Augustine Allegory Of The Cave Analysis

Throughout the history of western philosophy, men have been attempting to understand the complexities of the human soul. In Confessions, Augustine depicts the well-ordered soul in terms of conversion to Roman Catholic Christianity. For Augustine, the will plays a major role in this process. He repeatedly states that he was taken out of his sinfulness once he decided to align his will with God’s will (Augustine bk. 8, ch. 10, sec. 22; bk. 11, ch. 1, sec. 1). Augustine divides sin into three categories: lust of the flesh, pride of life, and lust of the eyes (bk. 3, ch. 8, sec. 16). He argues that these three sins all exhibit a disagreement between God’s will and his own. In his biography, Augustine reveals that he experiences all forms of these
In this story, Plato describes a scenario in which a man who was trapped in a cave since his youth is finally freed of his chains and allowed to exit the cave. Once the man’s chains are removed, he finds himself compelled to turn his head away from the shadows and towards the light behind him:
“Let us suppose that one of them has been released, and compelled suddenly to stand up, and turn his neck round and walk with open eyes towards the light; and let us suppose that he goes through all these actions with pain, and that the dazzling splendour renders him incapable of discerning these objects of which he used formerly to see the shadows. What answer should you expect him to make if someone were to tell him that in those days he was watching foolish phantoms, but that now he is somewhat nearer to reality, and is turned towards things more real, and sees more correctly; above all, if he were to point out to him the several objects that are passing by, and question him, and compel him to answer what they are? Should you not expect him to be puzzled, and to regard his old visions as truer than the objects now forced upon his notice?... And if he were further compelled to gaze at the light itself, would not his eyes, think you be distressed, and would he not shrink and
While in the cave, the shadows are formed by men holding images made of rocks and wood in front of a fire elevated above the men in the allegory (bk. 7, 514a-515b). This is strikingly different from the way in which shadows are formed in reality. Plato intentionally uses the sun as the natural light source in the outside world in comparison to the fire formed inside the cave in order to show the human influence on the men in the cave (bk. 7, 516e-517d). The shadows they viewed in the cave were untrue because they were man-made images viewed through a man-made source of light. It reflects the way in which man blinds man through their false understandings and leads them to believe these understandings as