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Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Essay

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Plato’s republic, on the whole, is a medley of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Plato dedicates the entire book to figuring out the ideal definition of knowledge. The allegory of the Cave, the analogy of the divided Line and the analogy of the Sun are all connected to explain Plato’s idea of the forms. Plato argues that philosophers are the most radical because they are lovers of knowledge, wisdom and truth. Since only philosophers hold the key to true knowledge, they can distinguish between a friend and an enemy. This skill is essential to ruling a city, which makes philosophers the best candidates for being a guardian. One cannot make the claim that there is justice in a city, until they know the complete truth. This paper will prove …show more content…

The allegory of the Cave is presented by Plato, as a dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates, the latter being the narrator. Socrates paints a picture of the allegory for readers, as he asks them to imagine prisoners trapped in a cave all their life, facing a wall and unable to move their heads. The allegory can be summed up in three main parts, which are the imprisonment in the cave, departure and return to the cave. The prisoners are misled by the shadows, which they believe to be reality. This is clear as Socrates says, “Then the prisoners would in every way believe that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of those artifacts” (515c). This quote relates to Analogy of the Divided Line, since the knowledge of the prisoners would match the lower sections of the divided line. There is a fire behind them and some sunlight shining through the hole at the top of the cave. Plato describes the experience of one of the prisoners being freed from the cave. The process is simultaneously painful and enlightening. The reason for this is because the freed prisoner is not used to the light shining directly into his eye and also because, they slowly

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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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He came to the conclusion that the sun was the source of life, and then discovers beauty and meaning. He comes back into the cave, and tells the other prisoners about what he had discovered, but they were too ignorant, and was settled into the life they already had thus refusing to believe what the escaped prisoners has been saying and threatens to harm him if he decides to set them free. I chose Plato's story of the Allegory of the Cave because it has deepened my own thoughts about my own current and future life. Being a prisoner inside the cave, and choosing not to escape and be free is compared to taking the easy way out in life. You chose to be ignorant and finding the short path to the happiness you think you want and deserve.

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Throughout Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” there is an internal struggle within the protagonist to escape from the only place he once knew as home just to find out that is like out of the cave. Within the cave it is extremely censored on what the people/prisoners are able to see and the only way they are shown anything is through shadow images that are projected upon the cave walls. They are shown manipulated images of birds, people, and other objects which in turn scares them into staying within the cave. The protagonist was determined to escape the cave to discover what was the real reality and truth outside of the cave. He was able to escape and see the light of the sun and was able to see what is really true.

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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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The philosopher is the escaped person who goes into the light and can see the true reality of the world around them. Plato argues that it is the duty of the philosopher to inform the people in the cave of the light. This means the philosopher 's role is to tell people of the reality of the world. Plato is saying that, unless we become educated, we human beings are like the prisoners in the cave. We think that we understand the world around us.

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In “The Allegory of the Cave”, Plato concludes that the ultimate definition of “the Good” is the effort to pursue knowledge and the insight which knowledge can provide the blinded mind. In this paper, I will further analyze his definition of “the Good” and my personal views on this definition given by Plato. Through the metaphor of the cave, this definition of “the Good” covers how experiences give knowledge, how knowledge broadens perspective, and how knowledge gives a more moderate perspective which leads to good actions. I believe that through this process knowledge leads people to “the Good” for they must be able to recognize their behaviors before they can accurately judge their actions. I will provide clear examples of each of these points

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Why do we exist? When was the start of the humanity? Not all the questions we had, have a concrete answer. But the philosophy will respond to all the question. For the philosophers there is an answer for all.

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Plato was a well-respected, intelligent philosopher and a student of Socrates. He understood the risks it took to try and educate the public on new ideas because he had witnessed firsthand the trials of Socrates. In book 7 of “The Republic,” Plato writes an allegory about a cave with 3 prisoners. This allegory could be interrupted in many ways, but I believe he introduces the passage as an analogy explaining what it’s like to be a philosopher who’s trying to educate people. Most people in the world are not only comfortable in their ignorance but are aggressive to anyone who points it out, and that’s exactly what happened to Plato’s teacher.

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Plato establishes his philosophical beliefs in the Allegory of the Cave stating that it is possible to only believe in the things that have been shown to us in a sense of self reality and only that. He believes that once someone leaves the "dark" cave and into the light, that's when true knowledge comes into play. In the Allegory of the cave Plato believe that there at two levels of reality and two levels of knowledge. In the levels of knowledge I think what he's trying to say is that the shapes/ shadows inside the cave represent reality which we have from a sense of experienced knowledge. It may be an imperfect truth because we manipulate ourselves into believing we know some type of experienced knowledge but in a way we only know what's been

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In order to fully comprehend knowledge Plato provides an explanation through his illustration of the Allegory of the Cave. To do this Plato differentiates between individuals who mistake sensual knowledge for the truth and individuals who actually do see the truth. Plato places prisoners inside a cave who have been there since birth and have never seen the outside of it. Inside the cave there is a wall that the prisoners consistently stare at. People outside of the cave walk along the wall which then projects shadows of the objects they are essentially ‘holding’.

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In his discussion over how the citizens should be educated and how to control their knowledge, the question of the ethical and realistic expectations of the city. However, the problem, or downfall, of Plato’s city is its foundation. A foundation of lies. Plato’s web of lies, falsehoods and manipulation make the entire city

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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 “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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In “The allegory of the Cave by Plato”, great philosophers offer a theory concerning human perception. Plato described it starting with three prisoners; these prisoners would have face the wall of the cave in a set position. They would not be allowed to move. A fire would be placed behind them with a walkway between. Along the walkway, people would walk carrying different items.

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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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