Allegory Of The Cave

Plato illustrates the cave as “a cell down under the ground” filled with pitch darkness. Including, two people who never knew reality. Shackled to the chains onto a seat for the rest of their lives as they look at a wall of nothingness. Meanwhile, mesmerized while watching “the shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality” these people

His body isn’t ready for the direct sunlight and his mind cannot comprehend the world in comparison to what he felt he knew. In time, the man is able to see that all of the previously “known” information he had was completely false but also that he must start a different journey in order to find himself as the way of life he was previously use to, in which guessing was the way of judging knowledge, is ineffective and useless to him now. Finally, the prisoner returns to the cave with a new base of knowledge. He tried to share this information with his fellow prisoners but after hearing about his travels and that they were in fact wrong the prisoned men said to him that “up he went and down he came without eyes, and that it was better to not even think of ascending” ("The Simile of the Cave." Republic, 1974) . He is then met with resistance in offering them help and freedom from their binds. They threaten “if anyone tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender and put him to death”, it is as if they feel that his “loss of sight” is death to them and they are perfectly happy with the information that they know to be true ("The Simile of the Cave." Republic, 1974) .

“The Allegory of the Cave “is a theory put forward by Plato concerning human perception. People who are unenlightened have limited self- knowledge as this is illustrated by the three prisoners who live in a darkened cave without ever questioning what may exist outside their dwellings. The prisoners are chained in a particular way such that they can only see the wall they are facing. Emerging from the wall are passerby shadows created by the effect of the fire and the people walking with various objects behind them. To the restrained prisoners, the shadows are what encompassed their reality therefore making their lives a complete illusion. As a result, Plato distinguishes between people who mistake

Events going on around at this time was the Peloponnesian war which may have been the setting of the dialogue. Plato may have been influenced by the war to write Allegory of the Cave. He could have been trying to find the reason for why the war started which led to the broad belief that mankind, just assumes and doesn't know what the truth is because he probably got different answers. Also around that time Socrates died and he wrote this piece of writing in honor of

After describing the setting of the cave, Socrates asks his audience to imagine that one of the prisoners breaks free from his bonds, and sees the fire and the statues themselves. He notes that there would first come pain as his eyes adjust to the new light, and disbelief, as everything he had previously thought to be real is suddenly proven artificial. However, Socrates assures his audience that the man would eventually come to realize that the people and the fire are more real than the shadows had ever been. He would ultimately grasp how the fire creates the shadows of the statues, creating a mere copy of the real thing. He would then conclude that the fire and the statues are the most real things in the world.

Once the person is outside of the cave they are blind and when they finally are able to see, they do not believe the outside world to be real. At first they can only see shadows and then eventually they are able to differentiate objects from one another. Lastly, the person is able to look at the sun itself. The sun represents good and now the person knows the truth. The cave is an illusion and the games they played in there were pointless.

Once the cave prisoners and Neo are released from their state of ignorance, they start to become more understanding of the outside world, as represented by the cave dwellers escaping the cave, and Neo leaving the matrix. As the prisoners are in the cave, watching the shadows pass on the wall, one of their prisoners is released from the shackles. Because of his natural curiosity, the prisoners turns his head to look outside the cave. Whilst looking outside the cave, the light from outside and will cause him to “suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will not be able to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows” (33-35). Because of the looming darkness always present in the cave, the bright light of the sun blinds the prisoner momentarily.

In the cave, the prisoners’ limited perception of the world is based on the shadows depicted on the wall and the freed prisoner has a higher perception because he has rationalized the world outside of the cave. As Socrates state “visible realm should be likened to the prison dwelling, and the light inside it to the power of the sun, if you interpret the upward journey and the study of things above as the upward journey of the soul to the intelligible realm” (Grube, p. 189), anyone who accepts rationalized ideas from

When the prisoner turns his head towards the light of the fire his eyes hurt him and he is confused because he is unable to see the objects of the shadows he had been subjected to his entire life. It is because of this pain and confusion that the prisoner wishes to return to the life that he is accustomed to, and the reality he knows, the world of the shadows. We are asked to envision the stubbornness displayed by this prisoner to leave the world of the shadows, a stubbornness which causes him to be dragged into the sunlight. Upon seeing the light of the sun the prisoner is temporarily blinded, unable to see anything around him, blinding him more than when he was a prisoner of the cave. Eventually the prisoner’s vision adjusts and he is able to see more clearly. His mind will first be able to recognize the shadows, then moving on to reflections of objects in the water, and lastly the objects themselves. This new sight leads the prisoner to question the colours and objects around him. He questions what it is that causes him to being able to see all the things he can, compared to only seeing poor reflections of objects in the cave. The prisoner eventually concludes that it is the sun which illuminates all around him and is the source of his sight.

They are only able to stare at the wall in front of them. The prisoners see shadows dancing across the cave wall. Puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave with help of the fire. These prisoners only know the shadows therefore the mistake it for reality. There is a small window in the cave that allows light into the cave.

In his allegory of the cave, Plato describes a scenario in which chained-up prisoners in a cave understand the reality of their world by observing the shadows on a cave wall. Unable to turn around, what seems to be reality are but cast shadows of puppets meant to deceive the prisoners. In the allegory, a prisoner is released from his chains and allowed to leave the cave. On his way out, he sees the fire, he sees the puppets, and then he sees the sun. Blinded by the sunlight, he could only stare down to view the shadows cast onto the floor. He gradually looks up to see the reflections of objects and people in the water and then the objects and people themselves. Angered and aware of reality, the freed prisoner begins to understand illusion

Slowly when the prisoner's eyes were gradually getting better he was able to see real things. He was able to see the activity of everyday life in society and much more. After he saw the objects and activity of this new world that he was in, the prisoner started to believe that this new world had more reality than the reality that existed in the cave. He wanted to explore this world and had many questions but the prisoner was sure of one thing.

After being in the dark for so long, it was difficult to adjust. Once his eyes did adjust, the prisoner could see that the objects were much more than what they shadows had portrayed. The prisoner is then exposed to the outer world, outside the cave, and immediately thinks of how he feels terrible for the other prisoners who are still in the cave. He realizes that they will not experience what he has in this "new" world.

It is the allegory of the cave, and begins with 3 men held as prisoners in a cave. These men have only ever seen the shadows of the being that walk past the entrance of the cave for they are unable to turn their heads towards the entrance. One man is freed and as he approaches the entrance of the cave, he begins to realize that the shadows are not the actual things he has been seeing, but rather an almost extension of the real thing. The prisoner even eventually is able to look directly at the sun to see just the mildest bit of how it works. He runs back to the cave to inform the other two prisoners of his miraculous discovery, but the other men say he has gone crazy and that the things he saw were imaginary and that he was

Socrates describes people in a cave since birth, bound so they can only see what is in front of them. There are shadows and sounds that can be observed but the source is unknown. Socrates says in 515c, “…such men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things.” Their reality is limited by their experience. Then a prisoner is freed from the bonds and is forced to look at the fire and the statues that were used to cast the shadows on the walls. He is overwhelmed by the revelations and learns that the shadows were not the reality.