THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE By Plato The well-known myth of the cavern‚ is used by Plato as an allegorical explanation of the situation in which the man is in regard to the knowledge that surrounds him. Plato divided this allegory in three parts: 1. Description of the situation of the prisoners in the cavern. 2. Description of the process of liberation of one of them and of his access to the top or real world. 3. Brief interpretation of the myth. Plato asks us to imagine that we are like a few prisoners
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Commentary Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the factual perception on what human’s ignorant minds accept whatever they perceive without envisioning the reality. His use of “dark” imagery illustrates how a person is trapped and isolated in his own “cave” and conceives everything without visually seeing the “light” outside the cave. He conveys the idea that the “prisoners” are stuck and “chained” in their own reality because they were only shown one perspective from “childhood”. Plato wisely suggests
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Plato’s Allegory of the Cave addresses important aspects of a person’s’ frame of mind; through indirectly comparing pieces of the story to mental exploitation. Through his story‚ Plato urges the reader to find truth and wisdom through elevating their personal thinking. A concept he would die to make known - some two thousand years ago - now bears a relevant message in our world today. The message Plato left behind the story lies around perception‚ and how knowledge obtained through what we see is
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talks about many subjects‚ including how he believed a person learned. He tells about an “Allegory of the Cave”‚ a story told by Socrates explaining how a person comes into knowledge. It tells of people in a cave facing a wall‚ chained so that they can not move their body or head and turn around. They were only able to see the wall and the shadows cast along the wall by people and animals walking by the cave entrance. They would only be able to hear their own voices‚ those arounds them‚ and the echo
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representation. Initially‚ I will talk about what Socrates considers reality and what he considers not reality and why art and poetry are only a representation. Next‚ I will discuss how The Allegory of Cave relates to this definition of reality‚ diving into the significance of light in this essay‚ and then relating this allegory back to representation. Thirdly‚ I will discuss what the theory of forms is and how it applies
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Why am I here and how does the allegory of cave inform my answer? It’s quite challenging to relate an allegory to our lives. But if we think carefully and list those objects and their corresponded symbols: prisoners represent imperfect human‚ the shadow represents illusion of the truth‚ prison represents limitations that hold us back from getting close to the truth…etc‚ I start to understand that I myself could be the prisoner who lives comfortably in his narrow worldview and have difficulties taking
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hand‚ it can be argued that‚ from a grander perspective‚ disproving old knowledge does not mean that our new-found knowledge is of higher quality‚ since we may never have an accurate grasp on reality beyond what our senses suggest. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” tells us that‚ what we believe we are seeing are but our interpretations of ‘shadows’ cast by other things. This can be compared to the fact that before the sixth-century BCE‚ almost everyone people believed in the Flat-Earth Theory. They
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Obtaining the Truth Plato is a historical Greek philosopher and one of Socrate’s pupils. After Socrate died in 399 B.C.‚ Plato left his home in Athens and returned approximately twenty years later. “The Allegory of the Cave” is a short story filled with symbolism and metaphors that Plato had written before he died. In the story‚ Plato wrote about Socrate and his brother‚ Glaucon‚ discussing the steps to obtain the truth and why one should obtain it. In the story‚ Plato uses the prisoners as representative
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And the reason he decided to escape was that he wanted to question everything he learned from inside the cave. When he finally left the cave‚ he was in disbelief; it was pretty much a culture shock to him. Everything was so different compared to his life inside the cave that he didn’t want to believe any of the world outside of it. When he finally accepted the new ideas‚ he discovered the truth. Since he was able to discover the truth
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Ignorance. This is knowing what you don’t know‚ and admitting to it. It is also the belief that wisdom is the property of higher power. I have had the pleasure of reading two of Plato’s most famous writings “The Apology” and “Allegory of the Cave” and discussing
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