Allegory of the Cave

by drawing a comparison between “the natural condition of humans and education, or lack thereof” (514a) to the allegory of the cave. This analogy paints a picture of a perilous journey from the darkness of the cave, a state of blissful unawareness, to the light, which is symbolic of the quest for education and knowledge. The allegory attempts to equate the prisoner’s emergence from the cave as the transition from understanding sensible reality towards the realm of forms; this realm is comprised…

recieving a scholarship, becoming famous, or getting a high salary job. Plato’s excerpt, “The Allegory of the Cave”, reminds me of my perpetual worries and doubts that I have of living up to my parent’s expectations. In “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato depicts a group of prisoners who can only see mere shadows as the closest thing to reality. This false perception of reality is the main takeaway of the allegory. Plato’s excerpt embodies the fact that as humans, we start off with optimistic…

In the stories, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain, The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass, and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely, the authors convey the importance of the freedom of learning and the different approaches to learning. Each author has a unique way of getting their point across; some through violence and some through experiments. The connection made between these stories is…

In Plato’s allegory, one of the individuals in the story, who goes by the name Glaucon, is asked to imagine a cave in which prisoners were placed. These prisoners, who have been in the cave since a young age, are restrained by chains surrounding their feet and neck. These chains are attached to the wall in front of them, preventing them from any movement…

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. The Allegory of the Cave is a…

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a story of a man coming from a world of darkness into a world of enlightenment. The main theme of the story is to “illustrate what it's like to be a philosopher”. Plato wished to educate his audience, which is thought to be his pupils from the Academy or anyone whom was interested in learning from him. The Allegory of the Cave begin with a group of people all chained to the wall of a cave, preventing them from viewing anything but shadows on the wall before them…

A decently controversial concept is brought up in The Allegory… The cave prisoners were born believing all they see in front of them, the dancing shadows of people backlit by the fire behind them, are actually black beings moving along the cave wall in front of them. How is it possible they believe in such a reality as closed minded as this? Surely they would know better after one prisoner was freed and shown reality as non prisoners see, comes back and tells their story. Why don’t they believe…

I think that the main points illustrated by Plato's Allegory of the Cave are that people only know what they experience and only choose to accept what they have experienced, people who have knowledge have a responsibility to share it and that ignorance is bliss. The men trapped in the cave demonstrate how people will only believe what they have experienced by shunning the man who tries to tell them of the outside world. They aren't willing to accept that there is more to life than the wall and…

order to find the ideal or perfect truth. By asking such queries, one is able to educate himself by exposing the flaws of the world around him. This importance to educate oneself in order to strive for true reality is exemplified in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” with the unchained prisoner and the Wachowskis’ The Matrix with the primary character Neo. In both storylines, the authors display through their characters that when an individual…

The Cave Allegory This allegory is used to convey Plato’s attempt to explain what the nature of reality is. It displays the role of the masses, the educated, and reality. The setting takes place in a cave. The people within the cave are chained in such a way that they can only see the cave walls. Behind them are these strange figures that would carry objects and walk behind the people. Because there was a fire, the people could see their shadows. Sometimes the figures speak so they thought that…