Plato and Niccolo Machiavelli magnificent ideologies for leaders of the world. First Plato’s dialogue Allegory of the Cave described what would happen if prisoners were chained to a wall and could only see the shadows before them. The shadows were visuals on the wall from the fire blazing behind them. Plato stated a quote about what would happen if those prisoners were to be released out of the cave? His reasoning for this was to produce what the human natures method is of gaining knowledge. Then, Niccolo Machiavelli described in The Prince why qualities are essential in succeeding as a prince. He stated that “qualities bring either blame or praise (Machiavelli). Therefore, it is significant to suppress negative qualities and let the positive…
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.…
The two texts that include The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both have similar ideas in the way that they both show how everyone has a different idea on what reality is. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave shows a cave where people have been kept since birth. The people are tied up in a way which has them only able to see the shadows in front of them and nothing else either side or behind them. The reality for these people that are tied up is just the shadows of all different things that are walking along behind them including people and animals. When one of the prisoners escapes his bonds he goes out and sees the real world for what it truly is and this person goes back to try to tell the other prisoners. The other prisoners just see the escaped prisoner as a shadow with a voice that they can’t understand. The Matrix is very similar because Neo the main character starts out living in a fake reality of the real world and then gets shown what the actual reality is.…
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…
In “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, the nature of good is represented through the deprivation of light the prisoners of the cave experience. In this imaginary representation, the individuals are not so much prisoners of the actual cave as they are of their own ignorance. The prisoners are surrounded by darkness and faint light, depicting shadows into reality. If light is the representation of truth, then the darkness engulfing the cave represents the lies the prisoners ignorantly believe. Because the darkness is all that they have known, they…
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.…
“Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exist in the soul…
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…
The prisoners in the story were only allowed to see shadows in the cave and it’s what they believed as true. In the story Plato states that the prisoners came to know reality as nothing more as “the shadows of those artificial objects” (Plato 50). Most people have only seen a narrow and small perspective of the world with a skewed sense of reality. They only know what’s happening around the globe from what’s told through the news outlets and from the surroundings. Lack of knowledge of things they haven’t seen or people they haven’t encountered before is someone’s personal “cave”. Throughout the story the theme of not believing everything you see and hear is prevalent and can be used in every person’s life.…
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…
In the story “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, these three prisoners have lived in a cave their whole life, chained and only able to see this wall. On this wall the only thing they can see is shadows from people and objects doing things in front to make shadows. By only seeing these shadows and nothing else the prisoners have no idea about the outside world, as one of them are released he goes and looks at everything he has not seen before. He then returns to his friends that are still kept in the cave and tries telling them what he has seen, what everything really is. They do not believe him or even know what he is saying because they have not seen the things he has. Plato wants the philosopher to understand life as it is, and know what everything is.…
The point that Plato is trying to make is that everybody is capable of learning; however, the only way we will actually learn is if we turn our whole body and look at the sun. When Plato says that the only way to turn from darkness to light is by "turning the whole body"(Plato, trans C.D.C Reeve, Hacket, 1999, p.212), he means that we must turn our soul to the light. When we turn to the light, it will help us gain knowledge, and it can make our soul healthy. With a healthy soul, our life force is the best and we'll be able to live virtuous. However, most people will never a life with a healthy soul because they're not willing to use the effort it may take to fully turn their body to the "brightest thing".…
In Plato's "Allegory of the cave" the believed perception of reality is portrayed through images of shadows on a wall, in a cave, where the only existence of reality is what is seen in front of one's eyes. In today's present-day the shadows still exist and are depicted in a different form of media through television, computers, movies, and ones personal cell phone. All which are a big part of our daily life. We all have a choice to accept the realities given to us and believe in the shadows created.…
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…