Preview

What Do You Mean By Darkness?

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
787 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Do You Mean By Darkness?
The scene takes place in a little coffee shop in Brooklyn in present time. We join the authors, Plato, Galileo, and Ibn Tufayl in mid conversation about truth. They have been arguing the point that truth can not be taught, you must see if for yourself.

Plato: You all live in a life of lies, you have never seen the truth. Not like how I have.
Ibn Tufayl: And how have you seen the truth?
Plato: I have left “the cave” that you are all living in. I have climbed out and can see the light of the world while you can only see the shadows that are cast on the wall.
Ibn Tufayl: What do you mean by shadows?
Plato: The shadows are the base level of understanding in our world and that is what most people will ever see.
Galileo: Would you say that the bible are some of those shadows?
…show more content…
Galileo: The Catholic Church uses the bible to control people, and those people take it as pure truth.
Plato: Yes, I would say that those are shadows for the masses of people.
Ibn Tufayl: How does one get out of the cave? Can we just get up and walk out?
Plato: Most people can’t, they see the shadows on the wall and think that is the only thing that is true. Once they get up and look around, they cannot believe it because they are being told that everything that they knew is a lie.
Galileo: Yes, when people try to contradict the bible, these people try to prove it undoubtedly false and by every possible means.
Plato: They would rather live their lives by believing in falsity than expanding their minds that contradict what they were taught.
Ibn Tufayl: And what is something that they believe in and that is

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Anti-Catholics often cite the Galileo case as an example of the Church refusing to abandon outdated or incorrect teachings. People believe that Galileo proved that the Copernican belief was true, unfortunately this was not the case. He could not answer the strongest argument against it, which was made by Aristotle. The question that he could not answer was if the Copernican belief were true, then there would be observable shifts in the star’s positions as the Earth moved in its orbit around the Sun. Unfortunately in Galileo’s time the technology was not advanced enough at the time. The evidence at the time shows that the stars were fixed in their positions relative to the Earth. Despite Galileo not being able to prove the Copernican, he had…

    • 151 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Throughout this semester of Paideia, I have read several books in which one or more of the characters know the truth about a certain matter and the others do not. The characters that know the truth then have to decide what to do with the truth. Do they keep it to themselves or share it with others? When both options have advantages and disadvantages, the person who has to make the choice is in a tough spot. This scenario has happened in two separate readings this semester: one in The Return of Martin Guerre and the other in The Allegory of the Cave. Using those two texts, I will be able to provide evidence that knowing the truth sometimes involves personal consequences or obligations.…

    • 1539 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Galileo was an Italian who proved Copernicus’ heliocentricity theory with highly accurate math. However, the Catholic Church didn’t like this and forced him to go in front of an audience and say that he lied. If he didn’t he would be excommunicated or killed.…

    • 2741 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ap Euro Unit 4 Outline

    • 368 Words
    • 2 Pages

    * Galileo supported the Copernican theory and his findings made people question the catholic doctrines. Galileo was put on house arrest for the rest of his life and this caused people to question the extent at which religion answered all questions.…

    • 368 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The metaphor depicts prisoners who understand life only through shadows flickering on the wall of their cave. Here he paints a frightening image of “prisoners [who] have been chained from childhood” forced to stare at the cavernous wall ahead of them (296). As they have never left their dark dwelling and are ignorant of the reality that exists outside of it, the prisoners are duped into thinking the “meaningless illusions” they see are real (297). Through metaphor, Plato asserts that one who understands life only through sensual perceptions is shamefully deprived of a complete and holistic accurate…

