ipl-logo

Analysis Of Plato's Allegory Of A Cave

588 Words3 Pages

In Plato’s “Allegory of a Cave” the main goal and plotline for the prisoner was to be able to go to the light to gain a full concept of truth, reality and justice. After passing the entranceway, he is met by the light which provides him “sharp pains” which eventually turn into being dazzled by it. However, as he grows customary to the light and the enlightenment that is brought forward to him, Plato questions whether he will fully grasp the notion of it. To present instinct Plato writes, “And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain his his eyes which will make him turn away to thale refuge in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the thing which are now being shown to him? True, he said.” This passage is claiming that at first, after being released of the cave which …show more content…

While accepting it, Plato questions whether or not you will fully be able to grasp the concept entirely, comparing the light of knowledge with the darkness, or ignorance, of the night. As found, Plato jolts “And he will see the stars and the spangled heavens: and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or light of the sun by day? Certainly.” To clarify, Plato says that even if enlightened and beholding the knowledge in front of us (the light), we will never be able to see it as clearly as the night, representing the narrow-minded ignorance that has been fed to us beforehand by the government (or marionette players). So that after being released from the cave and the restrictions that feed us blurred illustrations, we become faced to the light, a.k.a truth, that becomes a painful, complex process to

Show More
Related
1112 Words | 5 Pages

In the Allegory of the Cave by Plato the people who can only see shadows create their own version of the truth based on what they know, “To them [the people stuck in the cave unable to move],’

Read More
773 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
474 Words | 2 Pages

One’s perception might not be the truth and one’s perception might not be reality, but Avi’s novel “Nothing But The Truth” and Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”display the difference between truth,perception and reality. The texts interestingly approached the ideas similarly. In the “Allegory of the Cave” written by Plato a liberated prisoner was once trapped in a cave since birth. The darkness and shadows were all the prisoner once knew until liberated.

Read More
1271 Words | 6 Pages

Plato describes, “… look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which his former state he had seen the shadows …” (614). At first Plato’s caveman cannot see reality for what it is, for he’s been trapped in darkness for far too long. As time passes, he is “compelled to look straight at the light”, so he is forced to see the truth (614). Plato illustrates, “last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is” (614).

Read More
1640 Words | 7 Pages

In his Republic, we see a group chained and only able to see the shadows of things outside the cave – their truth is that everything is a shadow. This is everyone’s truth, this is right, until someone is released. Upon exiting the cave, they see the world around them and learn that the shadows on the wall are simple depictions of physical things beyond the cave. The sole adventurer outside the cave attempts to go back into the cave and tell everyone that what they know is wrong, that they are right because they have witnessed what is beyond the cave – the truth they are telling, their truth is the way and only way. Plato believed that “absolute, objective Truth” should “be housed in a particular privileged individual,” taken in the form of a philosopher-king (Salvatore 155).

Read More
560 Words | 3 Pages

But as his eyes adjusted, the newly freed prisoner would be able to see beyond only shadows; he would see dimensions and reflections. The escaped prisoner represents the Philosopher, who seeks knowledge outside of the cave and outside of the senses. Here, the Sun represents philosophical truth and knowledge and the Prisoner’s intellectual journey represents a philosopher’s journey when finding truth and wisdom. In a way this allegory represents Plato’s idea that knowledge cannot be transferred from teacher to student, but rather that education consists in directing student 's minds toward what is real and important and allowing them to apprehend it for

Read More
595 Words | 3 Pages

Socrates’s allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic Book VII is an accurate depiction of how people can be blinded by what they are only allowed to see. The allegory does have relevance to our modern world. In fact, all of us as a species are still in the “cave” no matter how intelligent or enlightened we think we have become. In Plato’s Republic Book VII, Socrates depicts the scenario in a cave where there are prisoners who are fixed only being able to look at the shadows on the wall which are projections of things passing between them and the light source.

