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Perception And Reality In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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Perception and reality have a complex relationship. One’s perception is not necessarily ones reality. Roberto Bolaños once said, “People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth” (Bolaño). People see what they want to see, whether it is the reality or not. Perception determines one’s reality; paradoxically reality is not determined by perception. Reality is contingent upon truth and is obscured by one’s perception.

To find the truth, one must question the reality of perceptions and the surrounding world. After analyzing The Matrix, Plato’s the Republic (the Allegory of the Cave) and Descartes meditations one can notice multiple similarities as well as differences. The protagonists in all three stories question the reality in which they are living in, weather or not it is real. However, there were some differences between them. In the Matrix, for example, society is controlled by a computer system in which they believe everything they see and are not aware of the reality of the situation. In Descartes meditations, he is controlled by his perception of evil. He thinks about his thoughts and questions their reality. In Plato’s Allegory, the inhabitants of the cave perceive the shadows caste …show more content…

In the “Allegory of the cave”, for instance, the individual is set free and begins to see reality but the sight of the sun is a painful experience. The sun represents the truth, and adjusting to it is difficult. The characters in The Matrix are kept in a dreamlike world and have been bound this way since their infancy. Cypher mentioned, “Ignorance is bliss” and would rather live based off his perceptions than on the reality of the truth. Rene Descartes was not able to find reality because the senses could not be trusted and he was constantly questioning his own

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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.

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Imagine living a majority of your life as usual, to awake one day and realize that your senses deceived you, and your world wasn't real. That predicament matches the one Neo, the main character of The Matrix, and a released prisoner from Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” face. Different time periods separate the two stories, but they still give off the same prevailing afterthought; what is real? Plato's work focuses on the philosophical effects of understanding your life, then discovering the real world upon release. The Matrix, a story of a computer simulated world set up to replace the real post-apocalyptic world for humans, “modernizes the original allegory and adds a more humanistic appeal.”

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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.

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Introduction Plato, a famous Greek philosopher wrote the Allegory of the Cave. He tried to answer some of the profound questions which arose about the nature of reality. He tells the story of 'Allegory of the Cave' as a conversation between his mentor, Socrates (Plato’s mentor), who inspired many of Plato's philosophical theories, and one of Socrates' students, Glaucon (Plato’s older brother). He uses an allegory as a short informative story, to illustrate 'forms' and the 'cave,' in his main work, The Republic (which first appeared around 380 BC). It is one of the most perceptive attempts to explain the nature of reality.

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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

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