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…
The Washington Monument is a magnificent structure designed to honor George Washington, the commander of American forces in the American Revolution and the first president of the newly created republic.…
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…
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave envisions the world as a dark cave, with human beings as trapped prisoners, and all of their experiences as nothing but shadows on a wall. Plato was an Ancient Greek philosopher who founded the Academy and is the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence in Western thought. Plato is informing us of the world around us, and is guiding the reader in the journey from ignorance to wisdom.…
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 metaphor depicts prisoners who understand life only through shadows flickering on the wall of their cave. Here he paints a frightening image of “prisoners [who] have been chained from childhood” forced to stare at the cavernous wall ahead of them (296). As they have never left their dark dwelling and are ignorant of the reality that exists outside of it, the prisoners are duped into thinking the “meaningless illusions” they see are real (297). Through metaphor, Plato asserts that one who understands life only through sensual perceptions is shamefully deprived of a complete and holistic accurate…
In Book 7, Socrates presents the famous metaphor – allegory of cave. The metaphor demonstrates the influence of education on a human soul. People see shadows of statues in the dark place and believe these figures to be real. This shows people’s lowest stage on the Socrates’ line – imagination. When a prisoner is unchained, blinded with the light of fire, within the time he sees that indeed shadows are reflections of statues. This is where belief is represented - he sees the link and percepts this to be real. Finally, the person is taken out of the cave and, blinded within the sunlight, later he sees the real world: real trees, flowers, animals,…
Plato was a Greek Philosopher, who was a student of Socrates. The Analogy of the Cave in Plato’s Republic was written as a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon. In the Analogy of the Cave, Plato describes the prisoners who lived an isolated life in the confined space of a cave. Plato’s Analogy explains a philosopher’s journey to knowledge and the difficulty that he faces along the way and the prisoners in the cave who have not embarked on the journey to true knowledge and are living their lives, only seeing what is on the surface, and what they want to see.…
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, Plato starts with describing a scenario where prisoners are chained up in chairs since birth that prevents them from moving or turning their heads. These prisoners are limited to facing a wall inside a cave. These prisoners witness images displayed on the wall which are shadows that are made by a group of people who are in front of a fire displaying statues of various objects. These prisoners believe that the shadows are the most real things in the world since they have never been exposed to anything else.…
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 allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic is a metaphor meant to illustrate Plato’s views on knowledge but also strengthens his perception of the noble lie in society, an idea that is still very relevant today. It is designed to ask the fundamental question of: “What is the truth?” This is a clear reference Plato’s ideology that rests upon the sworn duty that Guardians make towards the state and it is hence emphasized by this analogy. The journey that one makes to be able to attain that superior state is full of hardships1(The Republic, 516, a) but it is meant to illustrate the route the Guardians take to attain the Philosopher-King status. It is what leads a man to enlightenment but also establishes a supreme duty for whoever discovers…