Knowledge And Truth Lead To Freedom In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

733 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Chapter 1- The Nature of Theatre

The philosopher Plato in his seminal work The Republic argues using Socrates as his vehicle in the allegory of the cave that knowledge and truth lead to freedom. Glaucon and Socrates enter into a discussion of a group of prisoners who can only see what is right in front of their faces. They are chained in a cave unable to move. Behind them in there is a fire and a group of puppeteers, their keeps, who use props: vessels, statues, puppets, and other objects to cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. This is all that they have ever seen. It is the truth they know. Occasionally a prisoner is forced to leave the cave. They have to be compelled to leave the world they know. Socrates relates to Glaucon the result of one of the prisoners
He has left ignorance and moved into an intellectual truth. The freedman would naturally feel pity for his former companions because they are living in a false reality. Would he return to the darkness to educate and free his prison mates? He would see nothing but darkness. Could the puppeteers allow him to live once he knew the truth? His companions in the darkness of the cave would not be able to understand the truth. Their chains keep them in their state of ignorance. The status quo likes the prisoners ignorant, they can control their thoughts and their perceptions of the truth. The freedman would be put to death for trying to educate the prisoners and free them from their ignorance. The other prisoners would not be able to fathom the truth. Socrates equates this an individuals journey to knowledge and once attained the person does not want to return to a state of ignorance. Knowledge effects change personally, politically, socially, and nationally (the
Socrates is not against all forms of poetry only the imitative genre. It is not truth. A creation held to a mirror is not real. It is a reflection of the original, and it can be distorted, and changed in ways that destroy the original.
Imitative poetry is in Socrates opinion do not provoke thought and are corrupting for the soul. People were too foolish to see that imitative poetry was not truth. It was seductive and could corrupt the knowledge of even a wise person. Truth was the only protection against the corruption of this type of poetry.
Imitation decreased the value of the original; poetry, art, etc. Socrates asks Glaucon to distinguish the difference in an original object, a bed, created by a carpenter and copied by a painter. Was the bed copied or created by the painter? Was it copied as it was or as it appeared? What is the truth? The painter is not the creator of the bed in question, he is only the copier of the carpenter’s art. He has imitated the carpenter’s art without the sacrifice of the carpenter.
The beauty of art never changes, beautiful never changes but the perception can be changed by imitation. By the reflection in the mirror. It can be imitated but it is not truth. Imitation is deception, seductions, and corruption of the

Show More
Related

  • Plato’s Five Dialogues and Applications of Today’s Society

    1181 Words  | 3 Pages

    Socrates put one’s quest for wisdom and the instruction of others above everything else in life. A simple man both in the way he talked and the wealth he owned, he believed that simplicity in whatever one did was the best way of acquiring knowledge and passing it unto others. He is famous for saying that “the unexplained life is not worth living.” He endeavored therefore to break down the arguments of those who talked with a flowery language and boasted of being experts in given subjects (Rhees 30). His aim was to show that the person making a claim on wisdom and knowledge was in fact a confused one whose clarity about a given subject was far from what they claimed. Socrates, in all his simplicity never advanced any theories of his own but rather aimed at bringing out the worst in his interlocutors.

