The person who releases the prisoners has been enlightened from the bonds of a false reality. The prisoners become completely free when they are realesed from their chains, and accept what things truly are, rather than what they had perceived them to be. The journey out of the cave represents a prisoners’ unwilllingness to change and a resistance to accept new truths. The prisoners have to force themselves out of the cave into this reality.
At that moment, he is able to realize that what he thought to be the only reality was really a copy of the real reality. Again he assumes that the statues and the fire are the most real things out there; completely unaware that there are other things more "real" beyond his cave. However, when the prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the real world he finally understands and learns that there are other things out there that he has not seen yet that makes up the world and reality. He is finally enlightened by the knowledge he received by observing his surroundings beyond his
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.
“The Allegory of the Cave” exemplifies a path of intellectual transformation that has important parallels to the journey of a hero. Socrates’ description of the Allegory of the Cave represents education and the role of education on the soul. This analogy consists of several stages that highlight the philosopher’s heroic journey. The first stage is an image of cave prisoners who spend their entire lives looking at shadows. The prisoners are “chained not just by their legs but by their necks, so that they can’t move and can only looks ahead of them” (Plato 239).
Similarly to my circumstance, the prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” have been trapped in since the start of their lives. This means that their lives have been constructed for them, as their perspectives on their surroundings, specifically the world as it exists outside of the cave, are rooted entirely from what they have been presented since birth. When they are not provided with any other source of information on the world and how it operates, they are forced to infer from what they are able to witness and thus accept these assumptions as the truth. This is synonymous to blindness, as what they cannot see they are unable to anticipate as other possibilities. As a prisoner in my own cave, I am trapped by the expectations that were placed on me since I was born.
Two truths can be contradictory, but that does not make them any less true. The truth is just the way people perceive, or want to perceive truth. Plato, a Greek philosopher from the Classical Greek era, wrote Allegory of the Cave. Allegory of the Cave is a great depiction of perception of the truth, and how the truth can be different for different people. What some people might find to be true can be false to others; however, both truths are as true as people make them.
As Adler previously stated objective truth exists whether or not the human being has experienced it, in this instance the forms that cast shadows while passing by the cave. It can be inferred that both Adler and Morris agree that the negative response of the remaining prisoners in the cave towards stepping out and experiencing reality is a subjective truth and depends on the opinion of each prisoner, thereby belonging to the sphere of taste. Plato is able to present a situation in which both objective and subjective truth can cause a rift in the relationships that human beings can
#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.
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
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.
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.
They are tied in such a way that they are unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. The prisoners are chained since their childhood and have not seen the outside world ever. Behind them burns a fire. In between the fire and the prisoners there is a small path which is used by the people.
They would actually be shocked to find out that whatever they had been exposed to by far and whatever they had presumed to be the ultimate reality, was in fact not so but were actually shadows of the real images. If now the prisoners were actually taken out of the cave and been exposed to the real world, the disorientation and shock would be even more severe. The light of the sun would be even brighter than that of the fire and they would be able to see the real world with their own eyes, absolutely crystal
Plato and Hegel both emphasized that ideas and ideology were the forces behind social, cultural, and political change. Plato 's Republic Book Seven, discusses the Simile of the Cave. On the surface, The Simile of the Cave is about an individual breaking free of his chains from the cave to which he is accustomed to and being outside of the cave and being dazzled by the sunshine. Looking deeper, Plato is emphasizing the role education has on individuals. In the society Plato lives in, the population is divided into three components: commoners, soldiers, and Philosopher-Kings.
The first part, material world, which one can see, touch, hear, and smell is really the half-seen images of the reality of forms. Relying on one’s physical senses alone, trusting what one sees, or hears make him or her effectively blind. Plato, in the story of the prisoners in the cave, represents metaphorically how far is one’s perceptions through physical senses from the reality. Those prisoners in the cave who were kept there since their childhood, had been chained in a manner that they were unable to move around their heads and incompetent to experience the happenings and real things in their surroundings. They were only able to see the opposite wall and the reflections of the statues, objects and other items in the form of humans and animals which were projected by the fire behind them to opposite wall, they presumed to accept those shadowy images on the wall to be real.
