Allegory of the Cave: Plato: Truth and Art
Allegory of the cave is one of the most interesting, enlightening and insightful example given by Plato in his book The epublic to explain such vague concepts as knowledge and truth. It appears in form of dialogues between Socrates and Glaucon and they touch upon various important concepts in connection with learning and discovery. Two very vital subjects discussed are art and truth. When we closely study the allegory, we realize that for Socrates and Plato, art was something powerful and thus dangerous. In this allegory, art has been presented in a negative light because Plato saw what people could do with art. He saw it in the form of drawing on the wall in the dark cave and realized that while art offered a means of communication, it could suppress man's ability to think clearly and may even fail to illuminate the…...
mlaREFERENCES
1) Plato Allegory of the Cave: Excerpt accessed online 15th Feb 2005: http://www.plotinus.com/plato_allegory_of_the_cave.htm
Allegory of the cave can be summed up in one single sentence. It symbolizes the place of perceptions in the pursuit of knowledge. Indeed, in a preamble to the actual relating of the allegory, Plato is involved in a discussion as to who can be considered a true philosophy. The discussion meanders around attempting to answer the following enigmas: Just because someone subscribes to a specific philosophy, does that make him or her a philosopher? Does a person who indulges in a certain muse that is premised on a philosophy -- directly or indirectly related to it -- become a philosopher? Plato goes through pains explaining that a philosopher was (or should be) cut in a different mould. A philosopher, Plato avers, should be able to see beyond what is merely obvious or superficial. A philosopher should see the inner beauty of things and understand, abstractedly, the natural causes of…...
The discrepancy between the ideal and the real and the difficulty of arriving at the truth through deduction and induction is something that everyone must grapple with who deals with the ethics of a profession, like accounting. "Prisoners may learn what a book is by their experience with shadows of books. But they would be mistaken if they thought that the word 'book' refers to something that any of them has ever seen" (Cohen 2006). The ideal of how a corporation should behave and keep its books will invariably fall short of the reality, as the sloppiness of every day life, the new challenges posed by a dynamic business environment, and deliberate and accidental misinterpretations of the rules cause a deviation from the ideal, abstract forms that the reality is supposed to correspond to, Platonically.
There is a critical distinction between an accountant and a philosopher like Socrates, though. On some…...
mlaWorks Cited
Cohen, S. Marc. (17 Mar 2008). The Allegory of the Cave. History of Ancient Philosophy. Retrieved 19 Apr 20008 at http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
However, once the enchained individual is set free, we could assume that realizing his own potential could make him wiser than the person who originally helped him.
Another interesting idea that Plato introduces through the allegory of the cave states that all of us can become "superior" through a process of training which evolves a lot of effort and dedication. I agree to the fact that all people can overcome their own condition if they will it and they submit themselves to a process of hard work oriented in this direction. However, I believe that not all people are endowed with the same capacities and talents. Therefore, regardless the hardship of the training process or its efficiency in terms of progress, it is impossible to have a world of all "superior" people at the end.
On the one hand, there is always room for more, regardless of the high state of…...
Moreover, Bacon suggests that such false foundations, if passed in time, can only ruin the world.
"The Four Idols" of Francis Bacon summarizes an observation of how humans form information in their minds; same subject discussed by Plato in his "The Allegory of the Cave." According to Bacon, there are things in wherein the truth is hard to bare, thus the human mind resorts to information that are available to him; sometimes just assuming that the available information are the facts and reality. Bacon suggests that
"The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.
The philosophies of Francis Bacon were actually inspired and patterned from the thoughts and idealisms of Plato. Thus, "The Four Idols" can be found as an extension of Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave." Both suggest that the human mind is always…...
mlaReferences
Bacon, Francis."The Four Idols." A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's
Plato, The Allegory of the Cave (Text)
S. is on its way to chaos, anarchy and a national catastrophe. The pursuit of individual freedom without respect for authority will eventually lead to these consequences. What keeps U.S. strong and independent is that free enterprise and not the illusion of a contemporary democracy. A basic difficulty in American democracy is its attempt to mitigate all the aspects of negative human nature. Criminals are given equal rights as honorable individuals. Dysfunctional citizens are given thorough protection by the Constitution and allowed to practice their negative behavior in the same environment as honorable and conscientious citizens, shielded equally by laws and served by greedy lawyers and the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. These 10 amendments undermine the teachings of the Ten Commandments and thus destabilize the foundations of the Republic. The prevailing hypocrisy of democracy has been weakening the republic and will eventually lead to the decline and fall…...
