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Plato's attitude towards perception and reality in the allegory of the cave
Plato s philosophy of education
Plato's attitude towards perception and reality in 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
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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
One prisoner somehow manages to escape allowing the prisoner to break free and escape to the outside of the cave.He was greeted by a whole new world and further confusion. The sun blazes down upon him nearly blinding him before he covers his eyes.The confusion and intense lighting brought on a gigantic feeling of confusion.The prisoner backs up and returns to the forsaken cave and speaks of his findings to the other prisoners. The prisoners listen briefly. So bizarre & not fully being able to understand what the prisoner was saying, the other prisoners shunned him and paid no attention to his findings.They ridiculed him and told him they wanted no parts. The prisoner waddled in his own confusion.This allegory tells a story with a deeper hidden meaning. In the story once the prisoner escaped the cave he was blinded by the sun. The sun is a symbol
In the book Republic, Plato is on a quest to define Justice as he builds the ideal city. His city is ruled by philosopher kings, the true rulers. Philosophers, in Plato’s opinion, are best fit to rule and judge because of their love of knowledge and wisdom. When arguing philosophers have the experiences of all regimes Plato says, “The philosopher to have tasted the kind of pleasure that comes from the sight of things as they truly are. ‘so far as experiences goes, then,’ I said, ‘he is the one who is in the best position to judge” (325). Plato believes, that because philosophers have all the parts of the soul that other types of rulers contain, plus the ability to be able to see the world for what is, they then have
Plato states that “‘the world of our sight is like the habitation in prison,’” (citation). To convey this message he describes a cave, which represents the physical, sensory world that possesses people who believe empirical knowledge to be true knowledge. Within the cave the people only see shadows, mere reflections of the truth, which represents the falsehood in their perception of genuine knowledge. The dreariness of the cave is meant to exemplify how an "unexamined life" can be a mental prison; a suppressed mindset that yields impaired intellect (Robinson 25). However, the outside of the cave represents the ideal, true world; an escape from the confinement of ignorance. The prisoners who escape the cave through philosophical curiosity ascend into reality in pursuit of wisdom and understanding. The discovery of Forms, perfect, eternal, and unchanging entities, will lead to the comprehension of factual knowledge and endless wisdom. Plato’s Theory of Forms also illustrated the crucial link between knowledge and goodness. The highest Form of all the Forms is the Form of the Good, which illuminates all of the other Forms. Plato believes that the Form of the Good “‘is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and
The Plato’s Cave allegory is about prisoners that are chained in a cave since birth, that believe life in one state of reality. This was forced upon them. They cannot turn to see anything behind them because their necks were chained. The only thing they can see is the wall in the cave. Behind them was a burning fire. In between the fire and the prisoners was a parapet. The puppeteers hold up objects that cause shadows on the only wall the prisoners can see. They believe the shadows are reality. They would talk about the shadows as if they were the real objects. A prisoner was taken from what he believes is his home, his chains, and dragged outside as he was kicking and screaming, and blinded by the sun’s
Imagine a group of people, prisoners, who had been chained to stare at a wall in a cave for all of their lives. Facing that wall, these prisoners can pass the time by merely watching the shadows casted from a fire they could not see behind them dance on the walls. These shadows became the closest to what view of reality the prisoners have. But what happens after one of these prisoners is unbound from his chains to inspect beyond the wall of shadows, to the fire and outside the cave? How would seeing the world outside of the walls of the cave affect his views of the shadows and reality? It is this theme with its questions that make up Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It is in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that there are several key ideas presented in the allegory. The ideas presented in the allegory can be related back to themes of education and the gaining of knowledge and in ways that can relate back to “us”, the people.
Plato articulates that each and every individual is given the learning power in his soul by the divine, however a man only can learn up to a certain limit and after the limitation is crossed, he cannot learn more. This is why the prisoners originally attack the philosopher upon his return. Even still, Plato holds that enlightened individuals have an obligation to the rest of society, because a good society must be one in which the truly wise (the Philosopher-King) are the rulers. The philosopher has a responsibility to modify the shadows and accept what change he can
The allegory of the cave can often be used as a metaphor for the way that people take in information. This process entails learning. Education is all about receiving information and what you chose to do with it. It also involves considering the source of your information and realizing that you may not be able to accept the first thing you hear.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that for the perfectly just city to be realized in practice, philosopher must become kings and kings must become philosophers. In order to prove his point I will discuss the metaphor of the divided line and the allegory of the cave to explain Socrates’ theory of knowledge. Finally the questions of whether what a person knows make him or her better person? Does it qualify him or her to rule? Will get answered.
The "Allegory" depicts a number of people who are imprisoned in a cave, chained by the legs and neck so that they cannot move, nor can they turn their heads; they see only towards the back wall opposite the cave opening. These people have been chained in this manner their entire lives. Sometimes objects and people pass in front of the cave opening, and shadows play upon the back wall. Since the people have only seen the shadows, they assume that the shadows are the real objects and beings of the world. They watch the shadows, measuring them, trying to understand them, and soon honors are bestowed upon those persons who can see the...
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
In the allegory, a slave is then brought out of the cave, in what Plato refers to as "he ascent of the soul into the intellectual world" (Jacobus 319). Once out of the cave the slave discovers that what he thought was real is not. He learns to comprehend all of these new images as real and true. Since he has been in the dark, both literally and metaphorically, the light blinds him.
Nothing has truly changed, only our perception. The shadows were always shadows, and will continue to be. Just as the light will always be light, and just as there will always be people that sit in darkness, whether by force or of their own volition. Our ability to perceive and understand our world was merely restricted by the cave. The prisoner is emerging from an illusion he thought was real, and finally able to see the actual reality reveal to him by the light. Only by using our senses and intellect together can we achieve
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 ancient Greek philosopher Plato is one of the most famous philosophers in the history of philosophy. This is largely due to the fact that Plato considers a lot of philosophical issues and provides a holistic philosophical view of the world, able to explain the different levels of human life such as religion and politics. In this regard, the political views of Plato are still quite relevant in relation to different political regimes including democracy. In fact, Plato negatively assesses the democratic regime as a form of power that leads to tyranny and disorder in conditions of total permissiveness and promiscuity. His allegory of the cave allows one to equate the prisoners of the cave to the supporters
Written more than 2000 years ago, The Republic is one of Plato’s most influential and widely read works in the whole of western philosophy . Consisting of a series of ten books and contained within Book VII is the Allegory of the Cave, one of his best known works to emerge. The point of the allegory aims to conceive knowledge as a sort of illumination; Plato portrays the process of education as an ascent from darkness into light. This theory of knowledge still applies to events in our lives today, just as Plato directed it to the people of his time.