Read More
447 Words | 2 Pages

In Plato's Allegory of the Cave a conversation is taking place between Socrates and Glaucon. the conversation is meant to discuss human perception Socrates attempts to explain that human perception is only what we can obtain through the senses. Plato explains that the senses are only a part of the whole picture and that concrete perception alone is never the entire story. This can explain human error in perceiving scientific and philosophic notions in his time as well as in today's life. Plato explains to Glaucon a situation of prisoners in a cave who have only been exposed to very dim lighting there entire lives and have not been exposed to other people or even looked upon each other.

Read More
951 Words | 4 Pages

Jingjing Zhang Instructor Shay Tschirhart ENGL 1311L 31 August 2015 knowledge can be enriching and painful The dialogue “Allegory of the Cave” was written by Plato. His point is that humanity is ignorant about the true nature of reality. Once humans got out of the cave, they went into the real world; they can understand what reality is and get into true knowledge.

Read More
817 Words | 4 Pages

Plato tells of a group of prisoners held in a dark cave chained to the walls. These people have never stepped outside into the world and can only experience shadows that are displayed on the opposite side of the cave through the light outside of the cave. One of the slaves, now liberated steps outside of the cave and is able to experience reality, or what we can distinguish as objective truth. After returning to explain to the other what he has seen there seems to be quite a difference in opinions(Plato). In his article Plato’s Cave, T.F Morris attempts to dissect Plato’s allegory and explains his belief that “… the shadows on the wall of the cave correspond to what we call reality…(Morris 417)”

Read More
650 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
794 Words | 4 Pages

At the beginning of Part I, the allegory of cave by Plato's Republic emphasizes how sense experience serves as an important role for the gaining of true knowledge. He demonstrates how the shadows created by the puppeteers influence the prisoners' minds to view the world (Plato 5-6). However, I think that sense experience has its own limitations hindering the way to explore new knowledge. First limitation is that inference from sense experience may come up a misguided premise because of the weak relationship in between. Aristotle proposed that things in nature are nonbeing, potential being and actual being (Lindberg 22).

Read More
1874 Words | 8 Pages

Therefore, Plato has concluded that the capacity for knowledge is present in everyone’s mind as no human is any less than a human; everyone has the ability to reason and can cultivate it to attain the goal of understanding the truth. However, according to Plato, the reason people sometimes avoid enlightenment is because the strong light painfully blinds their eyes. In Plato’s cave allegory, the outer world of the light symbolizes the world of spirit, which anyone can achieve by breaking the chains that tie them. The blinding of their eyes symbolizes the difficulty of denying the material world and accepting their own ignorance after knowing the reality. Hence, there will be people who avoid leaving the cave, because they don’t have enough courage or maturity to face the pain, nonetheless everyone will be capable of doing

Read More
1159 Words | 5 Pages

When the enlightened prisoner returns to the cave “they all laugh at him and say he had spoiled his eyesight by going up there”(Plato __). Plato infers that society will purposely be blind to conform to society’s norms. When the escaped prisoner returns to the cave he “gets his eyes full of darkness” (Plato ___). The freed prisoner explains what the actual objects were that they were seeing were. Plato demonstrates that the ignorance and blindness to the truth is by choice.

Read More
2130 Words | 9 Pages

A prisoner who escaped captivity from the cave, Plato believed, would slowly start to realise that he was subject to an artificial reality and would start to see the true reality, and the different levels of reality. As he walked out through the cave he would see that the shadows were only projections of the true object cast by the light of the fire. He would then see natural light and realise the light from the fire was also artificial, and he would discover reflections if he looked into a body of water, and then he would see real objects. Finally he would see the sun and make the deduction that it is the ultimate natural source of light. This process of walking out of the darkness and the shadows into the light is a metaphor for one’s path to enlightenment, which can be attempted through philosophy, as a philosopher does not merely rely on the senses seeking knowledge and truth.

Read More

More about Analysis Of Plato's Allegory Of A Cave

Related Topics

Open Document