mlaBibliography
1. Plato. (c 390). The Republic. http://web.lamoyne.edu/coursesformation/Magee/PHL101/Plato%20%20Republic%20%20Book%20VII.pdf
2. Taylor, T. (2006). The Republic - Book 7. Series Volume IX. http://www.prometheus.cwc.net/republic7.htm
3. Wiessner, J. (2006). The Trouble with American Democracy. http://www.authorsden.com/ArticlesUpload/20268.doc
Plato's Cave Allegory
Plato's writing in the cave allegory deals extensively with moral values, materialism, ethical behavior and spirituality. The plot and basic concepts (discussed below) lend an incredible helping hand to understanding our place in this world given these frameworks.
Plato's Allegory of the Cave (Republic, book 7) recounts slaves chained from their very birth to their work areas deep in a cave. They are chained in a manner that precludes them from gazing left or right but only at that which is on the wall of the cave immediately in front of them. On this wall in front of them are the visible shadows of the people traipsing behind them, carrying food, water, or raw materials of all kinds. Beyond these individuals burns a constant fire that gives both heat and light to the desperate and chained inhabitants. These chained slaves create a game to ameliorate their boredom. Among other…...
Allegory of the Cave, the evaluation by Plato and Socrates of politics and ethics are very relevant to the policies of the ush Administration. An immoral war, tax breaks for the wealthy and a hard stance on the punishment of criminals rather than the prevention of crime are all examples of ush's policies that make Plato and Socrates seem as though they are analyzing actual current events.
The ush-supported war is morally wrong. His reasoning for entering the war was based on ignorance, which supports Plato's theory that anyone who behaves immorally does it because they are ignorant. Weapons of mass destruction, the original justification for invading Iraq, were never found. Economically, the war has driven up debt, signaling a need for higher interest rates and a cut in social programs to help the poor. Surely, a more scholarly approach to Iraq would have meant a different course of action with…...
mlaBibliography
Calbreath, Dean. "Census Shows More People Living Below Poverty Leve." The San Diego Union-Tribune 27 Aug. 2004. < http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040827/news_1n27poverty.html >.
"Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States." The Sentencing Project. .
"Income Gap of Poor, Rich, Widens. CBS News. 16 Aug. 2004. .
Montaldo, Charles. "Total Population Rising at Alarming Rates." About, Inc. .
Allegory of the Cave
This was a philosophical allegory that Plato put forth to try explain the individual understanding of ideas and objects. He put forth a fictitious cave that has sun light projected to the inside through an opening that served as the entrance to the cave. Within the cave were prisoners who were chained such that they always faced the far end wall without being able to turn their heads backwards. A flame was lit and between the flame and the prisoners was a path that passed through the cave to the other side. This path was well raised that all the objects that passed there, animate and inanimate had their silhouettes projected on the wall of the cave in front of the prisoners. All their life, these prisoners know the objects passing behind them through the projections on the wall. Then it so happened that one prisoner was…...
Plato's Allegory Of Cave
Less than a hundred years ago, women in the United States and in many other parts of the world were not permitted to participate in politics: they were deemed inferior to men by nature of their gender. In spite of rampant sexism in modern society, the thought of women being unable to vote seems preposterous. The shift in consciousness that took place with the nineteenth amendment to the American Constitution reflects a similar consciousness breakthrough as Plato describes in his Republic. In The Republic, which was penned millennia ago, Plato presents a perennially popular metaphor: the general public is living as if in a cave, without access to direct sunlight and without contact with the outside world. The sunlight nevertheless creates shadows on the cave walls, shadows that the people mistake for reality. When one person ventures outside the cave, he or she realizes that the shadowy…...
