Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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The Philosopher Plato was alive during the period of 400 BCE. One of his most famous excerpts cited in philosophy is Plato’s allegory of the cave. Plato believed that innate ideas came from the world of form. He was a rationalist and he held a very strict notion of knowledge. Plato’s allegory of the cave is a theory concerning human perception and is very significant to philosophy. To briefly summarize the allegory the people who grew up in the cave all their life had been retrained from seeing anything that wasn’t in frontal viewing. Behind them arouse a fire and behind the fire was a partial wall that showed false images which were used to manipulate the people. The people watched the stories that these shadows played out day …show more content…

Today life is being lived in a world of shadows, where we don 't see the reality of our ideas. We see the glass that can be broken as a shadow of (ourselves). However, it is very much possible to climb out of “the cave” and to be let go from our restraints , but it’s not an easy process. When the cave slaves (ourselves) climb out of the cave (perceive and understand ideas), we see the world for how it should be ,how we expect it to be . Seeing the ideas to be eternal and normal but they are not. After being conditioned to thinking something is ideal and perfect we refuse to explore. We just settle for a unexplored …show more content…

This would mainly contain those who have not fully contained the meaning of life. The people in the cave are without sun, without a higher knowledge, and have limited understanding. What they believe is what they see on their wall of shadows because they rely on the physical instead of the mental. None the less, the chains or shackles symbolize the blind spots that pull us away from the truth. These chains allow the people only to see the shows that the light portrays before them. These chained people are restricted to only what the fire allows them to see (their own perceptions). Their overall understanding happens when the shackles are disentangled and can comprehend sharply. On the other hand, the light is greatly significant. The light is the fire. The fire is the sun to the people in the cave. The fire has the power of the sun but it is distorted. For instance the fire could represent many things like media, society as a whole, etc. While the shadows are influenced by forms (the objects), the fire may simply paint them as blemished

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