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 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’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.
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.
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.
In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book ll, he explains that virtue is a habit of right action, formed by acting rightly (Nicomachean Ethics, p. 71). What he means by this is that everyone has the chance to act virtuously, but we must for work at doing what is right. Aristotle thought we should be virtuous because if we live virtuously than we will have a better life over
In Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotelian virtue is described as a purposeful disposition that lies in a middle and is motivated by the correct reason. Virtue is a steadfast attitude. It has a purposeful disposition as well. A moral person makes a conscious decision to act morally for their own sake. According to Aristotle, the most significant virtue is prudential knowledge.
In "The Machine Stops," people have put their entire faith in a machine which eventually lets them down, and Communication is made as a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine called the speaking apparatus, with which people conduct their only activity, they sharing ideas and knowledge. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who do see the truth, the cave represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the world empirical evidence. The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a ‘cave’ of misunderstanding, Although, the prisoner managed to break his bonds and soon discovered that his reality was not what he thought it was and in “The Machine Stops," it’s a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Now they live in isolation below ground in a standard 'cell ', with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the
#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.
Moral virtues to some may seem outdated in the contemporary times, however, they are necessary in most aspects of day to day life. For example, according to William W. Fortenbaugh in Aristotle’s Conception of Moral Virtue and Its Perceptive Role, “[…] good deliberate choice requires both moral virtue and practical reason” (77). Making a good decision requires guidance and moral virtue accompanied by practical reason help to make it. This, “good deliberate choice,” is what makes moral virtues needed still in today’s society and support Aristotle’s moral theory. Whether the good deliberate choice is helping someone else or doing what is morally right, they are usually shadowed by a virtuous undertone.
From this passage, Plato uses abstract and philosophical language to convey his meaning of true knowledge. He does this by using a hierarchy and process for sight. Although this is an abstract and philosophical way to look at knowledge, Plato uses the outside of the cave as a tool for learning. Outside of the cave, there is room for exploration and
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.
In Plato 's theology, our soul exist before we are born with all knowledge, and though life experiences, people are reminded of this pre-existing knowledge, and they gain this wisdom. Once people use their senses to observe this recollecting experience, and by using others to influence further critical thinking, knowledge is gained. In his story of the cave analogy: "picture humans beings in a cave like dwelling underground, having a long pathway open to the light all across the cave. They 're in it from childhood on with their legs and necks in restraints, so that they 're held in place and look only to the front, restricted by the neck-restraint from twisting their heads around.
In another aspect, for the conclusion based on empiricism above—we cannot know what right is and what wrong is, Aristotle provides his own idea about what right is. In his book The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (1947) claims that we act rightly if we perform in accordance with the “proper excellence” and ethics—in another word—moral virtue. According to Aristotle (1947), if we declare that “the exercise of the soul’s faculties and activities in association with rational principle” as the form of a man—in other words, the function of a man, and say “that the function of a good man is to perform these activities well and rightly, and if a function is well performed when it is performed in accordance with its own proper excellence”, then the right actions of a man are the actions performed in conformity with excellence and virtue. What’s more, the actions must go through the whole life, which means the actions need to occupy in a very long time and become the habits with similar passions or affections to our characters.
Aristotle explains that a virtuous person is who can modulate passions and consideration. Aristotle thinks two kinds of virtue; virtue as consideration and virtue as characteristics. We cannot learn the virtue as characteristics by studying. Also, we cannot be virtuous naturally. Therefore, we all can be virtuous by learning from others and preparing.