Rana Hassoun
Essay 1
02/24/2017
“ How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” Plato
The world we live in today is like Plato’s cave where the shadows are the things we see and perceive in our everyday life and we are like the prisoners chained by our beliefs and senses to what we perceive to be the truth. The human beings in the cave can see what their eyes wants them to see and that’s what they believe is the real truth. Plato’s Cave Allegory is a mythological story of prisoners whom their legs and necks are chained since childhood watching the shadows on the wall, which is the only reality they have ever known (Plato 1). They live in the darkness and they are not able to
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Humans in the cave and who lived in that era were people who lack experience and were confined into this living as they were accepting ignorance (Gonzalez, Para.10) .As per Plato’s dialogue the prisoners see these shadows and since they lack of knowledge they assume that these shadows are real and the shapes on the wall are the realities of their world. Moreover, the humans moving the shapes beyond the fire talk to each other that cause sounds that prisoner can hear but does not know what makes them. As far as they know they assume the noises they hear are the noises of the shapes but they do not understand what do they mean. In this part Plato proves how the prisoners see the reality based on what their eyes see and the shadows are all real and this world for them is the reality. This means, humans in the cave do not have the desire for the change and do not even question what are these noises and where they are coming from. Similarly, this can happen to any human being today because some of us are afraid of doing something for the first time ever in our lives and some are unable to conquer their fears. Thus, fear of change is caused by having a closed mind and not aiming to open our minds so we can see things from different
Portraying the prisoners inside the cave for a lifetime further describes his beliefs on how closed minded society is in his opinion. The “light outside the cave” explains how he feels knowledge is the source of light to everyone’s lives. Without knowledge, there is lack of light. Also, since society does not want to gain further knowledge, they will seem to stay stuck in the dark tunnel. Plato also uses personification to give reader insight on how someone may treat the earth and appreciate it. For example, Plato states “Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.” The reasoning behind this is to explain how a man would reason with the sun as if it were an actual speaking person. The style of Plato’s writing gives readers an understanding on why his work is named “Allegory of the Cave”. The use of his rhetorical devices give deeper meanings to the Earth and the nature it
Inside the cave, the prisoners believe that the shadows they see on the wall are actual reality. Their “bodily eye” tells them that this world is real because their senses perceive so. Plato suggests that the senses do not perceive actual truth.
In “Plato’s Republic” he tells a story of a cave with people being shackled and kept in the shadows. These people can only see shadows of objects on the cave wall and believe that this is reality. Plato writes as Socrates and says, “Imagine human beings as if they were in a cave-like dwelling underground, with a broad opening to the daylight across the whole width of the cave. They have been there since childhood, chained not just by their legs but by their necks, so that they can’t move and can only look ahead of them…Light reaches them from a fire that burns way above and behind them…there is a path across the cave, beside which you need to imagine a little wall, built like those screens puppeteers have in front of their audience so they can show their puppets above them.” (Republic, 239-240). This is illustrating the lie that is being pandered to the people and that this lie then puts the people into bondage. These lies that we live makes us absolutely miserable, but because this is what we have accepted as true since childhood we do not question what is familiar to us. The people in the cave cannot move at all and must just look at the
In Plato’s, “The Allegory of the Cave” he is telling a story about Socrates and a conversation with Glaucon, Plato’s brother. In this story Socrates tells Glaucon of a cave, “Behold! Human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads” (Plato). The purpose of the cave which Socrates describes is to show that we as human beings are blind. We don’t expand our knowledge or test our beliefs. We sit with chains around our legs and necks and don’t try to test our boundaries. We are all
Throughout the course of history, mankind has unceasingly strived to comprehend the purpose of our existence. Who are we? Why are we here? While many different conclusions to these questions have emerged, Plato shared Socrates’ believe that ignorance is the mind’s natural state and that our human existence is meant to be lived seeking true knowledge through debate and questioning. In “The Allegory of the Cave” from The Republic, Plato depicts a cave where prisoners are chained from their childhood to grow up only looking at the back of the cave wall. Above and behind them is a fire with a wall standing in front of it where puppeteers hold various figured objects in front of the fire to create dancing shadows on the wall. The prisoners, seeing
Reality is being ignored throughout life. In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, the technique gives a strong metaphor about the real world today. It is an excerpt that shows a good idea of how not everyone has the desire to open up their mindsets or to learn the reality of the worldly goods. This reading requires readers to dig in deeper to find the message Plato is delivering. We don’t have our eyes open to the deeper reality but to the surface reality. He begins with giving an image of a cave scenery and how the only option you can have been to looking forward. All you can picture was shadows of puppetry on the walls and nothing else. The prisoners were so adapt to the darkness that when they were dragged into the reality, it burned; pain occurrence. He discusses how we are afraid to adapt to new things with comparisons of the pain light gives to prisoners. The comparisons with what you see behind darkness reveal how society today’s viewpoint needs further discussion; to seek the truth of art.