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato's Cave on Ignorance

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There is a commanding belief that our experiences of reality are just simply deceptions of the truth. In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates illustrates his perception about human knowledge. He contends that people are rarely able to escape from personal ignorance and with greater knowledge comes confusion and conflict when their own beliefs are challenged. (Socrates 20)…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato’s Allegory of the Cave envisions the world as a dark cave, with human beings as trapped prisoners, and all of their experiences as nothing but shadows on a wall. Plato was an Ancient Greek philosopher who founded the Academy and is the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence in Western thought. Plato is informing us of the world around us, and is guiding the reader in the journey from ignorance to wisdom.…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato understood that there are concepts that we can all recognise in various things, for example the concept of beauty. We all recognise beauty in art, nature, people, or music, and we all understand the idea when we hear the word used. Although we can all recognise beauty, our opinions of what classes as beautiful are widely varied and subjective. The conclusions Plato drew from this is that beauty must exist, otherwise we would not know it at all. This is the Perfect Form of Beauty. However, we must have only partial knowledge of it or we would not have subjective opinions.…

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Galileo lived in a time of division and repression between religious and scientific theory, where most writings were incendiary and disincentivized unity. His letter to the Grand Duchess Christina worked against what most of his contemporaries were peddling. Galileo’s assertions of separation in the meanings of scientific and religious thought powerfully achieve his goal of reconciling the conflict between science and religion. He does this by using credible sources to discredit those who speak against him, comparing the science of astronomy to many other sciences, and creating a defined space in which the Bible will retain its supreme authority. Nonetheless, Galileo tends to portray the interpretations of science as much more significant than…

    • 1660 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Plato suggests that reality is only ‘real’ because of the form of the good (the sun), but the prisoners only have the fire, a copy of the form of the good, and not the sun – the highest form of the good- which is discovered when escaping the cave and into the world of the forms. He also suggests the ‘reality’ is an illusion given to us by our empirical knowledge. In other words, the cave (the world around us) would be the ‘real world’ illusion given unto us by our senses (empirical knowledge), Plato believed that we should never trust our senses, only our ability to reason and our logic.…

    • 260 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato is a historical Greek philosopher and one of Socrate’s pupils. After Socrate died in 399 B.C., Plato left his home in Athens and returned approximately twenty years later. “The Allegory of the Cave” is a short story filled with symbolism and metaphors that Plato had written before he died. In the story, Plato wrote about Socrate and his brother, Glaucon, discussing the steps to obtain the truth and why one should obtain it.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    english paper

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates illustrates a metaphorical story about attaining knowledge. He describes a cave with men who are chained, prisoners of the cave. They face a wall; that is all they can see because they cannot move their heads. They cannot even look behind them to see a walkway and a fire. As a person passes on the walkway, a shadow is projected onto the wall in front of the prisoners; this is all they know. Only the shadows are what is real to them because it’s all they have ever known. Socrates says, “How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” (Plato 479). The main point is that people cannot understand anything except what is being projected right in front of them. Socrates’ point is that society has a limited understanding of knowledge, and is ignorant about what is beyond the surroundings.…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato vs. Nietzsche

    • 1140 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Starting from a base point, Plato and Nietzsche both state that there are deceptions and illusions in the world. First, according to the cave allegory by Plato, he believes the “shadows”(Plato 64) to be what’s keeping us from utilizing our knowledge to its fullest value. The “shadows” are metaphors that represent our acts of relying on our senses to identify objects in life. They are only the appearances of the actual objects, meaning that we are not getting the genuine concept that is concealed by the appearances. He explains that the objects humans see in the visible world are far from the truth and their true forms.…

    • 1140 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to Dr. Michael Rivage-Seul, we are living in a world full of deceit and human frailty. He stresses this particular point in his essay "Taking Risks in Plato‘s Cave" which helps to illustrate that not everything we know to be true is actually true. He also believes that, just as in the parable, we have an obligation to ourselves to look at all aspects and trey to understand all observed viewpoints. His words enforce this belief when he says "We can't begin our escape from ignorance without the intervention of an outsider, without listening to others." (Rivage-Seul, 6). In his teachings, Rivage-Seul tries to highlight the importance of thinking for ourselves and always being weary of a socially accepted truth.…

    • 930 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    European History Essay

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the “Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633” we can directly see Galilee’s theories being refuted by the church in the following quote:…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays