Socrates The Allegory Of The Cave

The Allegory of the cave explores several big ideas: What is reality? What is the meaning of truth? And what is the value of knowledge? The Allegory of the Cave, illustrates three men chained facing a wall; they have been there form birth.

The cave allegory helped prove how the philosopher would be worthy of becoming the philosopher king and created the perfect government system for their city. Once this government is formed, they know how to effectively structure the city and raise the next guardians and philosophers to maintain their perfect society. After their society has found harmonious living, this proves the process required to make a just city. Using this, they can now focus on the soul as a whole rather than the whole city. Socrates shows that the three parts of the soul, reason, thumos, and appetites must work in harmony much like the city to achieve optimal success.

The study of philosophy is a path seldom taken by many. Philosophical thinking requires much discipline in the mind of the student. It is through philosophy that the student is able to break free from the grasp of ignorance, and instead turn to the embrace of reason, thus leading to the discovery of many great philosophical truths. This essay will discuss two great philosophical works: Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, and Voltaire’s “Story of a Good Brahmin”. In examining each story, this essay will bring forth the philosophical attitudes presented by that of Plato and Voltaire.

Plato, the author of “The Allegory of the Cave”, was a Greek philosopher who used the power of dialogue in order to more effectively communicate his philosophy. [3] Plato firmly believed in the pursuit of enlightenment of the soul being of upmost importance; therefore, the need for enlightenment of the soul through knowledge supersedes that of learning basic skills. The fire in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave represents myth created by man. According to Plato the fire in “Allegory of the Cave” represents the false truth created by man.

3078607 Professor Cheryl King English 1301.81049 24 September 2016 “Allegory” Response “Everything that is seen is not always what is made out of it.” What does that quote mean? Are there people who actually understands this quote and live by it? In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” Socrates explains to Glaucon that life is like being chained up in the cave and having no general knowledge about life. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave portrays a positive message by demonstrating the importance of education.

In our world, we encounter different people every day, per our judgement we differentiate them and place them into categories as bad or as good people. We judge people as per our judgements, I may judge somebody as a bad person, but someone else may judge that same person as a good person. This shows that people have different ways of thinking, and judging bad and good varies between different individuals. During this essay, we will compare and contrast Socrates ' attitude about philosophy (Apology and Allegory of the Cave Readings) with the Good Brahmin 's (Voltaire) attitude. Both stories are very important while studying philosophy, as they show how is philosophy applied in life.

Thus, for these people in the cave the reality is the world of shadow. They then gradually develop a whole ideology of shadow—there were authorities that teach them the meaning of the shadows. However, one day an outsider went into the cave. He broke the chains and tried to take these people to the outside world. While most people are afraid and reluctant to go outside, one woman followed the man and went out the cave.

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a short narrative written by Plato to convey the feelings, thoughts, and obstacles a person faces as a philosopher. The story focuses on the tale of a group of humans bound to each other in dark cave, only two lights within the cave giving them any form of light. One of the humans breaks free of his binds within the cave, and ventures into the light, at first struggling to comprehend what he sees, but grows to love the world beyond the cave. He then goes back to free the other prisoners within the cave but each one of them reject his help, either being afraid or aggressive towards the freed prisoner as they believe he is below them for his newly changed beliefs. The situation represents the internal struggle suffered by philosophers with the

The freed prisoner would finally uncover he was living a life of deception as he only lived to see shadows of mere images of real things until now. The process of coming to know reality would be a ‘difficult’ and ‘painful’ transition as his first instinct would be to cling on to what his familiar with, and withdraw back into the cave. Therefore the prisoner would need to be dragged out of living in the darkness in order to see the light of day. The prisoner would inevitably be overwhelmed by the brightness however he will need to grow accustomed to the light before he could see things outside the cave and will then have more knowledge of what is real such as imperfections of human life to the forms of goodness. After discovering reality with his new found wisdom he would eventually think back to life trapped in the cave and therefore would ultimately congratulate himself on his good fortune and would feel sorry for the prisoners still chained down in the darkness.

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

The cave represents ‘the realm of becoming’ – the visible world of our everyday experience, where everything is imperfect and constantly changing. The chained captives, which symbolize the ‘ordinary people’, live in a world of conjecture and illusion, while the former prisoner, free to roam within the cave, attains the most accurate view of reality possible within the ever-changing world of perception and experience. By contrast, the world outside the cave represents ‘the realm of being’ – the intelligible world of truth populated by the objects of knowledge, which are perfect, eternal and unchanging. In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato sets out to do more than illuminate his distinctive

Final Exam Plato’s cave allegory demonstrates how blinded we could be by the world around us. Plato proves to us that we are able to think and speak for ourselves even if we have no prior knowledge of a certain subject. Prisoners were enslaved in a cave while not being able to turn their heads all they could see was what was in front of them. The puppeteers would project the image of puppets which provided the enslaved with the shadow of what they thought was reality. The prisoners had a perception of what they thought was a real object but instead it was just a projection of fiction that was not real along with the echoes that were portrayed inside of the cave.

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.

The analogy takes place in a deep cave, where a group have lived there since birth without ever seeing outside. These people are also bound, so that they can only see what is in front of them. Behind them is a wall with a variety of statues on top of it and between them and the wall is a fire. Lying behind the partial wall are another group of people who are manipulating the statues on top of the wall. The statues, in addition to the fire, cast shadows across the wall that the prisoners are facing.

Plato wrote The Allegory of the Cave as dialogue of Socrates talking with his students. In this story Socrates explains how three men had been chained up like “prisoners” facing the back wall of a cave from the time they were born, unable to see anything but