Socrates's View Of The Cave Analysis

If they were able to move and look around, they would have seen the truth of the statues, and the fire behind them. The cave is a metaphor for human existence. The people in the cave accept the shadows on the cave wall as reality because this is all that they have experienced. The echoes they hear are assumed by them to be real for the same reason. Plato is trying to illustrate that people know little truth about the reality of the world. The philosopher is the escaped person who goes into the light and can see the true reality of the world around them. Plato argues that it is the duty of the philosopher to inform the people in the cave of the light. This means the philosopher 's role is to tell people of the reality of the world. Plato is saying that, unless we become educated, we human beings are like the prisoners in the cave. We think that we understand the world around us. We think that the things we see and otherwise perceive are real. However, we are incorrect because the things that we perceive are mere shadows. There are true forms of everything that we think we perceive, but we cannot see those forms. In the allegory of the cave, Plato is trying to make us understand that we see shadows and we think they are the real thing. Thus, the main theme of the allegory is that we are ignorant about the true

In the beginning portion of “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato introduces the story of the prisoners in a cave to illustrate the foundation of why some do not like change. He begins by explaining there are three prisoners in a cave who are bound and can only see the shadows of objects projected by a fire behind them (Plato 201). The author begins with this portion of the example to set the context for the rest of the allegory. Plato then goes on to describe how one prisoner is released to the outside world to experience the

An acceptable listener is a person who is able to put aside their thoughts and opinions in order to digest someone else’s views that are possibly different. However, the person can retain their own opinions even after listening, but for that moment they had an open mind during the discussion. In “On Communication”, Bohm is trying to manifest the readers why listening is critical. Bohm states that “communication can lead to the creation of something new only if people are able to freely listen to each other, without prejudice and without trying to influence each other.” In that statement, it is clear that Bohm is telling the importance of listening to one another. However, people must listen to each other, no matter anyone’s opinion, since that’s how new ideas are created, how people come together, and how people become educated.

Allegory of the Cave, a short story by renowned philosopher Plato, describes the life of prisoners chained inside of a cave where all the knowledge they receive is given by unknown strangers behind them. It continues to elaborate on their transition from a lackluster world where they were truly in the dark to one that completely surpasses all expectations. Likewise, Stranger Than Fiction, a movie written by Zach Helm, illustrates an IRS auditor, Harold Crick, that is shackled by his mundane lifestyle and also has an embodied voice that seems to be controlling his life. The movie goes on to describe his arduous journey toward finding the woman behind the voice, which ultimately gives him a new perspective on life. Zach Helm’s screenplay Stranger Than Fiction and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both describe the experience of a person escaping limited perspective darkness and discovering a more complex world than they had previously thought existed. Just like the prisoner of the Cave, Harold Crick breaks free from his chains of naivety and widens his vision to become truly enlightened.

The journey out of the cave represents a prisoners’ unwilllingness to change and a resistance to accept new truths. The prisoners have to force themselves out of the cave into this reality. 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.

Plato’s Allegory of the cave represents life/death/rebirth. Life/death/rebirth is a popular archetype that most authors use in fictional books. Plato’s Allegory of the cave begins with people that are locked in chains inside of a cave. The people inside the cave see shadows on the wall of animals and creatures that they think represents their life. This cave is an illusion of life that the people are experiencing. The people who are chained up get set free by the keeper, who is a symbol of the sun, or the “Rooster” who wakes people up from their illusions. The people are blinded by the sun and they want to go back to their illusion of life. This is when the people are in the Belly of the Whale or when they are symbolically dead. Once the people realize there is no way of going back to the way it was, they are “reborn” from their illusions and live their lives to the fullest and not take for granted what they have. Plato’s Allegory of the cave is

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Diego Velazquez’ Las Meninas are both commentaries about different ways of life. Velazquez gives insight into the daily life of the Spanish monarchy, and Plato, on the other hand, enlightens about the various stages of life on the path to higher knowledge. Though they use different mediums, Plato and Velazquez use a similar framework to illustrate the ways people live. They both use a hierarchical structure to divide their works into pieces that make the works more straightforward for the reader or viewer to comprehend.

