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Personhood In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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The notion of personhood, to me is most accurately described in Plato’s writing, Allegory of the Cave. Personhood is going out of the comfort zone, if one is willing to do so and explore more than what one already knows and never wanting to go back to the way you were living before because you now see the world in a different way than before, seeing the world in more ways than the one view one had for so long can be life changing. Getting out of that “comfort zone” can bring a person on many different paths making each person’s life experience different in many ways. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave starts out with Socrates saying “Imaging human beings living in an underground, cave-like dwelling, with an entrance a long way up that is open to …show more content…

“Don’t you think he would count himself happy for the change and pity the others?” (A Plato Reader, 465). I agree with what Socrates is saying in this quote, when one goes out of the cave and sees the light, it changes them for the better and this prisoner may begin to pity the others because they do not know that there is more to the world than they believe to know. Seeing the light made the prisoner realize that his views of reality were not all entirely true, making this prisoner never wanting to live down in the cave again. When this prisoner goes above the cave and sees the light, it only makes sense for him to want to go back down, only to tell the other cave dwellers what it is he saw above the cave. “…and as for anyone who tried to free the prisoners and lead them upward, if the could somehow get their hands on him, wouldn’t they kill him.” (A Plato Reader, 466). In this passage, Socrates describes how a prisoner who has been out of the cave wants to go down and tell all the prisoners still down there what is beyond the cave, he wants to teach them and get them to go above the cave. I see it as, there are always going to be people that do not want to go out of the cave or their “comfort zone” so when a prisoner who goes above the cave comes back down to try to get them out, the ones who do not want to leave, try to attack this person, or as Socrates says, kill him. I think its fair to get angry bout someone trying to force someone to do something that they do not want to

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After Socrates experienced a new reality and nature, he planned on going back to the cave to persuade the prisoners to join him. He asks Glaucon if his eyes will have to readjust to the darkness of the cave after being in the sunlight. Because the prisoners were used to seeing the illusions of shadows inside of the cave, they did not want to change their perception of the world and leave their home. Socrates asks, “And if they can get hold of this person who takes it in hand to free them from their chains to lead them up, and if they could kill them, will they not actually kill him?”(Plato). Socrates is planning on freeing the prisoners from their chains and taking them out of the cave, but he questions Glaucon if the prisoners would kill him if they got the chance.

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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.

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In “The Allegory of the Cave”, the prisoner was ignorant of the true nature of their reality and was limited by their perception of the world. In Plato, Socrates illustrated an image of a prisoner chained to the cave wall their whole life, facing only a blank wall. Behind them was a fire burning that was casting a shadow. They believe this casted shadow was their only reality. However, one of the prisoners made a bold attempt to free himself and escape outside the cave.

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In the beginning portion of “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato introduces the story of the prisoners in a cave to illustrate the foundation of why some do not like change. He begins by explaining there are three prisoners in a cave who are bound and can only see the shadows of objects projected by a fire behind them (Plato 201). The author begins with this portion of the example to set the context for the rest of the allegory. Plato then goes on to describe how one prisoner is released to the outside world to experience the

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The Great Leap Forward took place during 1958 and 1960 (C). Mao introduced the Great Leap Forward as a means to catch up to the West’s development through agricultural and industrial development. The key factors of this movement were Propaganda, the introduction of communes and hard labour. While this was claimed to be in the interests of the Chinese population, the manner in which Mao lead this campaign, in addition to its devastating consequences, cannot prove these claims true (A). Mao’s goals for China were impossible to achieve as he believed the country could make a century’s worth of achievements in as little as a few decades (B).

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In the reason stage, the individual uses philosophical dialect to create a hypothesis, then using only the hypothesis the individual arrives at his conclusion. This is basically the process of how the individual reaches full understanding of the Form of the Good. This is the highest form of knowledge an individual can reach, and those who reach this stage have proven that their desires are pure because only the true philosopher can desire strictly truth and knowledge. Thus, this specific philosopher is the only type of king that can rule justly and reasonably.

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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.

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This new impression of life now cleans away his old principals, ethics, and morals and sets him up with new and restored ones. He discovers that he is not committed to go about as the mistreating society around him requests. Perusing an entry from Plato 's 'Purposeful anecdote of the Cave ' offers us some assistance with connecting his acknowledgment of how his general surroundings functions, and his attention to another reality: Behold! People living in an underground give in, which has a mouth open towards the light and coming to up and down the hole; here they have been from their adolescence, and have their legs and necks anchored with the goal that they can 't move, and can just see before them, being kept by the chains from knocking some people 's socks off. Above and behind them a flame is blasting at a separation, and between the flame and the detainees there is a raised way; and you will see, in the event that you look, a low divider constructed along the way, similar to the screen which doll players have before them, over which they demonstrate the manikin.

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In the dialogue, Socrates claims that after a prisoner leaves the cave and sees the sun (which symbolizes truth and knowledge), he will not participate in the cave dwellers’ ignorance. Similarly, individuals who chose to become enlightened to the true nature of reality do not partake in the ignorance of humanity; instead they encourage individuals to believe in philosophical knowledge. The cave dwellers believe that the shadows on the walls are real, just like individuals accept the reality of the world with which they are presented; however, they are both illusions, which are perceived. This is because over centuries human perception is merely a shadow of reality and individuals are like the cave dwellers who believe the perceptions created by society (Cleveland). Therefore, humans need to raise past the perceptions governed and taught by society in order to break through ignorance and travel on a path of

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What I understand about this is, the people inside the caves whose reality consists of the cave and it’s shadow relate to the people of a society who live the lives, doing whatever they can to meet the norms and fit in. In his dialogue between Socrates and his student, Glaucon. Socrates described to Glaucon

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Ted Bundy is one of the most famous serial killers. He killed more than 30 women and caused many to live in fear during the 70’s. He has the typical serial killer back story. He had a rough childhood, which caused him to act out and become a killer. When he was young he didn’t know for sure who his father was and he was told his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister.

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Also, he wouldn’t be able to look at the shadows and discuss about them with the other prisoners like before because he was now a way more knowledgeable man than the rest. If he told the other prisoners what he had seen outside the cave and what they had been believing was mere a phantom, the uneducated prisoners definitely wouldn’t believe him and would rather stay in the cave continually. This passage is an analogy of what is like to be a philosopher trying to educate the public. The alienation of the returned prisoner is what all truth tellers might expect. A gory example is that in real life Socrates was sentenced to death by the Greek government for disrupting the social order.

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In “The Allegory of the Cave”, Plato’s idea of the human who escaped the cave, but came back to tell about his learnings but the other people in the cave did not want to listen to him since they believed that the cave was the real truth and did not want to be educated about the outside

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1125 Words | 5 Pages

True the prisoners in the cave were shackled in the cave from childhood as said in part one of the allegory, and hopefully we’ve never experienced something like that in our lives but the allegory never states that they never had the opportunity to escape. After the released prisoner came back and told them what he saw, they chose to stay in the cave. They persecuted him and he was, “exposed to ridicule,” as it states in part three. They were fearful and considered his ‘enlightened’ state not worth it if he could no longer see the shadows. Instead of taking his words as truth, they disregarded them and perhaps for the first time were responsible for their shackled state.

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The emergence from the cave is an enlightenment of intellectualism, when all the difficulties and confusion of life is gone and only reality exists. Plato uses the shadow of fire as a metaphor for intelligence. The people who emerged out of the brightness represent truth; the freed prisoner. The chained prisoner would “look towards the firelight; all this would hurt him, and he would be too much dazzled to see distinctly those things whose shadows he had seen before”(Plato

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