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Essay On The Allegory Of The Cave

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The allegory of the cave is a very symbolic passage with so much meaning behind it. It is such a popular philosophical piece and is still greatly talked about today. The allegory of the cave talks about how knowledge, education, and imagination affects us as a whole society. We are shown that everyone lives in a different kind of world, whether it be by choice or force. We either live in the darkness, the ignorance of not wanting to open our mind up to other beliefs, or the light, the world where we are overflowing with education and see the world through others perspectives. Socrates explains two different worlds during Book 7. He starts by explaining the world that the prisoners in the cave are living, then goes to explain the world that …show more content…
A lot of people are ignorant and blinded by their beliefs which makes them not want to open their eyes to the beliefs of others, which is what the prisoners that stay in the cave symbolize. They represent the people that don’t want to know about anyone else’s beliefs but their own. They are not open to the idea of hearing other’s perspectives or looking at situations in a different light. They believe that what they think is right and are too ignorant to look at the bigger picture. The cave symbolizes the beliefs of the ignorant people. It symbolizes the darkness that they live in because they are so against opening their mind up and learning other things besides the ones they were taught and forced to know growing up. It is easy to only believe in what you were taught to believe in while growing up, whatever your parents thought about certain situations you would think the same thing. That’s all we knew as kids so that’s all we believed in. However, as we grow older we are exposed to an even bigger world than the one we thought existed. We should be willing to open our mind to this new world, rather than live in the darkness of only what we know like the prisoners in the

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