Mental Imprisonment In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

Decent Essays
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are shown different motifs of mental imprisonment against physical imprisonment. In his play the prisoners are chained in the cave and only able to see the shadows. But once, one of the prisoners was freed and he had no understanding of how to function in the outside world and wanted to go back to the cave but forced to go to the outside world. We see this in real life when we look at the American educational system; in High school students are told what to learn, how to learn, and not to go against superiors; When their growing. That is true that they will never forget this in their whole life.
In today’s society, students are required to follow with the American educational system. Instead of learning

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” describes men who have been held prisoner in a cave for their entire lives that are brought out if the cave for the first time, and represents men searching for knowledge. Through the allegory, Plato claims that anyone can access knowledge and the truth, so long as the seeker is willing to pursue them. However, in Kleist’s “The Marquise of O—," the characters’ individual attempts to access the truth all come up short.…

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The ability to be able to distinguish between what is real and what is an abstraction is essential to the understanding of the world. Within in Plato’s The Republic, the allegory of the cave shows the process of learning what is real and its importance within a just society. Plato, within the allegory of the cave, utilizes the prison in opposition with the upper world to further expound upon the theory of forms and ultimately further justify the Philosopher as the ideal ruler. Plato’s analogy of the cave operates on the binary of the cave and the upper world; these two binaries then correlate with what Plato calls the “perceived” and “Intelligible” realms, which serve as a basis in the theory of forms. The audience is first brought into the cave where puppets, lit by artificial light, are moved in order to create a shadow on a screen for trapped prisoners to witness.…

    • 590 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The prisoners are led to believe that they are living in “the real world” since they had been in the cave since childhood. In the allegory of the cave Plato writes about forms. The world is made up of reflections of more perfect and ideal forms. The prisoners believed that the “material” cave is all there is to the world. Then one of the prisoner is forcefully set free.…

    • 224 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    After reading and interpreting the picture of Plato: Allegory of the Cave, I found out a lot of things I did not know about the world back in that time period. The world back then is familiar with the world today, more than people think. The Allegory of the Cave had many symbols and meanings that were important to the meaning of the story. In this story, Plato is tying to get it across to others that people must show and teach others about the reality they experience. Humans not only use their ears to learn but also their eyes, like the way the prisoners learned and remembered the shadows even if they were not right.…

    • 239 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A number of individuals have recently suggested that ignorance is bliss. It has become common today to dismiss ignorance for the fact people desire to be right while dismissing other cultures, religions, or thoughts of being wrong. Americans though, do now believe in the act of dropping out of college to build their own a company being the best method, yet this process severs their path of education but also their desire to learn. In discussions of ignorance, one controversial topic was issued from Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. On one hand, Plato argues ignorance is not bliss as there is more for us to see.…

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” the philosopher is trying to say that those who are enlightened must try to enlighten others and show the people in the dark the right path. Plato was trying to make people think about being more open-minded to philosophers’ ideas such as Socrates. The story starts with humans being imprisoned in a dark cave, they are chained to rocks so they can only see the wall in front of them Many creatures pass by the opening of the cave yet the humans do not know what they are since they can only see the shadows in front of them. One prisoner is freed, gets to see the light and reality of the world, comes back to the cave to persuade his fellows to come out. His friends believe that he is insane, reject him and even…

    • 228 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Republic, written by Plato, Plato uses the Allegory of the Cave as a metaphor to explain his Theory of Forms. The Theory of Forms maintains that two distinct levels of reality exist. These two levels are the visible world of sounds and sights and the intelligible world of Forms that stands above the visible world. The Theory of Forms differentiates the abstract world of thought from the world of the senses. Plato’s hope was to gain a greater knowledge by investigating the world of Forms.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Finding Light in Darkness Around the world there are many individuals go through challenging obstacles in life. Some may be little almost to no importance, but others may be very serious and difficult to overcome. An obstacle that many people deal with in life is depression.…

    • 1062 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When people fear the unknown, they are unaware of the information that is present. When people take risks they have the potential to become a negative but also a positive situation, which results into fear because we never know the outcome of situations. In the reading, Apology by Plato, He created this reading because his speech defended what he believed in, which was that he is wiser than all men. This defensive system shows that he knows-that he knows nothing thus producing false wisdom as ignorance. Through Plato’s analysis he sees people who admire his thinking and sees those who are against it, thinking they brought him to trial.…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Our understanding of what is reality and what is altered, lead us to believe that the world we see is far from the truth. “The Allegory of The Cave”, written by Plato is based upon the reality the prisoners believe they live in, which in truth, is far from the actual world itself. The shadows portrayed to the prisoners by the puppeteers, reconstruct their minds making them distort their sense on what is ethical. This correlates to society today, based on how people see what they want to see, even if it is not reality. The prisoners in the cave compare to society today by revealing true life could be an altered reality, displayed through symbols and allegories showing what we do not know about the world around us.…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As we see these shackles of the mind have been instilled in each of us since as long as we can remember, these shackles create prisons . For example a husband could be closed minded and not understand why abusing or cheating on his wife is wrong , of course being unable to display compassion and understanding , now Creates a “personal cave” or prisoner for his spouse. Overall in the Allegory of “The Cave”, Plato did a very good job of vividly displaying how the shackles connect to actual prisoners of today.…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Allegory of the Cave and the Question of Philosopher’s Happiness Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents the reader with perhaps one of the most beautiful and enlightening metaphors in literature. His depiction of the rise of a soul from the cave of intellectual deficiency to the light of knowledge serves as the perfect analogy for the intellectual and education ascension of Philosopher-Kings in his ideal city described in The Republic. Similarly, it depicts superbly the stages of his Simile of the Line, a philosophical tool utilized to demonstrate the four basic levels of cognition. He describes these levels in ascending order as Imagination, Belief, Thought, and ultimately, Understanding (Plato 202). Plato places the first two cognitive levels in what he terms the visible realm, a state of existence relying solely on material, or worldly, goods and concepts.…

    • 1697 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Allegory of the Cave” is a philosophical parable or analogy from Plato’s The Republic, written around 380 BC. Exploring themes of knowledge, perception, and the importance of education, it takes the form of a discussion between Plato’s brother, Glaucon, and his teacher and mentor, Socrates. Although this dialogue was almost certainly scripted by Plato, it is not clear whether the idea itself is Plato’s own or his record of Socrates’s thoughts. The allegory begins with Plato’s Socrates describing a group of humans held in a deep, dark cave. They have been imprisoned there since childhood, their necks and legs bound so they cannot turn to see themselves, each other, or the rest of the cave.…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Often times in society, people place more importance on aspects of lesser value. Instead of focusing on the impactful matters, certain people allow the mere opinions and objects of physical worth to dictate their lives and actions. This idea can be visualized in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where those dominated by public opinion are only capable of viewing a far removed, inaccurate version of reality. While this allegorical image acts as a critical reflection of civilization and various socio-political themes, it also displays other features discussed throughout Plato’s Republic, such as philosophical education, one’s movement towards enlightenment, and the “Divided Line”. With the use of numerous key symbols and metaphors, Plato further…

    • 1443 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Plato is an ancient Greek philosopher who was considered to be the father of educational philosophy. Plato used to be a follower of Socratic in education. He is the one who founded the Academy in Athens and wrote many philosophical works including The Republic, which outlines Plato's utopian society and his thoughts about political and educational issues (Gutek, 2009). Historically, Plato's beliefs in philosophical thought are the idea of perennials, perennials is an educational philosophy based on idealism. Idealism is directly traced to Plato, with concepts of the idealistic perspective influencing education today.…

    • 1259 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays