philosophers.
philosophers.
Plato’s philosophical beliefs by the Allegory of the Cave represents how people view the world by what they see and hear and that we are blinded because of it. The cave itself represents how we are all trapped from the real knowledge that we are too blinded to see. The shadows in the cave are supposed to be what we think is true and that they’re really just shadows of the truth. The prisoner leaving the cave represents the people who actually try to go out and seek knowledge and the sun is representing the truth in life. The prisoner returning to the cave represents how most people are too scared to except the philosophical truth and are actually scared of…
In The Republic, the Philosopher King becomes compelled to tell his citizens medicinal lies. When the citizens do not understand something, like medicinal things, the philosopher king becomes able to tell them almost anything and they will believe everything he says, and exalt him. He is compelled to do this to ease their minds, since they would not understand anyway, he figures it is just easier to not tell them. The Philosopher King also seems to understand more than what the citizens understand. But it isn’t his nature that sets him apart from citizens like him, it is his wisdom, virtue, and knowledge that lifts him higher than everyone else, and allows his to “understand” things that the regular citizens would not. This suits him because he is so wise, he understands why the citizens do not understand what he understands, or knows.…
In Plato's Allegory of the Cave there were multiple beliefs brought upon by the prisoners of this cave. The prisoners of the cave are supposed to parallel everyday people in the sense of how reality is perceived. The prisoners of the cave believed and only knew that reality of the shadows and developed their own belief structure and way of processing that information. Plato connected that to everyday people due to the fact that although we strongly believe the reality we have made for ourselves, there can be more that we have never been exposed to. For example, when one of the prisoners were unchained and brought out of the cave into the world, he was overwhelmed and wanted to tell the other prisoners. Due to the fact that other prisoners could…
Initially, I would say that Plato’s Allegory of the Cave doesn’t tell us anything about reality, and by doing so I would have to agree with the statement. My reasoning for this is straightforward and simple, Plato implies that the senses are completely useless, and by doing so he also implies that empiricist ways are also useless for they rely solely upon the senses. This shows to us that the Plato’s allegory cannot tell us anything about reality as we have survived for millions of years by using empiricist techniques, or more specifically the senses. It would simply be impossible for us to live without them. These senses are sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, and Plato claims that in order to understand reality we mustn’t use them, instead relying on rationalist techniques like logic and reason, this, in some circumstances couldn’t tell us a thing about reality. An example of this would be that we cannot gain all of our knowledge through thinking alone. For example, I could think of a fruit like an apple or banana and I could think of what it would possibly taste like, however, you wouldn’t be able to imagine the taste, this simply isn’t possible. We couldn’t just think that bananas or apples taste delicious because we don’t actually know how they would taste without actually eating it, and if we were to do this we would have to rely on the sense of taste, an empiricist sense, this clearly shows how the Analogy of the Cave cannot possibly tell us anything about reality as humanity relies on empiricism for the most basic of tasks as my example above clearly shows.…
In Michael Ramsey’s video depicting Plato’s Allegory of the Cave men are held captive in a cave since childhood. The only reality they knew was demonstrated before them as the shadows of civilians as they passed by them. All seemed normal in their world until one of the prisoners was set free and taken out of the cave. Once his eyes became adjusted, he was able to accept the new reality portrayed all around him. I had a similar experience when I transitioned from high school to college. In high school my reality was based on the security, structure, and guidance provided by exterior influences, college has helped me to change my perception of reality.…
In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, a dialogue between two men, Socrates and Glaucon, reveals that our senses are not completely reliable. Socrates tells the story of a prisoner who has been chained for his whole life, able to see only shadows cast on a wall. The prisoner believed that the shadows were reality, but when he is released and dragged out of the cave, he finds a more important, more authentic reality. Socrates arrives to the conclusion that our senses are limited, just like the prisoner’s were, and that in order to come closer to the truth, we need to enter the world of intellect.…
already;” (Plato 4). Spoken by Socrates in reference to the philosophy of life, this quote depicts the meaning of broadening our horizons in order to gain knowledge and escape the shackles that confine us in the form of deceit. This quote is portrayed in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” as the prisoners detained in the cave are deluded by their perception of reality, and the prisoner that escapes loses that distorted world and becomes enlightened. The cave is a representation of the hidden lies in which the prisoners are provided at the premises of their knowledge and are restrained from the truth to remain ignorant. Ultimately, one of the prisoners discovers that the world in…
Allegory of the Cave is a dialog between Socrates and Gloucon in The Republic written by Plato. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Socrates depicts a long, dark cave with a small opening that allows a small amount of light to enter. Inside the cave there group of prisoners, who have been in the cave for their entire lives. The prisoners legs and necks are chained to the cave floor so they are unable to move and can only look forward at the cave wall. At the back of the cave there is a fire that they are never able to view. In between the prisoners and the fire there is a low wall with a path behind it, along which people carry pictures, puppets, and statues. These pictures, puppets and statues are all the prisoners are able to see, and the echoes of the puppeteers when they speak are all they are able to hear. Although the prisoners are chained they are still content because all they have ever known are the shadows. None of them have ever seen anything beyond the cave and have no desire to do so. However one prisoner wakes up to find that he is no longer chained to the floor, and is able to leave the cave. Once the prisoner is outside he realizes that the shadows are not real. The prisoner then decides to return to the cave, to free the other prisoners, however reentering the cave would make his eyes have to…