    Read More

  • Comparing Plato's Allegory Of The Cave And Jumping Mouse

    1221 Words  | 3 Pages

    When he hypothetically returns to try to tell those who are still chained there of the outside world, and how everything they see is only the faint shadows outlining the true nature of reality, they reject him outright. He would be immediately mocked, and any attempts to convince the remaining prisoners would be rebuffed in their futility. Acceptance of his ideas would mean a complete restructuring of all that they now accepted as reality. Any previous satisfaction that they could have had in their position would be lost with their view of that position, and that causes a great deal of discomfort in the minds of the prisoners, given that they are not sure of the same happiness on the other side of change. It does not seem graspable to them that they might find more happiness after they see the truth from the returning prisoner's point of view, so they choose the safe alternative, that of close-mindedness.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    In some moments of my life I too feel shackled or chained down. Whether it’s in a relationship or just trying to get ahead in life. In my teenage years I was careless and figured that since I was young I had time to waste. I held my own self back from doing a lot of things I should have done back then that would have made life a whole lot easier for me now. In the allegory, once the prisoner returned from the outside world he shared his stories with the other prisoners. The prisoners wanted to hear nothing of what the man had to say. Nor did they believe him. It reminds me of when I took a trip to Hawaii for my cousin's wedding. Everything there was so beautiful and the air smelled so fresh and clean.I took a lot of pictures and when I returned home I let my friends know all about the wonderful experience I had. Some did not want to hear it at all saying things like “ Well I will never go there so I don't care”, or “Your putting extras on it i’m sure it was not that pretty. People are afraid or quick to refuse new information or ideas because they are so comfortable in believing their own beliefs or what society wants them to believe. In the case of the allegory the prisoners all wanted to only believe what they were subjected to. They were afraid to receive knowledge. Most of us these days do the exact same thing simply because we believe we know it

    Read More

  • Plato and Bacon

    921 Words  | 2 Pages

    Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a story being told by Socrates to Plato’s brother, Glaucon. Socrates tells of prisoners in an underground cave who are made to look upon the front wall of the cave. To the rear of the prisoners, below the protection of the parapet, lie the puppeteers whom are casting the shadows on the wall in that the prisoners are perceiving reality. Once a prisoner is free, he's forced to look upon the fire and objects that once determined his perception of reality, and he so realizes these new pictures before of him are now the accepted forms of reality. Plato describes the vision of the real truth to be "aching" to the eyes of the prisoners, and the way they might naturally be inclined to going back and viewing what they need perpetually seen as a pleasing and painless acceptance of truth. This stage of thinking is noted as "belief."

    Read More

  • Allegory Of The Cave Essay

    560 Words  | 2 Pages

    I think the prisoner is pulled out of the cave by the enlightened ones, the ones who have reached this essential wisdom They also might stand as deities asserting there power over the prisoner because according to Socrates Plato's teacher only a diety or auricle has the wisdom of the gods and as a result the beings that pulled the prisoner out of the cave and into the light must be deities seeking to grant humankind the wisdom they

    Read More

  • Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix

    2260 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Republic is considered to be one of Plato’s most storied legacies. Plato recorded many different philosophical ideals in his writings. Addressing a wide variety of topics from justice in book one, to knowledge, enlightenment, and the senses as he does in book seven. In his seventh book, when discussing the concept of knowledge, he is virtually addressing the cliché “seeing is believing”, while attempting to validate the roots of our knowledge. By his use of philosophical themes, Plato is able to further his points on enlightenment, knowledge, and education. In this allegory, the depictions of humans as they are chained, their only knowledge of the world is what is seen inside the cave. Plato considers what would happen to people should they embrace the concepts of philosophy, to become enlightened by it, to see things as they truly are. As we have mentioned in class, Plato’s theory did not only present itself in his allegory, but also in the Wachowski brothers’ hit-film, The Matrix. In the film, the protagonist, Neo, suffers from a similar difficulty of adapting to reality, or the truth, which we will see later on. In order to understand Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, one must consider how Plato’s used of symbols to explain what true knowledge (or enlightenment) really is along the comparisons to the Wachowski brothers’ film, The Matrix.

