Allegory Of The Cave And Education Essay

In the “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato breaks the story into four main scenes to demonstrate the path to enlightenment for the unenlightened reader. He uses a story of a man trapped in a cave,

When someone grows enlightened, they utilize their newfound comprehension and knowledge to unshackle themselves from their lifelong ignorance to pursue a superior understanding of the world around them. This lengthy process often times entails detrimental consequences. It can be a traumatizing experience to disband yourself from a way of thinking that has been deeply ingrained into your psyche. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave showcases how enlightenment and education go hand in hand. His analogy connects directly to the struggles detailed in Frederick Douglass’s essay, Learning to Read and Gwendolyn Brooks poem,

In the allegory, the prisoners who are bonded in the cave, once given freedom, are too blinded by the light to embrace it. He argues to the audience that the “lord” is this bright “visible light” that is “the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual” (Aristotle 35). The light that society pushes many away from fully gasping in the idea of enlightenment. The prisoners in the cave are a metaphor for the vast extent of society that turns away from a greater truth of love, acceptance, caring, and

Throughout 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.

In “The Allegory of the Cave”, Plato’s idea of the human who escaped the cave, but came back to tell about his learnings but the other people in the cave did not want to listen to him since they believed that the cave was the real truth and did not want to be educated about the outside

Just like the prisoner of the Cave, Harold Crick breaks free from his chains of naivety and widens his vision to become truly enlightened. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave the prisoners are described as being “chained so they cannot move, and can only see before them” (Plato 1). These chains are notable not only because they are the restriction that keeps the people

Often times, it is assumed that learning does not have negative consequences and leads to one’s enlightenment What people don’t realize is that being thrown into the light can burn. Associating learning with pain is clearly illustrated in both Plato’s Republic and Frederick Douglass’ The Education of Frederick Douglass. Both works represent people who move past their ignorance through the acquisition of knowledge and step into the light, both literally and metaphorically; they become aware of their own situations and with that comes pain. Book seven of Plato’s Republic (trans. 1968) presents the allegory of the cave and the idea that learning isn’t always pleasant.

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.

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.

In other words they only know about that false reality that they are living in and to them there is nothing else. Plato then goes on to describe of how those people are enlightened when one is taken out of the cave and brought into the outside world they are shown the real reality and “enlightened”. If one of the people is enlightened he or she will be motivated to help those in the cave

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave the people think that their entire reality is the shadows that they see on the walls of the cave. Plato explores the truth and criticizes that humanity does not question what is real. Plato explores that the human understanding and accepting of what is real is difficult and

But, when adjusted to the sun, the prisoner can see the world as it truly is, not just as the shadows in the cave. Plato begins to explain that if the prisoner returned to the cave to explain what he saw to the other prisoners, they would simply not believe him. Truman, lives in

In its simplest form, I believe that in the “Allegory of the Cave” Plato is trying to explain the difference between perception and true knowledge. It's not only an analogy about exposing what is behind the shadows when there is light. It's also about what happens when you finally do obtain this knowledge and then try to explain it those who have not been enlightened. The cave can represent a multitude of things: religion, government, life, a fixed perspective of the world, etc. Each of these provides context that shape humans views but also creates bias from which it’s hard to escape, especially as many “truths” are passed from generation to generation or taught in school.

Searching for the truth is very challenging, as the world today entrenched in lies. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” briefly tells a story about cavemen being chained on most parts of their body, restring all movement including their head, since childhood. Then, he discussed the consequences inflicted onto the cavemen, specifically their perspective towards the truth after being chained for a long period of time in the dark cave, which resembles many events occurring in a person’s daily life. Based on the discussed effects, the author argues that human beings should always seek the real meaning of truth.

Finally when the prisoner sees that the sun is the source for all of the life on the earth he has reached the understanding stage. This whole story just represented that when we are young we are nieve and we don’t know anything, but slowly throughout life we work our way out of the cave and become closer to the ultimate goal of