What Is The Philosophy Of Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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The journey to a philosophical way of thought In class, one of the assignments was to watch a video called Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave. While watching the video, a voice spoke as the story unfolded describing animated prisoners chained from their necks and bodies to a rail where they could only watch a wall in front of them to never be able to see what was around. On that wall their shadows were displayed. Over time, the fire from a distance would continue and someone would begin to maneuver puppet like figurines behind the on-going fire where it shaped shadows that were reflected on to the wall. While all of this is occurring, the prisoners believed the shadows to be real. Later on, a prisoner is released and allowed to see the world around him for what it truly is and when he returns to the prisoners to tell them about his experience, they reject him. The released prisoner, sees life the way it should …show more content…
Through out the entire allegory he causes for the reader / viewer to undergo two different realities and at the end making them question things they did not think before. The purpose of the allegory is to ponder in philosophical thought. He encourages the quest for higher knowledge but also shows the consequences in achieving that knowledge. He personalizes it so that the reader/viewer relates to the different forms of reality. Plato puts the reader/viewer as the person who knows nothing at all, to the person who is experiencing a discovery between one world to another, and lastly, to a situation where both people from different worlds cannot agree because of the two separate perceptions. This is displayed when it is suggested that prisoner returns to the cave to share his wisdom of the world later to be discouraged by his fellow prisoners. This occurring because the prisoners no longer agree with the freed one due to the lack of knowledge they have yet

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