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Plato's Allegory: The Republic By Plato

1251 Words6 Pages

Question #4 In the allegory written by Plato, he describes a story of a once prisoner becoming enlightened from the truth of the world he once never believed to exist. The story details a number of symbols to represent everyday life of opinions, beliefs, and knowledge, and how each impacts our perceptions and attitudes to everyday life. Plato emphasized the power of knowledge and the responsibility to share that knowledge with those around. However, as detailed in the allegory how we share that enlightenment with others is not always as well interpreted as we hope it will be, where sharing those ideals face criticism and denial. However, where we may have success in collaboration is having discussions on a different level of understanding …show more content…

Plato tells the story of a group of people chained in a cave from birth, in which throughout their entire life they have only come to understood reality as the shadows dancing on the wall from the firing burning behind. The images projected on the cave are their reality, and is all they believe to be real in life, further they develop opinions and beliefs based on what they understand to be real based on the shadows. When a prisoner escapes for the first time and discovers the outside world, the exposer to the new light temporary blind the prisoner, as he has never experienced this light before. However, once adjusted to the exposer of the suns light allows his to learn that there is more to life than he once believed, and understands not everything is, as it seems. The story continues when the once chained prisoner returns to the cave to share his new knowledge with the other prisoners. However, the other prisoners are not as accepting of what he has to say and the knowledge that he brings. This is due to the fact that they do not have that same understanding, and are only entrust of their own perceptions and attitudes based on what they have experienced and developed their opinions and beliefs around. Change is not easy, particularly when someone has an opinion, or way of doing something for a number of years that has been unchanged. Like the prisoners in the story, people often become resistant to accepting a new idea that they have not learned on their own, particularly when it challenges the preconceived norms which they have only every

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