Plato’s Cave portrays prisoners captive in a cave and forced to look at the shadows projected on the wall in front of them for their entire life, until one
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.
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.
Plato’s Republic, Book 7, talks about the metaphor referred to as "the allegory of the cave. " This metaphor in philosophy is use to describe the importance and effect education or lack of education has on the human mind. In book VII, education is referred to as a light that brightens the different paths that exist in life. It helps open the human mind to things that it was unaware of. Another point made in book VII, was that by educating yourself you become less ignorant to what is out there in the world.
Allegory of the Cave- First Draft The Allegory of the Cave is an extended analogy presented to us by the Greek Philosopher Plato. It is concerned with human perception of knowledge and truth. Plato believed that real knowledge can only be acquired through philosophical reasoning. In the Allegory, Plato portrays to the mistakes of people who mistake empirical knowledge for being the ultimate truth and differentiate them from people who have sought real knowledge. Plato believes that the society is like prisoners in a cave and one can only emancipate from its conventional beliefs by seeking knowledge outside the cave.
Plato's writings describe the different aspects of the cave as being representative of the world and our view of it. The People chained to the chairs in the deepest part of the cave represent us. They are the ordinary people who spend their days staring at the shadows on the wall, completely unaware of anything else. The Shadows being cast on the far wall of the cave represent the physical world, the things that we perceive with our senses. These shadows are not permanent and may come and go as they leave the light.
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.
Allegory of the Cave Everyone at one point or another has questioned reality. Plato, back in Greece’s Classical Era, wrote, “Allegory of the Cave”. This allegory talks about prisoners, and how one unique prisoner is treated after being trapped his entire life. In The Cave, Plato urges readers to believe that there are no facts, only interpretations, by finding your own reality based on your own beliefs, not others.
In life, we are always presented with people who are seemingly unwilling to change points of views. At times like this, we are required to avoid causing offense especially if we wish to stay close or build a connection with the person in question. However, let's assume you wish to educate the person with new thought even if it costs you your life this is the predicament the enlightened man from Plato's allegory of the cave is presented with. In Plato's allegory, we start with a group of captured people who are trapped in a cave since birth only to know the shadows of creatures to be reality.
The meaning and comprehension of life has been a common topic to debate about for a very long time. Philosophers still don’t fully understand the bigger picture of life, but to see a bigger picture, you have to first at all of the small pictures that make up the big picture. In Plato’s story, “Allegory of the Cave”, he has written a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon about one of these smaller pictures. It talks about unintelligent and intelligent people, the idea of good, leadership, and some other topics. With all this supporting the main theme, it is the idea of intelligence and knowledge and how it is linked to society.
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.
Are we always at the mercy of others and our own experiences? Are the truths we cling to always reality? Are we ever truly free or are we always prisoners in our own mind? These are some of the questions that went through my mind while reading Plato’s allegory of the cave. Through them I’ve come to understand one of the biggest themes in this allegory is our ability to “shackle” ourselves mentally, but also our ability to free ourselves if only we have the courage.
To Be or to Become…That is the Question The philosophical view of being as opposed to becoming Throughout the ages, the philosophical vantage points of the various philosophers have often debated the simplest of questions of human existence. These questions, though simple in nature, are complex; filled with large rabbit holes for others to dive into and become immersed in a largely hollow world needing to be created and argued into formation. The arguments swing in directions of “what is good” or “where do we find justice” and then swing back towards more developed questions of the “soul” and how do we know if it exists. The goal of philosophy is to explore knowledge in search of the truth; which is the basis of wisdom.
Plato discussed a two layer view of what he perceived as reality; the world of becoming and the world of being. The world of becoming is the physical world we perceive through our senses. In the physical world there is always change. The world of being is the world of forms, or ideas. It is absolute, independent, and transcendent.
Interview: The main aim of this interview is to dig out in depth information about the challenges and prospects of refugees and asylum seekers social integration, which the study is interested in. As a result, structured and unstructured interview questionnaires (checklists) will be prepared to be administered to selected key informants. These key informants will be selected from refugees and asylum seekers themselves and other Voluntaries (Ehrenamtliche) , social worker at refugees/asylum seekers residence (Flüchtlingswohnheim), Social security office, and others whom the researcher believes have rich information about the issue to be studied( Diakonie and Caritas Refugee support program coordinators). A total of 18 key informants will be