    Read More

  • Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of the essay, Socrates creates the setting by creating an illusion of a cave, prisoners and the sun. The prisoners are trapped in a cave and are chained head to toe. They have only been able to look at the cave wall their entire lives. There is a fire behind them so that object’s shadows can be seen on the cave wall. Because of this, the prisoners believe that the objects they see on the cave wall are real. One prisoner is dragged out of the cave and is forced to open his eyes in the

    Read More

  • Comparing Plato's Allegory Of The Cave And Harrison Bergeron

    642 Words  | 2 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Comparing Plato's Allegory Of The Cave By Mumford And Sons

    280 Words  | 1 Pages

    Plato’s cave had chained prisoners and that was the only life they ever knew. They couldn’t move their heads, and the only objects they could see from the outside world were the casted shadows created by the fire. They saw the truth from the shadows, but they were distorted. What they were seeing was only one side of the truth, not the whole thing. When one of the prisoners was free to go, he was forced to be dragged out of the cave. It

    Read More

  • Criticism In Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    Plato begins the dialogue by describing the cave and the people to which he is referring. The cave is underneath the ground where a small fire is the main light source. The prisoners, who are shackled by their arms and legs, are sitting in front of the fire facing a wall. Above them there is a walkway connecting with a low wall, resembling a puppeteer’s stage. On this walkway people are carrying monuments and statues to make

    Read More

  • The Allegory Of The Cave And The Apology By Plato

    1292 Words  | 3 Pages

    In "The Allegory of the Cave," prisoners in a cave are forced to watch shadows as people behind them are forced to accept these shadows as reality -- "To them... the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. One prisoner, however, is released, and stumbles into the real world, containing more depth and complexity than they had ever known. At first, the prisoner will be pained at the bright, piercing light, but will eventually recover. According to Plato, the freed prisoner is then obligated to return to the shadows of the cave, to inform the shackled prisoners left behind of the real world. The prisoners, however, will not believe the freed prisoner, and may even go as afra s to kill him for such "lies" contrary to their "reality." The pursuit of the truth is, therefor, a painstaking but rewarding process. According to Plato, the physical world is a world of sight, one that lacks meaning if left alone. Only those who manage to break into the sunlight from the cave will ascend to the intellectual world. The prisoners in the shadows only know of the dull physical world, while those who ascend into the sunlight learn of the spiritual world, and are exposed to the first hints of truth. The soul ascends upward into the realm of goodness and of the truth, where "... souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell.." The pursuit of goodness and of the truth, then, improves the soul, as the soul desires to be elevated to a higher state of knowledge and morality. Caring for the self and the soul involves freeing the shackles of the physical world and ascending to the "... world of knowledge... the universal author of all things beautiful and right... and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual..." The soul yearns to dwell in a world of morality and knowledge, and only the pursuit of

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Allegory of the Cave by Plato

    5691 Words  | 12 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comparison Of Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

    862 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, prisoners are kept since child birth in a dark cave, they are only able to see nothing but shadow figures move on the wall of the cave. They perceive that as their true reality since that is all they have known all their life. A prisoner breaks free from his shackles and is blinded by the light of the sun. He realized that his reality in the cave was not real, he sees people and understands what reality is now. The prisoner goes back to explain to the others what he has seen but they don’t believe him because they believed in their own reality.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, and Dualism

    794 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...onclusion, the considerations of knowledge and reality are ones that philosophers will continue to contemplate throughout the centuries. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a wonderful attempt at trying to ascertain the answers to these inquiries with its revealing comparisons that contrast the darkness of ignorance and the light of the sun to knowledge to demonstrate an individual’s journey up and out of the cave to the immaterial world of heaven and a state of true enlightenment. The allegory also illustrates Plato’s ideal of dualism by liberating knowledge from any dependency on anything material or physical. This excursion into Plato’s teachings illuminated the “Allegory of the Cave” in detail, and affirmed the question that dualism does, undeniably, exist and that Plato is correct in his ideal that reality does, without a doubt, go beyond the material world.

    Read More

  • Allegory Of The Cave Essay

    775 Words  | 2 Pages

    In book seven of ‘The Republic’, Plato presents possibly one of the most prominent metaphors in Western philosophy to date titled ‘Allegory of the Cave’.

    Read More

More about Knowledge And Truth Lead To Freedom In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

Open Document