· The ‘Allegory Of The Cave’ is a theory put forward by Plato, concerning human perception. Plato claimed that knowledge gained through the senses is no more than opinion and that, in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical blogger.comted Reading Time: 3 mins Allegory of the cave. Also known as Plato’s Cave, The Allegory of the Cave is a work of the Greek philosopher Plato and was presented by him in his work called Republic. The Allegory of the Cave is a part of the book seven of this work by Plato. The main motive of this work was to compare the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature. The allegory is basically meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul · Allegory of the Cave Analysis Written as a dialogue between Glaucon (Plato’s brother) and Socrates (his mentor), The Allegory of he Cave is a poem composed in approximately The source of this poem is from series on Plato called “The School of Athens” by Raphael
Allegory of the Cave Summary - Achiever Essays | Achiever Essays
The Allegory of the Cave is a part of the book seven of this work by Plato. The main motive of this work was to compare the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature. The allegory is basically meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul. The Allegory of the Cave, as the name suggests is philosophical writing in the form of an allegory. Allegorical writing is a type of writing which has two levels of meanings: literary meaning and allegorical meaning.
The literary meaning refers to allegory of the cave summary essays subject matter or the content of a text and the allegorical meaning refers to the symbolic or metaphorical suggestion that is artistically hidden in the text by the writer. The allegorical writing allegory of the cave summary essays, actions and setting are used as symbols by the writer and they are meant to be interpreted by the readers to make out the meaning of the content. The Republic is the most celebrated book of Plato and The Allegory of the Cave is the seventh chapter of this celebrated book.
In this book, he seeks for justice which can only be offered by an ideal form of government. Plato is of the opinion that the life of a human on earth is like the ignorant and miserable life of somebody stuck in a deep cave. Socrates is the narrator of the text. Plato begins the allegory by having Socrates ask Glaucon to imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned for all their lives, allegory of the cave summary essays.
All of these prisoners are chained. And they are chained in such a way that their necks and legs are fixed. They cannot move at all and thus, they are forced to continuously gaze at the wall in front of them.
They cannot look around the cave. They cannot even look at each other or themselves. There is a fire behind the prisoners. Between this fire and the prisoners is a walkway with a low wall. Behind this wall, people carrying objects or puppets of men and other living things walk. These people walk in such a way that their bodies do not cast shadows on the wall for the prisoners to see but the objects or the puppets that they carry do.
Since allegory of the cave summary essays neck and legs of the prisoners are fixed, they cannot see anything that is happening behind them. All that they can see are the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. The sounds of the people who walk behind the prisoners echo off the wall in front of them.
Thus, the prisoners believe that these sounds come from the shadows. Plato makes Socrates suggest to the readers that the shadows are the reality for the prisoners because the wall and the shadows are all that the prisoners have ever seen. The prisoners do not realize that what they are seeing on the wall are shadows of the objects in front of the fire. Therefore, it is impossible for them to even imagine that these objects are inspired by real things outside the cave which they do not see.
Next, Plato supposes that one of these prisoners is freed. The prisoner would naturally look around and see the fire. If he sees around, the light from the fire would hurt his eyes and it would become difficult for him to see the objects responsible for the shadows on the wall, allegory of the cave summary essays. If somebody would tell him that what he is seeing is real and what he sees on the wall is not, he would not believe it. Plato continues in pain and says that the freed prisoner would then turn away and run back to what he is accustomed to seeing.
He would run back to the shadows of the objects carried by the people walking behind the chained prisoners. Plato says that the prisoner would run back to see the things he was able to look at allegory of the cave summary essays and believe in their reality. He would believe that these things are clearer than what was being shown to him. Plato continues further and says that even if someone was to drag the freed prisoner by force, through the rough ascent, on the steep way up and keep dragging him until the prisoner reaches the end of the cave and sees the light of the sun for the first allegory of the cave summary essays, it would allegory of the cave summary essays the prisoner angry.
The prisoner would be in pain. He says that if the prisoner stays there, things would just become worse. Soon, the radiant and bright light of the sun will take over and overwhelm his eyes and in some time, blind him. He says that gradually, the eyes of the freed prisoner adjust to the light of the sun. When his eyes adjust to the light of the sun, all he can see at first are shadows.
Gradually, he begins to see the reflections of the people and things in the water. Later on, he begins to see the people and things themselves. All of this goes on and after some time, allegory of the cave summary essays, he can look at the moon and the stars in the sky at night.
Finally, he can look straight at the sun. Plato says that only after the freed prisoner is able to look straight at the sun, is he able to reason about it, think what it is and think more about it. Plato continues and says that as the freed prisoner will spend more time in the world outside the cave, he will come to the conclusion that the world outside the cave is superior to the world that he was experiencing inside the cave.