Lastly, Plato’s Allegory of The Cave had ensured through the centuries because it can still relate to today’s ignorant society. For example, the government will give the people little information yet they take it as the truth. As if the government could never lie to its people, but Plato could not disagree more.…
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is Plato talking to Socrates and Glaucon about the idea of human being. Plato, being a philosopher, wondered about a lot of things. He, of course, had meant to put meanings behind the dialogues that he writes down, Allegory of the Cave being one. The central idea of it is that he believes humans are creatures that only wander around in places that they know, and whenever they leave the cave, they see a whole new world. Throughout the entire text, he develops the idea with lots of analogies and hidden meanings.…
The Allegory of the Cave is a metaphor that can be seen to describe many aspects and situations in life that one had no control or choice over. The reason Plato uses many metaphors in his allegory is to think or ‘philosophize’ about the world around us because in fact our understanding of the world is very limited. This is due to the fact that we live in a world of shadows and not reality to whom very little is actually known about by everyone. The metaphors are seen to actually represent a society with all its people, truths, hidden meanings, problems, solutions etc… The meanings transferred in the allegory of the cave apply to philosophy because it shows the philosophers position in society. It gives the philosopher the opportunity to philosophize/think about what exists/reality and what does not exist in our surrounding environment. To society, the allegory of the cave contemplates many issues related to man in his society. Such issues include human’s ability to be ignorant or knowledgeable, free or imprisoned, stubborn, lazy, active, etc… by choosing either to or not to search for answers to many of the issues that arise continuously. Moreover, The Allegory of the Cave is about ignorance and learning because the men in the cave are ignorant or unaware of the outside world that exists except for the shadows that they saw passing by on the walls. The man who is freed engages in the process of learning from the moment he is released from the cave and is forced to adapt to the new conditions and situations that now surround him. In addition, the chains are used to symbolize the limited amount of information that a person has about reality. For whatever reason, this limited amount of information can be considered to be a type of ignorance. Last but not least, as humans in this world, many of us are really ignorant…
In “The Allegory of the Cave” and “We Should Grow Too Fond of It: Why We Love the Civil War,” respectively, ancient and modern writers Plato and Drew Gilpin Faust articulate the way one perceives and believes reality. They assert that by shifting a fragmented focus of a subject of study to the subject as a whole, one can reach an altered and illuminated understanding of it (Faust 188, Plato 298). However, where Plato expresses, through an enlightening and famous metaphor, the necessity of a clear understanding that enables the thinker to change his skewed view of reality to ultimate reality, Faust underscores the necessity of a clear and realistic vision of war’s true devastating nature through detailed historical references. These differences aside, when pairing and studying both essays together, Plato’s essay offers a cautionary and enlightened vision of ultimate reality that is extended in Faust’s essay.…
Because I love Socrates I find everything Plato writes thoroughly interesting. The minute he opened this part of The Republic with “how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened,” I was interested. The part in the Allegory of the cave that stood out to me was the transformation of the man from the shadows to the sun then back again. It is here that everything seemed to fall in place. The people in the shadows seemed, t me, to have an erroneous conscious, simply because they were living in the shadows. The shadows represented the gist of reality. It was the appearance of an object but not the depth of it. The shadows seemed like a false reality, there to see but unable to be grasped in any way. When the ,an went from the shadows to the sun he refused to believe there was such a thing other than what he had learned from the cave, therefore the sun would represent what reality actually is. The prisoner of the cave was unable to accept reality when he was first introduced to it because for all of his life he had only been able to reach the shadows of reality, not the full thing and he believed he had learned all that there was of reality so he refused to believe there was anything else to say about the manner. The transition from the fake world to true reality took him a while but after one begins to live in reality when he is sent back nothing else will ever make sense. The sun, reality, was able to change a man’s mind, one who had been in the dark for his entire life, but…
The "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato represents an extended metaphor that is to contrast the way in which we perceive and believe in what is reality. The thesis behind his allegory is the basic tenets that all we perceive are imperfect "reflections" of the ultimate Forms, which subsequently represent truth and reality. The purpose of this allegory defines clearly the process of enlightenment. For a man to be enlightened, he must above all desire the freedom to explore and express himself. Plato's main concept of the cave is: people see reality as the visible world when reality really is more than the visible world.…
The journey that “prisoners” of that cave take is in the ultimate goal to attain knowledge of the abstract world. By doing so, the few who left this place establish themselves above the slaves that are still living within the depths of the cave(521, a). The interesting part of this allegory is that it shows that this cave has an entrance and hence shows the possibility there is a light out of the tunnel and be able to reach the enlightened state. Plato clearly explains the difference between the people that are left behind the cave and those who ventured out on their journey to discover the universal truth: “…the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason” (517, c). All of this is especially relevant in Plato’s thinking. He specifies in his Republic only a few will manage the reach the status of Philosopher-King and hence grasp the universal truth. It is up for the Guardian class to accomplish such a task through hardships and tough education throughout their lives to prepare them for this difficult task. It also justifies his vision that not all men are born with equal status and therefore the Noble lie. With this allegory, he is able to show the Noble Lie idea and firmly affirms that not all men can become “gold” and that only a few will manage to endure the hardships of the light and become the philosopher-king. One who chooses such a path hence refuses to live his life in ignorance and by doing so, forgets the past: “Would he not find his eyes so dazzled by the glare as to be incapable of making out so much as one of the objects that are now called true” (516, a) It is the existentialist value that men have responsible for their own self community and in…