Imagery Of The Cave In Plato's Republic

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In Plato’s Republic where Plato was receiving the philosophical lessons about education from his teacher Socrates, the analogy of the cave was an impressive approach to convey that people believe what they see with their sight without further thinking about whether it’s actually what it is assumed to be. They also tend to be satisfied with being ignorant than being exposed to the truth because the truth is just difficult to experience. It can be painful. That’s why teachers like philosophers are there to open our blindfolds and lead us to light.
In the Republic, the shadows projected on the cave are assumed to be the reflections of what exists.That’s why the prisoners in the cave believed that a shadow of certain things indicates its existence but in a …show more content…

You would turn on the lights and look behind you to see if it really is what it is but end up realizing that it was nothing but the shadow of your coat with some other objects. After being exposed to reality, you might not get terrified once you turn off the light again because you would know what was the truth and actual. That’s how the prisoner felt and went back to the cave to tell that everything that they knew is a lie. However, going back to the scenario again, what if you weren’t able to move neither your body not head to see what that mysterious shadow was? You’d probably believe that that was the reality. That there was actually Pennywise behind you with a knife and you’d probably die from being too afraid. What a fail. Going back to the scene where the men came back from reality to tell the rest of the prisoners that they are living in lies, everyone laughed at him and thought he was insane. This shows that when we are see something with our own eyes or even hear, we gradually become convinced that it’s the truth, especially when everyone else agrees to it. Similarly, in the present world today, our understandings are influenced by social media, one another,