He would bless himself for the change and feel pity for all the prisoners and therefore, would want to bring them out of the cave into the sunlight. But when the freed prisoner will return to the dark cave, he would be blind because his eyes would have become accustomed to the sunlight because of the time that he had spent there. Allegory of the cave summary essays says that all the prisoners chained inside the cave would infer from the blindness of the returning prisoner that the journey he had undertaken outside the cave is what has harmed him.
They will believe that the journey outside the cave is the reason for his blindness. Therefore, they would not want to take this journey. In the end, Plato would conclude that the prisoners would, therefore, reach out and kill anyone who tries to persuade them to go out of the cave or drag them out of the cave.
In his work Republic, Plato has imagined a state and calls it the ideal state, in which people should be politically free.
They should come out of the illusion and they should have the clearest vision of life. He takes this world as a reflection of the real world.
Therefore, this world is nothing more than an illusion, allegory of the cave summary essays. If one looks at the literary meaning of The Allegory of the Cave, it is quite a simple text and easily comprehensible.
But this text is not about literary meaning at all. Whoever reads it should look for the allegorical and metaphorical meaning that Allegory of the cave summary essays has tried to employ in the text.
There are many allegorical and symbolic suggestions used in the writing. The dark cave in which all the prisoners are chained is an indication towards the contemporary world of ignorance and the chained people in the cave work as a symbol of the ignorant people in this ignorant world.
The raised wall behind the prisoners is also a symbol. Plato has employed it as a symbol of the limitation of the thinking of human beings. The shadow that is cast because of the fire on the wall in front of the chained prisoners is a symbol of the world of sensory perception.
This world of sensory perception is considered an illusion by Plato. Plato is of the opinion that the appearance is far from reality, allegory of the cave summary essays.
He believes reality is somewhere, which we cannot see. In his philosophy, Plato says that the appearing world is nothing but the imitation or Xerox of the real world. Therefore, the shadows have been used by Plato to symbolize this photocopy. He believes that reality can be seen with the help of spiritual knowledge only.
The prisoners have been chained in the caves. These chains are also important symbols. The chains symbolize the limitation of human beings in the material world.
They limit us so that we do not even come to realize that there is a reality that we need to know about, that this is a material world that we need allegory of the cave summary essays break free from.
Naturally, the world outside the cave, allegory of the cave summary essays, filled with sunlight is also a symbol and it symbolizes the world of spiritual reality.
It is the world which we can see or achieve by breaking the chains which are used by the material world to tie us. When the prisoner enters the outer world of the cave, his eyes dazzle and he finds himself unable to see. This dazzling of eyes is also a symbol. Plato has craftily used this dazzling of these eyes to symbolize the difficulty that we have in denying the material world.
When the freed prisoner returns to the cave, his eyes dazzle again because of the time that he has spent in the light. This second time dazzling of the eyes is a way to allegory of the cave summary essays the difficulty we face in accepting ignorance once we have known the reality. All these symbols have been employed by Plato to comment upon and criticize the limited existence of human beings in the material world.
In this text, Plato has also talked about our perception. He says that there are two types of perception that human beings have: spiritual perception and sensory perception. As the name suggests, sensory perception refers to the material world, allegory of the cave summary essays, the world of appearance, which is perceived by all of us through our sensory organs. Plato considers it the world of shadows and nothing more than an illusion. He says that reality is impossible to be perceived with the help of our senses.
It is only possible through spiritual perception. He says that spiritual perception is possible only when we reject the world of sensory perception.
Therefore, we need to break all the material chains if we want to attain spiritual perception. Also, Plato talks about true philosophy or true education. Plato is of the opinion that education is the process of learning spiritual knowledge. Therefore, he even calls true education as a true philosophy. Plato says that every individual in the world is given the power to learn by the divine force so that our learning process differs from each other.
He says that we all can learn only up to a limit and once the limit is crossed, we can learn no more, allegory of the cave summary essays. Plato also talks about an ideal state. He says that in an ideal world, there is equality among the individuals as nobody is superior or inferior to anybody.
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, time: 11:16Plato’s “The allegory of the Cave” Free Essay Example
· The Allegory of the Cave 1. Plato realizes that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms. blogger.comted Reading Time: 6 mins · Allegory of the Cave Analysis Written as a dialogue between Glaucon (Plato’s brother) and Socrates (his mentor), The Allegory of he Cave is a poem composed in approximately The source of this poem is from series on Plato called “The School of Athens” by Raphael · The “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato represents an extended metaphor that is to contrast the way in which we perceive and believe in what is reality. The thesis behind his allegory is the basic opinion that all we perceive are imperfect “reflections” of the ultimate Forms, which subsequently represent truth and blogger.comted Reading Time: 5 mins
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