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Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

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Plato’s, “The Allegory of The Cave” talks about the different areas of philosophy containing metaphysics, epistemology, etc. It also includes Plato’s theory about the World of Forms. Plato’s Allegory is a metaphor that compares and contrasts the way in which we perceive and accept what is real. He suggests that people are trapped by their inability to accept things they aren’t familiar with. The prisoners in his allegory have a specific mindset that is accustomed to what they know and what they have seen (the shadows). To think beyond what they know is to challenge the basic fundamentals of their lives. Sharing knowledge with others ultimately leads to negative consequences because it would call for change, development, and acceptance of what people believe is the truth. …show more content…

All they have ever seen is the wall in front of them and the shadows the puppeteers behind them cast. All the prisoners know is the cave and its shadows and finally when one of them is free and able to leave the cave he cannot believe this other reality he is seeing. The sun, the water, his own reflection, he is shocked by this new world and starts to question everything. The cave and its shadows were his truth and now this alternate reality is hard for him to believe. The prisoner in Plato's allegory struggles to adjust when he first learns about this new reality, but he eventually understands after seeing with his own eyes. The knowledge he learns he seeks to share with his former prisoners, but he is perceived by them as being crazy and they ridicule him because how can they believe something they have never seen? How can they imagine this other reality when the cave and the shadows are all they have ever

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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],’

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In reality, many people live without an absolute knowledge of the world and often times, they are comfortable with this ignorance. Likewise, Plato introduces the idea of this unawareness through The Allegory of the Cave, a short story in his published book, The Republic: Book VII. In his book, he narrates the story of a few prisoners who are held captive in a dark cave, where the only light that shines through is from a fire that burns behind them. He further explains that the prisoners are completely bound and unable to move their body or head. Moreover, he reveals that the captives grew up with no outside communication and consequently, the way of life in the cave was all they knew.

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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.

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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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Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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The prisoners being inside the cave seeing shadows only rely on what they see to be realistic and dwell in their positions. The prisoners do not know what the outside world is like. Suddenly, one prisoner gets released and get out of the cave and see a new world. In that case, the prisoner experiences a new surrounding and quickly adjusts to it; however, the other prisoners would not listen. Like that, we realize that we adjust to our present surroundings; but once our surroundings change, we quickly adjust to the new surroundings.

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