In “The allegory of the Cave by Plato”, great philosophers offer a theory concerning human perception. Plato described it starting with three prisoners; these prisoners would have face the wall of the cave in a set position. They would not be allowed to move. A fire would be placed behind them with a walkway between. Along the walkway, people would walk carrying different items. These people as well as items would cast a shadow on wall for the prisoners to see. Socrates suggest that the prisoner would start identifying different items and classifying them, “Now if they were able to say something about what they saw and to talk it over, do you not think that they would regard that which they saw on the wall as beings” (Plato 1).

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”.

Plato’s theory, ‘The Allegory of the Cave’, aims to explain the nature of reality and human perception. With this theory of his, he aims to answer questions like ‘why are we here and what is reality?’ He explains this theory as a conversation between his mentor, Socrates and one of his students, Glaucon. Plato claimed that the knowledge gained through our senses is not real knowledge. In fact, real knowledge is the knowledge that is gained through deep philosophical reasoning. Knowledge gained through our senses is very opinionated and thus is not valuable enough.

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

In the dialogue, Socrates claims that after a prisoner leaves the cave and sees the sun (which symbolizes truth and knowledge), he will not participate in the cave dwellers’ ignorance. Similarly, individuals who chose to become enlightened to the true nature of reality do not partake in the ignorance of humanity; instead they encourage individuals to believe in philosophical knowledge. The cave dwellers believe that the shadows on the walls are real, just like individuals accept the reality of the world with which they are presented; however, they are both illusions, which are perceived. This is because over centuries human perception is merely a shadow of reality and individuals are like the cave dwellers who believe the perceptions created by society (Cleveland). Therefore, humans need to raise past the perceptions governed and taught by society in order to break through ignorance and travel on a path of

Plato, a famous Greek philosopher wrote the Allegory of the Cave. He tried to answer some of the profound questions which arose about the nature of reality. He tells the story of 'Allegory of the Cave' as a conversation between his mentor, Socrates (Plato’s mentor), who inspired many of Plato's philosophical theories, and one of Socrates' students, Glaucon (Plato’s older brother). He uses an allegory as a short informative story, to illustrate 'forms' and the 'cave,' in his main work, The Republic (which first appeared around 380 BC). It is one of the most perceptive attempts to explain the nature of reality. The state of most human beings is depicted in this myth of the cave and the tale of a thrilling exit from the cave is the source of true understanding. Plato has portrayed the concept of reality and illusion through the allegory of the cave.

In Plato’s dialogue, the cave allegory, I am given a story about a prisoner and allowed to depict an image of what the cave looks like. Inside the cave are prisoners, a fire, a rocky path, and people who carried various artifacts that project shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. The fire represents the sun, the rocky path symbolizes the journey of the soul, the prisoners represent us, the shadows were what they believed to be the truth, the people carrying the artifacts symbolize influences in life for example parents or teachers. The cave as a whole represents the visible realm. In the dialogue, the prisoners are chained so that they can only see what is in front of them and being depicted on the wall. “They’ve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them,” (514b). A prisoner is freed and dragged outside the cave,

Also, outside the cave realm, people were engaged in their daily work; however, a wall had been built between these two worlds and restricted the cavemen from seeing the world. They could only see the shadows of people along the wall and accepted those shadows as the reality (Plato, trans. 1997, p. 514b-515b). This masterpiece of Plato is one of the most famous and perceptive assay to illustrate the nature of reality. The cave stands for the state of most human beings, and the tale of escape from the cave is the origin of the true understanding. In this composition, Plato believes that the world is made up of two parts; the forms, and the reality. The first part, material world, which one can see, touch, hear, and smell is really the half-seen images of the reality of forms. Relying on one’s physical senses alone, trusting what one sees, or hears make him or her effectively blind. Plato, in the story of the prisoners in the cave, represents metaphorically how far is one’s perceptions through physical senses from the reality. Those prisoners in the cave who were kept there since their childhood, had been chained in a manner that they were unable to move around their heads and incompetent to experience the happenings and real things in their surroundings. They were only able to see the opposite wall and the reflections of the statues, objects and other items in the form of humans and animals which were projected by the fire behind them to opposite wall, they presumed to accept those shadowy images on the wall to be real. Comparing this situation from the story to one’s real life, it can be inferred that in most cases people just see one side of a coin while the reality is perceivable only when one be aware of the two sides. The allegory of the cave also portrays that understanding of the reality is obtainable