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The Allegory Of The Cave In Plato's Republic

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Allegory of the cave 1) The dialogue between Plato’s brother Glaucon and his teacher Socrates. 2) The idea of forms (justice, beauty and truth) 3) Two world: intelligible vs. sensible, soul and body 4) Brief summary and analysis of the text Plato, in his book Republic, describes about ideal world, republic, how it should be. Seventh book of it concludes The Allegory of the cave. He talked about such ideas as justice, beauty and truth. In the allegory, a group of prisoners are lives in the cave since birthday. They are chained back to the entrance of the cave with bonds and they cannot move and even turn their head, in order to see what happens in an outside of their world. (514a–b) However, they can see shadows, which appears on the wall. Prisoners give the names to shadows and learn them. (514b) Once, a prisoner was released to the freedom, to the outside of their world. (514b-515a). He is completely …show more content…

(516c) He cannot believe because all he has seen were real things, but he recognizes that is the real life and all things that surround him is true world and tells to other prisoners. They cannot believe to him, they thought that he has blinded because of travelling, and they killed him. Within this story, Plato tried to explain that being philosopher who wants to enlighten the people is difficult, because human being feels comfort in their ignorance. People are hostile to those who are trying to get them out of false world. For instance, Socrates was condemned to the death by Athens court, saying that he violates to society. However, he was like escaped prisoner, because he was trying to say to people all true and criticizes republic for doing incorrect. The most part of the Republic book is devoted to the criticism of Athenian democracy and to promotion of the philosopher-rulers. In Allegory of the cave, Plato shows that people are silly and

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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 compares a number of things in this essay- the material world to the world of ideas, the life of the mind to work of governing, silver and gold to virtue and wisdom. How does he use his comparisons to make his arguments? 2.)Plato creates the Allegory of the Cave to be a conversation between his mentor Socrates and one of his student Glaucon. Plato sets the story to demonstrate that the “blinded” prisoner or in a more cultural sense the men of iron. The Greeks created 4 classes of civilization the gold,silver,bronze and the iron.

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In the beginning portion of “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato introduces the story of the prisoners in a cave to illustrate the foundation of why some do not like change. He begins by explaining there are three prisoners in a cave who are bound and can only see the shadows of objects projected by a fire behind them (Plato 201). The author begins with this portion of the example to set the context for the rest of the allegory. Plato then goes on to describe how one prisoner is released to the outside world to experience the

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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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“The Allegory of the Cave” is a parable used to demonstrate the different Forms from Plato's theory, and how they function. Socrates uses prisoners who have been chained up all their childhood and live among the shadows of the cave to show that in their minds the only reality are the images of the shadows and echoes. However if when one prisoner is released and brought up to the ground, he will witness another reality in the sight of the sun. Furthermore, Socrates said that “the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence” (71). In other words, the cave represented the realm of belief, along with an image or opinion that is not concrete.

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