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Truth In Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

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The idea of “truth” is complex in that its importance and meaning lies with whoever is judging its validity. The search for self knowledge and truth is the main focus of Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave.” He theorizes that humans want to enjoy the enlightenment that comes with the truth and should strive to spread the freedom of truth. This “freedom of the truth” presents the positive viewpoint of Plato throughout his allegory. In The Marquise of O- Heinrich von Kleist presents an opposing idea. His story explores the negative theory that humans do all they can to evade the truth because instead of creating freedom, it produces even more of a prison. Kleist and Plato’s ideas differ in the views of truth and its importance to humans. Plato …show more content…
It can be questioned why the mother does not think this activity to be unusual but the answer is seen in Kleist’s comprehensive view of the truth. From a negative perspective, the mother only wants what is best for her family, and what is best in this instance is for all of them to be together. To maintain what she has worked for she must ignore the truth that is in front of her. In a positive view, the mother does not truly know what is going on. It can be suggested that this is a different time period than that of the reader and the mother does not read anything into these actions. Kleist presents different views of the truth not just in this passage, but throughout the entire story. This method of showing different versions of the truth shows how complex it is, thus presenting the truth in its entirety.
In conclusion, the Kleist and Plato have very conflicting beliefs regarding the quest for truth and the simplicity in understanding it. In “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato only presents the positive attributes of truth and in doing so takes away the complexity of the idea. In The Marquise of O- Kleist let’s the reader decide which truth to believe which shows that the truth is hard to understand. Kleist gives the idea more depth which accurately characterizes the idea of

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