After all, Socrates tells Glaucon that if the prisoner who sees the sunlight were to venture back in the cave and break the news that the shadows on the wall were illusions, he would be killed. However, it is possible to enjoy the pleasures of the body without causing harm to the self or to others. The key is to acknowledge truth and wisdom.
Morgareidge suggests that collectivism can help with the mutual liberation that should ideally take place inside the cave. The prisoners can help each other to see the truth, represented by the sun in Plato's allegory, and then inspire each other to act ethically. "The walls of the cave and dungeons, whose solid appearance we now discover to have been produced by our own alienated labor, crumble, allowing us to perceive the light -- beauty and the good -- in a world of objects and activities designed…...
mlaWorks Cited
Brown, Eric. "Plato's Ethics and Politics in the Republic." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2009. Retrieved online: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/
Cohen, S. Marc. "The Allegory of the Cave." Retrieved online: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
Morgareidge, Clayton. "Teaching Marx with Plato's Cave." Teaching Philosophy 11:3, September 1988 209. Retrieved online: http://legacy.lclark.edu/~clayton/papers/marx.html
Plato. "Allegory of the Cave." The Republic. Retrieved online: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html
Plato's Allegory Of The Cave
If he were simply presenting the idea that humanity is often blind to the fullness and vast resources of the world and what it offers, using the cave as a metaphor would have been enough for Plato to make his point. If the only point was that individuals -- because they are so wrapped up in their own shallow lives, petty distractions, and so loyal to their sensory experiences -- can't (and don't) see the big picture of life and an of humanity's relationship to the universe, placing people in a dark cave would have been sufficient for Plato to convey his message. But by placing those allegorical individuals in chains -- and locking their heads in place to reduce what they see to shadows on a cave wall -- takes Plato's allegorical message quite a bit deeper.
Clearly the philosopher wanted to make the point that…...
mlaWorks Cited
Kreis, Steven. "Plato, The Allegory of the Cave." The History Guide: Lectures on Modern
European Intellectual History. Retrieved July 24, 2011, from http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html .
Plato's Allegory Of The Cave And The Movie The Matrix
Plato's allegory of the Cave and the 1999 Matrix movie share many similarities and look at a similar question of what is real and who has the responsibility to point towards the truth. It is obvious that the creators of the Matrix have inspired quite significantly from Plato's work and putting in a modern contexts, aiming for a different result.
In Plato, the dialogues he presents offer the image of a strange dual-world, in which men are tied together facing a wall, from birth, with only shadows of people and objects projected in front of them. When one of them is released by force, he is taken away from the cave he was born into and shown a different world from the one he knew. Besides this, he understands that the reality he has lived so far is a faked one and…...
Most importantly, Plato describes the fundamental difference between the prisoner who is released and his former companions who are still chained together and unable to see the world directly.
"And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death."
Plato maintained that the ability…...
Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" has as its central image prisoners in a cave, who are chained to a wall and unable to turn their heads. While it is Plato's intention to use these prisoners as a metaphor for persons untutored in the Theory of Forms, they can also be used to apply to students coming to college. College students are the current version of Plato's untutored persons. The fire behind the chained figures can then be seen as the illuminating light of knowledge. This light, when seen only partially, is however likely to induce illusion rather than true knowledge. Thus puppeteers behind the prisoners create illusions with the combined effect of puppets and the fire. This can be seen as representing the limited knowledge gained in life before entering the illuminating environment of college. The shadows and echoes cast by the real objects are taken as real by the…...
mlaBibliography
Johnson, Ben E. Doing it right: improving college learning skills. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1992
Pappas, Nickolas, Plato and the republic. London: Routledge, 1995.
Plato's Republic Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1974
1. Explain the concept of the Forms in Plato's philosophy and discuss its significance in his understanding of reality.
2. Compare and contrast Plato's views on education with contemporary educational practices.
3. Analyze Plato's theory of justice as articulated in his Republic and consider its implications for contemporary society.
4. Discuss the role of women in Plato's ideal society as outlined in The Republic and evaluate his views on gender equality.
5. Explore the concept of "philosopher-kings" in Plato's political philosophy and assess their suitability as rulers.
6. Examine Plato's belief in the immortality of the soul and consider its implications for his ethical and....
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