#2 Plato’s Allegory In Modern Day Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is about the human perspective and enlightenment. In todays society Plato’s allegory is still relevant and is deeply rooted in education. College students are a perfect analogy for the “Allegory of the Cave”. We are told from the very beginning that we need to have an education to be successful in life. College is the only path we can take to get an higher education. Taking a class in college is similar to what the four prisoners go through in the cave: In both the cave and classroom scenario, teachers are like the “puppeteers” and they are in control of the information we receive. Lastly, when one ventures to answer a question first they are looked at differently because it …show more content…
We, the students are the “chained prisoners”. We are only allowed to know what the “puppeteers” allow us to know. The “puppeteers” can be seen as the teachers. Now we have to ask ourselves, what are the “shadows on the wall” that we see everyday. I believe that the “shadows” represent all of the illusions that we live by as our reality. College students, myself included, tend to have a like minded way of thinking, similar to the men in the cave. We tend to think that we know everything that there is in the world, when in fact we don’t. We seemingly have a complete grasp of what our future will be, when really our future is bound to adapt based on changes in our life. The prisoner also believes he knew what was his future based on where he was at the time, until he ventured out and discovered things weren’t as easy as they seem. Upon his realization, that things were not as he perceived them, he had to adapt to the new way of thinking. Adaption is often scary, and many people will tend to avoid it at all costs. Some people deny the need to adapt, even though it is apparent that adaption is eminent, because of fear of the unknown. The chained prisoners are indeed in denial and not willing to believe their fellow prisoners new found thought because, it goes against their already perceived
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Show MoreThroughout the last five weeks, I have read three of Plato’s dialogues: the cave allegory, Euthyphro, and the Apology. While reading them, I was able to see Plato’s view of a philosophical life. To live philosophically is to question appearances and look at an issue/object from a new perspective. In this essay, I will explain Plato’s cave allegory, Socrates’ discussion with Euthyphro, and the oracle story in the Apology.
Many people have been slaves and prisoners since they were young. Some of them born there and are slaves or prisoners for their whole entire lives. Most of the time their lives are stuck in the darkness and never know what is going to come or happen to them. Every day in their lives they feel worry, afraid, and frightened because they’re scared that they might do something wrong or unable to do what they have been told. In their lives, the only goal they have is to escape from slavery and imprisonment or be a good slaves and prisoners.
The author tells how these men, as prisoners, are treated of quasi-slaves. In fact, the prison system is now the new plantation system of slavery in America today. It was more shocking for to learn what type of low wages the prisoners earn; and how refusal to work could be grounds for disciplinary action such as isolation cells or extended time added to original sentence time. It was additional shocking to learn the there is little or no rehabilitative service or training offered to the prisoners, and with the privatization of the prison system has led to longer sentencing time.
He talks about how education is perpetuating injustice. He thinks that schools are hiding something from the students,
The guards and soldiers got so carried away with their position of power that they lost sight of what their job really were. The students involved in the experiment started behaving in the same way because they thought that they were really in prison and that they were not informed that it was still an experiment. The isolation caused the groups to develop an us against the world mentality which led them to believe that no one would understand what they were going through except for the other members of the communities. A while after the experiment, a prisoner was asked about his experience during the experiment and was asked to discuss on his time in solitary confinement. He talks about how he lost his identity and how he became just another prisoner at the time.
“I mean other’s expectations that take you on as your own”(126). They both believe that we as people-kids- never really had our own expectations of ourselves without the help of someone else putting it there constantly but Wes-author- believe this causes a person to lose control, however Wes-prisoner- felt you can’t lose
The second phase, occurring once the prisoner has fallen into a routine within the camp, is one of apathy, or “the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not anymore” (42). The third phase, which occurs after the prisoner has been liberated from the camp, is a period of “depersonalization”, in which “everything appears unreal, unlikely, as in a dream” (110). In this phase, released prisoners also feel a sense of “bitterness and disillusionment” when returning to their former lives (113). Frankl describes each of these phases using psychological theory and provides personal experiences to exemplify each of the
1) In the allegory of the cave, Plato’s main goal is to illustrate his view of knowledge. A group of prisoners have been chained in a cave their whole lives and all they have ever been exposed to were shadows on the wall and voices of people walking by. The prisoners in the cave represent humans who only pay attention to the physical aspects of the world (sight and sound). Once one of them escapes and sees the blinding light, all he wants is to retreat back to the cave and return to his prior way of living. This shows that Plato believes enlightenment and education are painful, but the pain is necessary for enlightenment and it is worth it.
He says that they see shadows. This is his illustration. The way that we can apply it is, to detainment facilities and different things that need different methods for support. You can likewise apply this in different social orders in today's time. In addition, another example of a rhetorical
Plato tells us that the prisoners are confused on their emergence from the cave and that the prisoners’ will be blinded once they had been freed from the cave. After a period of time they will adjust their eyesight and begin to understand the true reality that the world poses. The stubbornness to develop a different perspective is seen in much of today’s society. The allegory of the cave is an understanding of what the true world is and how many people never see it because of their views of the society they are raised in.
Plato demonstrates the significance of education. We are accustomed to the knowledge that we already have but do not want the education that we actually need. This is the case because actual learning is painful: it needs dedication and sacrifice but we as humans do not like to face that pain and go for the easier alternative which is the act of being ignorant. Plato’s Allegory of the cave has been separated into three parts: the first part is the part where the prisoners are in a cave, in the cave the prisoners are tied in such a way that they can only face forward, towards a wall with shadows in front of them. The second part is about how the prisoners leave the cave.
The world that we live in can be cruel and scary, but it can also be full of life, excitement, and mysteries that intrigue us. " The Allegory of the Cave" by Plato discusses the nature of humans being held in a cave with very little mobility, and what happens when they are finally released into the real world. Although, things become complicated when that human tries to communicate what he has learned to the other prisoners. This story is very relatable to what we see in our world today. Plato's theories can be perceived in children, the internet, and our society.
Our experience and perception are limited to the three-dimensional space just as the prisoners are
How does the story "The Machine Stops" echo the sentiments of Plato in "The Allegory of the Cave"? "The Machine Stops," The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most people of that world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas '. Kuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel. He tells Vashti that he has visited the surface of the Earth without permission, and without the life support apparatus supposedly required to survive in the toxic outer air, and he saw other humans living outside the world of the Machine.
The emergence from the cave is an enlightenment of intellectualism, when all the difficulties and confusion of life is gone and only reality exists. Plato uses the shadow of fire as a metaphor for intelligence. The people who emerged out of the brightness represent truth; the freed prisoner. The chained prisoner would “look towards the firelight; all this would hurt him, and he would be too much dazzled to see distinctly those things whose shadows he had seen before”(Plato