Knowledge would allow someone to guide the others to the truth, just as the Allegory of the cave represents a free person who can see the light, rather than the shadows that guide those in the cave to seeing light too, and being able to distinguish what is good or bad for the …show more content…

He illustrates how the other prisoners ridicule the freed prisoner and do not understand his reasons for leaving in the first place, nor his behavior on return, they ignore his propositions and continue in their way of life regardless. They do not believe the claims of his findings. When extended to society the majority will not believe the philosopher rulers are telling the truth. In the republic, Plato considers the philosopher rulers to be social pyramid, but that would not work in reality because usually we would consider someone’s social ranking dependent on the view of the

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