In the story Allegory of the Cave written by Plato, it looks into human perception, showing that what we see isn’t always the truth. In the story it begins by describing the lives of three men living inside a cave. In this cave they are chained, with their backs toward the entrance of the cave unable to see anything behind them. The three men have been living in this cave their entire lives, only being able to see shadows of any objects that pass by. The shadows, have became a game to the three men, each guessing what shadow would appear next. The three men had no idea what they were seeing was only shadows of actual objects; the shadows were all they knew, so to them the shadows were what was real. One of the three men, after years of living this way, was finally able to break free from his chains. After freeing himself from the chains, he then ventured away from the cave. After stepping out, the sun quickly burned his eyes as he walked outside.”Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself. “ only after he can look straight at the sun "is he able to reason about it" and what it is.. The Republic Book VII. Penguin Group Inc. pp. 365–401. After
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato described a group of people that have lived their lives confined to a cave, tied to a pole making them face a wall. On this wall you could only see shadows of what was going on behind you, and from that they misperceived shadows from reality. One day, one of the inhabitants broke free and was able to leave the cave, only to be shocked by what “true reality” was outside of the cave and what was different from the shadows he saw on the cave wall. He was so excited that he wanted to go back into the cave and basically enlightened the other prisoners about what he saw,
The allegory of the cave represents how humans can often skew reality due to beliefs that we create in our own imagination to explain the world around us. We must free ourselves from being led to believe in things without properly seeking evidence to support or counteract our beliefs by getting out of the cave to witness the actual world with our own eyes. Plato attempts to display man’s lifestyle, as well as their entire belief system, as one of bondage to perceptions. It can be very difficult to rid our minds of all we believed originally and establish a new way of thinking. However, like the prisoner who suffers from the bright light when he first gets out the cave, we will get used to the light and be thankful to whoever brought him out of the “dark” cave and enter the world with “light”. This light is used to illustrate enlightenment, or a transition from a state of ignorance to a state of understanding. Plato highlights that education is a process of learning spiritual knowledge, but that everyone has the inherited power to learn within their soul. On the other hand, the process of enlightenment can vary drastically from person to person. However, Plato expresses the notion that in an ideal world there will be equality among the people on many levels. For example, it is believed that all of the knowledge should be known by every citizen, so that everyone has the same opportunities to seek a fulfilling life with the knowledge of their surroundings. Once the prisoners have seen the light outside of the cave, they then have the responsibility to go back into the depths of the dark cave and attempt to enlighten the ignorant prisoners who still chose to live under the shadows, because they refuse to listen to information that dif...
When Plato describes the cave dwellers, he states that for their entire lives they have been shackled to a wall by their neck and feet. With little ability to move they are forced to see only what is in front of them. Located in the line of visibility is a wall and on that wall are human figure shadows made by the fire that is located behind the wall they are chained to. These prisoners that have never seen the outside world believe that these shadows are humans and that they are living in reality.
The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. He sees it as what happens when someone is educated to the level of philosopher. He contends that they must "go back into the cave" or return to the everyday world of politics, greed and power struggles. The Allegory also attacks people who rely upon or are slaves to their senses. The chains that bind the prisoners are the senses. The fun of the allegory is to try to put all the details of the cave into your interpretation. In other words, what are the models the guards carry? the fire? the struggle out of the cave? the sunlight? the shadows on the cave wall? Socrates, in Book VII of The Republic, just after the allegory told us that the cave was our world and the fire was our sun. He said the path of the prisoner was our soul's ascent to knowledge or enlightenment. He equated our world of sight with the intellect's world of opinion. Both were at the bottom of the ladder of knowledge. Our world of sight allows us to "see" things that are not real, such as parallel lines and perfect circles. He calls this higher understanding the world "abstract Reality" or the Intelligeble world. He equates this abstract reality with the knowledge that comes from reasoning and finally understanding. On the physical side, our world of sight, the stages of growth are first recognition of images (the shadows on the cave wall) then the recognition of objects (the models the guards carry) To understand abstract reality requires the understanding of mathematics and finally the forms or the Ideals of all things (the world outside the cave). But our understanding of the physical world is mirrored in our minds by our ways of thinking. First comes imagination (Socrates thought little of creativity), then our unfounded but real beliefs. Opinion gives way to knowledge through reasoning (learned though mathematics). Finally, the realization of the forms is mirrored by the level of Understanding in the Ways of Thinking. The key to the struggle for knowledge is the reasoning skills acquired through mathematics as they are applied to understanding ourselves. The shadows on the cave wall change continually and are of little worth, but the reality out side the cave never changes and that makes it important.
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.
Plato’s Republic transmits the Platonic-Socratic vision of how human kind interpret reality. This model concludes with The Allegory of the Cave. Said metaphor describes a cave inhabited by chained men that can only look forward, to the wall of the cave. The wall offers visual projections of things, shadows, and they believe them to be the real things and the essence of the world. One day, one of them sets himself free and gets to see the real models behind the shadows he once thought to be real things. When he comes back and talks about the real world he experienced, he is mocked by the other men and thought to be insane. With this representation, Plato refers to human knowledge: The things that we see are not the authentic forms of the world, but merely projections of real things that are outside of our human
The circumstances that are described by Plato have a metaphorical meaning to them. The allegory attacks individuals who rely solely upon; or in other words are slaves to their senses. The shackles and chains that bind the prisoners are in fact their senses .In Plato’s theory, the cave itself represents the individuals whom believe that knowledge derives from what we can hear and see in the world around us; in other words, empirical knowledge. The cave attempts to show that believers of empirical knowledge are essentially ...
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.