The Myth Of The Cave

Life for the prisoners goes on this way without occurrence until one of them is freed, led up outside the cave, and shown the real world. The freed person will realize that the truth of the shadowed reality is actually a falsehood. After this realization the person who visited the upper world is returned to imprisonment in the cave. Her eyes have to adjust to the darkness of the cave once again. However, this adjustment naturally takes a long time. As a result, the once free person can no longer see the shadows as well as she did before her release into the upper world. To the people who have remained in the cave, it seems as though going into the upper world has destroyed her faculty for seeing "reality." Some of the captives then say that trying to reach the outer world is harmful, and that anyone caught trying to loose themselves or another person for the purpose of reaching the outside will be punished. Plato says that the cave symbolizes the world of sight and the outside represents the world of knowledge. Plato also instructs people to "interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world." Plato's belief is that in the "world of knowledge the idea of good appears," and that humans should strive to reach this goodness through philosophical thought.

Journal 5: The Allegory of the Cave The Allegory of the Cave is a metaphor that Socrates came up with. It’s supposed to show the effects of enlightenment and education on humans. The metaphor starts with a group of people who have lived in a deep cave since they were born. They are bound so that they can only look straight ahead. However, due to the fire in the cave, and the statues on the walls, they are able to see shadows.

In the highly popular animated film The Lego Movie, there are many similarities between it and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the movie, there many parts from the plot that directly relate to what was happening in the Allegory of the Cave. There is a lot of symbolism from both the movie and this idea by Plato. The movie uses the idea that when people are made to live a certain way they believe only what is told to them and what is in front of them.

The “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato represents the differences in the way we perceive reality and what we believe is real. In his story, Plato starts by saying that in a cave, there are prisoners chained down and are forced to look at a wall. The prisoners are unable to turn their heads to see what is going on behind them and are completely bound to the floor. Behind the prisoners, puppeteers hide and cast shadows on the wall in line with the prisoners’ sight, thus giving the prisoners their only sense of reality. What happens in the passage is not told from the prisoners’ point of view but is actually a conversation held between Socrates and Glaucon (Plato’s brother).

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.

The Story “The Allegory Of The Cave” written by Plato, describes that there is a distinction between appearances and reality. In the story, there are three main examples that are used to show the distinction between how something looks and what it actually is (appearance vs reality). These examples are shadows, objects, and the outside world. The story mentions that there are chained prisoners inside of a cave that have only ever seen the wall in front of them. One prisoner is unchained and discovers a whole new reality.

Aristotelian Analysis of “The Allegory of the Cave” In “The Allegory of the Cave”, Plato is demonstrating his theory about people’s mindset concerning old and new ideas through. He does this through the use of an Allegory, sound logic, and emotion. He tells the story of a prison in a cave, and how one of the prisoners escapes his bonds and is “compelled suddenly to stand up… and look towards the light” (Plato p. 451) .

What is real? A thought in both The Matrix and Allegory of the Cave. The Matrix, written by Lana Wachowski illustrates many questions throughout. The main character, Neo, tries finding Morpheus in need of an answer to his question. What is the Matrix? Considering, Morpheus is the most dangerous man alive, he does all that he can to find him. Neo is approached by Trinity and led to the underworld to meet Morpheus. They soon realize that Neo is “The One” who can defeat the Matrix. Similarly,The Allegory of the Cave,which took place in ancient time, humans were living in an underground den with their necks and legs chained only seeing their shadows in front of them. The people trapped in the den are like the people in the matrix, not knowing

Socrates asked if after escaping, “when he came out into the light, that his eyes would be filled with its beams so that he would not be able to see even one of the things we call real?” (Plato 748). Glaucon replied “no, not immediately” (Plato 748). The objects the prisoner sees after leaving the cave are the objects that created the shadows inside the cave, or the real objects. It is painful for the prisoner to see them because he is not accustomed to the light, or truth.

In the Allegory of the Cave there are chained prisoners in cave who can only stare at the cave wall in front of them. At the back there is a long entrance with a staircase the width of the cave and a fire burning in the distance. They see only shadows projected in front of them from a raised platform and hear an echo that they attribute to what they observe. They talk about and name the shadows of objects they see before them. To them the truth are the shadows. Then one day one of the prisoners is released. He is told that what he saw before was an illusion. Once he is outside it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sun. First he observed the shadows of thing then their reflection and finally the actual object. Remembering his previous state he goes back to the cave and tries to explain that everything is an illusion but they laugh at him and think he’s crazy. They believe it best not to ascend and they choose to remain as they are. The cave represented opinion. The shadows that are cast on to the wall represented physical objects. The prisoners represented the common people (Welles).

An allegory is a kind of story in which writer intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface story. One of the most important allegories ever to be gifted to humankind is Allegory of the Cave. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is one of the most potent and pregnant of allegories that describe human condition in both its fallen and risen states. The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. It is also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave. It is written as a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon at the beginning of Book VII of The Republic.

The prisoners don’t know what life is and it’s purpose. So putting into conclusion, the prisoners seem to believe that the only way to life is the cave and the images they see. These prisoners see shadows of people and objects projected by the light of the fire. The fire is lit behind the wall they are shackled to, so they don’t know exactly what they are seeing.

The Allegory of the Cave or also known as, Myth of the Cave, is a good example of explaining the feature of the way people think. It is a concept that demonstrates how humans are fearful of change and what they don’t know. Plato says that men are living in an underground cave and it is a situation. The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. Plato talks about being free, everyday life, knowledge, and essentially what he wrote to be true. I think that he was very unique with his writings because there are so many ways to look at the world and his way was just one. He was educated highly and is recognized as a philosopher to this day.

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

The “Cave” was told as an allegory, a story that is compared to something similar, but unstated. The “Cave” represents people who think knowledge comes from experience in the world. This is known as empirical evidence. In the cave believers of this type of evidence believe that they are trapped in some type of cave. This cave that they are trapped in this cave of misunderstanding. The shadows are seen as those who believe in this type of evidence and that it guarantees knowledge. If what you see is what you believe, then that is the truth, it is just a shadow of what the truth is. The game shows that some people believe that a person is a master when they have knowledge of this world. Plato showed though that this master knows nothing really and thinks it is absurd to look up to someone so highly in such ways. The escape prisoner is like a philosopher. This philosopher is one who looks for knowledge outside of this cave. The sun then shows us philosophical knowledge and truth. The sun is wisdom. Then there was the return. The other prisoners were scared of knowing all of the knowledge of this world, so when the escapee returned they were shocked. The overall lesson of the “Cave” was that sometimes knowledge is a good thing, but sometimes if someone is