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Allegory Of The Cave

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The main trait of human intellect is its curiosity, its questioning nature about itself, the perceived world and the other people for which a meaning is sought. From ancient times, this endeavor became known as philosophy. Over the course of time, many such philosophers came into being and enhanced our knowledge about the meaning of things, us and our life. In the next paragraphs will take a look to a couple of them which are considered today among the greatest philosophical minds of all times: Socrates and Voltaire. We will explore their view on philosophy through some examples: Apology and Alegory of the Cave Reading for Socrates and Good
Brahmin’s for Voltaire.
Socrates never wrote his thoughts as other great thinkers during his time. What …show more content…

The Alegory of the Cave, although written by Plato and reflecting his style, is based on Socrates’ view about the truth and to reach to it.
In the Apology, Socrates answers to a couple of main accusations: corrupting the minds of the young people and promoting other deities than the “legal” ones in the city of Athens (resembling the blasphemer profile in the Christianity). In the Alegory, a group of people (prisoners) are bound to the space of a cave where there only source of light comes from some lightened fires.
These cave-confined people see only the projected shadows of those who briefly walk near the fire. Based on the shadows, they elaborate on what the world is beyond their immediate sight.
Everything they see is speculative, though based on directly observed facts.
Like these, the people (especially the young) wander in the world of thought thinking they got the truth, when they are in error, actually. One must acknowledge that it does not know anything in order to start gaining “true” knowledge. Socrates argues during this trial, paralleling the young with the cave dwellers and hence the need for proper intellectual education and exercise. And like the prisoner who escapes and goes outside the cave, returns and tells the other what …show more content…

In the case of Voltaire, the Good Brahmin, tries to show the importance of the philosophical undertaking even when it seems to reach dead ends. We have to characters: a brahmin and an old woman. The brahmin (n.r. a Hindu priest) spent all his life searching for answers to the questions he found during his philosophical endeavor. He is “tormented” by the uselessness of his efforts because he still did not found the answers to his questions. Voltaire opposes him with his neighbor – an old and simple woman, lacking any education or intellectual refinement. This woman is not even capable of understanding various philosophical one can address to her. Her joy resides in fulfilling the rituals of her faith, without questioning them. The brahmin admits that the woman might have a point, but refutes one such life for him, considering that the search for answers to the great questions of life it’s still superior to a life without them, even when no outcome is there.
We observe that we must choose between the search for truth and the blind acceptance of a canon that regulates all that is to be known (the rituals). I tend to leave somewhere in between, questioning the world and myself and also participating in certain rituals just because the

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