Comparing Socrates 'Allegory Of The Cave Readings'

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.

Through the Apology and the Allegory of the Cave Readings

The story of the Good Brahmin illustrates that knowledge takes away happiness and the more knowledge somebody has the unhappier he or she is (Good Brahmin, n.d). The idea behind this reasoning is that the more people becomes aware about the things going around them the more they lose happiness (Good Brahmin, n.d). The reason behind this is that the world is filled up with evil and there are a lot of injustice around us and the more we become aware of them the unhappier we get (Good Brahmin, n.d). When people are unaware about those evilness and injustices they live happily (Good Brahmin, n.d). The story suggests that to acquire knowledge one should lose his or her innocence, for instance, we must question everything that we have learned since childhood to acquire further knowledge (Good Brahmin, n.d). A lot of things that we are taught when we were children were not true as we grow up and achieve knowledge we come to know the truth (Good Brahmin, n.d). In that way, we seek enlightenment, and that is what philosophy is about. By acquiring knowledge, a person becomes more responsible and knows what he is doing and hence becomes a responsible person. As for Voltaire, the best way to achieve happiness is to follow your heart.

Both Voltaire and Socrates agree upon the fact that knowledge brings wisdom and success. But Voltaire suggested that knowledge brings unhappiness, whereas Socrates thinks that knowledge is everything and that knowledge is the key to everything. As for me my view about philosophy is that knowledge is important if it is true knowledge. Philosophy is fascinating as there is only a certain much that we know about things that it is hard to what is true and what is