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The symbols of the plato's cave allegory
Plato's allegory of the cave reality
Analysis of plato's allegory of the cave
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In the Allegory of the Cave by Plato the people who can only see shadows create their own version of the truth based on what they know, “To them [the people stuck in the cave unable to move],’
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.
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.
Book VII ("Allegory of the cave"), describes a scene carry out in a dark cave. In this scene, a group of human beings have been living in a cave since birth; they have never seen the light of day. These people have only focused on what is in front of them but never what is beyond what they can see, "chained, can't turn their heads." Behind them is a fire and behind the fire is a wall. There are various statues placed and manipulated by other people on top of the wall.
When one of the person is allowed to leave the cave and see the real world they don’t believe it. Even more when they return to the cave to tell the others. The others won’t believe the person that left because all they know is the shadows. That’s why Plato says “[…] that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from darkness except by turning the whole body.” (Plato 750).
In life, the world one lives in is always assumed to be the reality, without anyone questioning its credibility. As Iris Murdoch once said, “[People] live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. ”(Iris Murdoch Quotes). In The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, prisoners are trapped in a cave and chained so that they are to face a wall and only see the shadows of objects that pass behind them.
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.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a story is told of chained prisoners in cave that can only see right in front of them. There’s a fire that burns behind them and they perceive only what shadows they see. These shadows were all they knew and to the prisoners these shadows were real. One prisoner breaks free and leaves the cave to which he discovers the blinding light of reality. The reality he and the other prisoners had their backs turned to.
If they were able to move and look around, they would have seen the truth of the statues, and the fire behind them. The cave is a metaphor for human existence. The people in the cave accept the shadows on the cave wall as reality because this is all that they have experienced. The echoes they hear are assumed by them to be real for the same reason. Plato is trying to illustrate that people know little truth about the reality of the world.
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.
Since he has knowledge of what he lived inside the cave and the difference after he got out. He is wiser and he puts his knowledge in practice. Having all this new knowledge makes him have the feeling of wanting to go back to the cave, to Inform prisoners of all the good and bad things there are outside, to inform that there is a bigger World outside those four walls. “How could they see anything but shadows if they were never allow to move their heads?”
It’s a society which people are limited to many rigid controls and can only see the “shadows” of the real facts so that they can only understand the lesser level of the world. 3. The prisoners in the cave won’t believe that there can be the “real facts” other than what they see and think in the cave. They are challenged and won’t accept the fact that they are in
Martin Luther was responsible for the church's eventual reform in the 16th century. Though he started as a monk and was highly devoted to the church, he quickly noticed the high levels of corruption and greed throughout the catholic church. Luther set out to change the ways of the church to better fit the needs of the people who served it. After separating himself from the church, he wrote a document called the 95 theses. The 95 theses was a list of 95 things that the church was doing that was either a form of corruption or wrongdoing. Luther took this list and nailed it to the door of one of the biggest churches in Rome.
Because of this they cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these real people that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes of the people whom they do not
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
