Myth Of The Cave

In Sophie’s World, one of the first ancient philosophers we learned about was Plato. Plato’s ideas were revolutionary to philosophy and influenced innumerable philosophers to come. His philosophical project had to do with the world of ideas, where he believed all souls came from before entering the physical world, thus innately recognizing the ideas it had seen before viewing the physical form of the idea. This concept was demonstrated by the Myth of the Cave, found in Plato’s dialogue the Republic. Also found in this dialogue were Plato’s ideas of how a utopian state (led by philosophers) should function: Plato believed it should be divided into three parts, rather like a human body’s head, chest, and abdomen. Each of these has a corresponding piece of the soul; reason, will, and appetite, respectively. In terms of the state the rulers are the reason and the head, in charge of leading the people with a

He believed that every piece of history was in conflict between two classes of society, such as between the capitalist and proletariat in his lifetime. Marx firmly believed that the way to end this feud was to form a classless society, which would eventually happen in every society with revolution of the proletariat overturning the bourgeois. He believed this was inevitable, as a person is so connected to their employment that it shapes their entire being. When the worker’s labor doesn’t give back to them, they give both their work and their soul to the capitalist they work for. This causes unrest among the workers, and so they seize power back from the bourgeoisie using force until eventually society evens out into a classless world where production is owned by all according to ability. Karl Marx’s ideas were morphed into Leninism and Social Democracy, both of which are much less class-based than in Marx’s time, and much less fundamentally