Plato compares a number of things in this essay- the material world to the world of ideas, the life of the mind to work of governing, silver and gold to virtue and wisdom. How does he use his comparisons to make his arguments? 2.)Plato creates the Allegory of the Cave to be a conversation between his mentor Socrates and one of his student Glaucon. Plato sets the story to demonstrate that the “blinded” prisoner or in a more cultural sense the men of iron. The Greeks created 4 classes of civilization the gold,silver,bronze and the iron.
Experiencing a new discovery leads to a better understanding of life. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it explains how a group of prisoners are inside a dark cave looking at shadows believing it to be realistic; however, one prisoner gets free and leaves the cave and experience the outside world seeing real nature and the brightness of the sun and adjust to it. That person returns back to the cave to tell what he had experienced outside the cave to the other prisoners as the other prisoners would not listen to him and neglect his words. That person however cannot adjust to the darkness inside the cave once he got adjusted to the brightness of the outside world. Like Plato’s allegory of the cave, good living does require us to leave the cave.
Plato’s Republic, Book 7, talks about the metaphor referred to as "the allegory of the cave. " This metaphor in philosophy is use to describe the importance and effect education or lack of education has on the human mind. In book VII, education is referred to as a light that brightens the different paths that exist in life. It helps open the human mind to things that it was unaware of. Another point made in book VII, was that by educating yourself you become less ignorant to what is out there in the world.
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.
Enlightenment itself is a concept that cultures around the world believe in and how people can master this concept. Enlightenment is an elevated understanding of life and learning how one may remove any negativity from their life. Societies view enlightenment as important because it helps people understand any and all forms of negativity never promote happiness and prosperity. One piece of literature that vividly shows this concept is Plato’s, “Allegory of the Cave.” Plato highlights how Socrates converses with Glaucon about how the man who reaches the light at the end of the cave would be free from negativity; the man discovers the truth which leads him to enlightenment.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a metaphor for education, and every object and character represents something in the education system. The cave itself, where the prisoners live, is a question of reality. Furthermore, the cave may symbolize a school, as students learn everything in school like the prisoners learned everything in the cave. The puppeteers are teachers because they teach and control the prisoners like teachers teach and control students. The prisoners are the students because the prisoners are stuck in the cave and learn from the puppeteers like students must attend school and learn from teachers.
The meaning and comprehension of life has been a common topic to debate about for a very long time. Philosophers still don’t fully understand the bigger picture of life, but to see a bigger picture, you have to first at all of the small pictures that make up the big picture. In Plato’s story, “Allegory of the Cave”, he has written a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon about one of these smaller pictures. It talks about unintelligent and intelligent people, the idea of good, leadership, and some other topics. With all this supporting the main theme, it is the idea of intelligence and knowledge and how it is linked to society.
The Allegory of the Cave describes a series of events in the form of an extended metaphor. Education and the effects on one’s life is commonly displayed throughout the book. Plato describes the series of events with an analogy between vision and education. Plato was an eminent figure in the realm of philosophy: also fabricating the 1st university in western history. Plato’s philosophy was that people see the world as a duplicate and not reality.
#2 Plato’s Allegory In Modern Day Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is about the human perspective and enlightenment. In todays society Plato’s allegory is still relevant and is deeply rooted in education. College students are a perfect analogy for the “Allegory of the Cave”. We are told from the very beginning that we need to have an education to be successful in life.
He symbolizes this “ignorance” with the cave itself. In the text we can clearly see the division between realities, between visible and intelligible orders. Plato creates the allegory of the cave only to refer to the world of appearances. This myth explains, men would be prisoners chained in a dark cave and that, because of being in such an uncomfortable situation, they can only see what they have in from of them that are, the shadows of other men, that’s because of a fire they have behind them, but they could not see . Having no other way of perceiving the world, those shadows would be for them their only reality.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is at its core a metaphor for what Plato believed to be wrong in Greek society at the time. The fact
The Myth of the Cave In the Myth of the Cave Plato is having Socrates describe a group of people whom are called prisoners, that have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives. While the prisoners are chained up they are facing a blank wall. The prisoners watch shadows that seem to be projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. For fun the prisoners decided to give the shadows names.
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
Are we always at the mercy of others and our own experiences? Are the truths we cling to always reality? Are we ever truly free or are we always prisoners in our own mind? These are some of the questions that went through my mind while reading Plato’s allegory of the cave. Through them I’ve come to understand one of the biggest themes in this allegory is our ability to “shackle” ourselves mentally, but also our ability to free ourselves if only we have the courage.
Plato discussed a two layer view of what he perceived as reality; the world of becoming and the world of being. The world of becoming is the physical world we perceive through our senses. In the physical world there is always change. The world of being is the world of forms, or ideas. It is absolute, independent, and transcendent.
