Preview

Why Does Plato Considers Ordinary Human Existence to Thatos Chained Prisoners in a Cave

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1633 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Why Does Plato Considers Ordinary Human Existence to Thatos Chained Prisoners in a Cave
WHY DOES PLATO COMPARE ORDINARY HUMAN EXISTENCE TO THAT OF CHAINED PRISONERS IN A CAVE? Plato in his famous Allegory of Cave compared the ordinary human existence to that of chained prisoners in a cave. According to Plato, we are all stuck in a false reality in this world like prisoners in a cave. His cave theory still applies today in the sense that the people are influenced and controlled by the world around them. They do not want to realize or seek the truth; instead they wish to live in the comfort zone inside the cave. THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE: PLATO, REPUBLIC. Plato assumed the existence of human life in a cave. In his view, human beings are tied as prisoners in a cave and they could only see the shadows of real things and thought that these were the reality. There was a sun illuminating outside the cave and when one of the prisoners is released, he was perplexed as he was exposed to the light for the first time, he felt the pain in his eyes, after that he realized that it was real and tried to understand that reality (truth), he attained enlightment(knowledge). It represents the various stages of human life and the ultimate goal of human existence to attain enlightment. The visible realm inside the cave should be compared to the prison dwelling and the light of the fire to the inside it to the power of the sun. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is very relevant to the contemporary world. We are influenced and controlled by a lot of people, via parents, teachers, friends, relatives and peer groups. For example, the future of a child is decided by the parents. The original dreams of the child are manipulated by them and they decide what their children have to study, what they have to wear, which college they have to join… We are also influenced by a lot of things like internet, mobile, marketing advertisements, video games and T.V serials. We are locked and captured by these myths which are the barrier between us and the truth .They control our

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, the nature of good is represented through the deprivation of light the prisoners of the cave experience. In this imaginary representation, the individuals are not so much prisoners of the actual cave as they are of their own ignorance. The prisoners are surrounded by darkness and faint light, depicting shadows into reality. If light is the representation of truth, then the darkness engulfing the cave represents the lies the prisoners ignorantly believe. Because the darkness is all that they have known, they…

    • 851 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Plato’s philosophical beliefs by the Allegory of the Cave represents how people view the world by what they see and hear and that we are blinded because of it. The cave itself represents how we are all trapped from the real knowledge that we are too blinded to see. The shadows in the cave are supposed to be what we think is true and that they’re really just shadows of the truth. The prisoner leaving the cave represents the people who actually try to go out and seek knowledge and the sun is representing the truth in life. The prisoner returning to the cave represents how most people are too scared to except the philosophical truth and are actually scared of…

    • 122 Words
    • 1 Page
    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

    In "Allegory of the Cave", Plato in all ways sets up in description the truth as being a higher plane of enlightenment than is achieved by the normal man. By describing it as the "light" and the alternative to truth as a form of "captivity", he sets up the prisoners below as being chained to their weak ideals. In a demeaning tone he speaks of how the chained men have contests among themselves to pick out quickly what they believe to be reality, but which is only a shadow, as is everything they see.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The journey that “prisoners” of that cave take is in the ultimate goal to attain knowledge of the abstract world. By doing so, the few who left this place establish themselves above the slaves that are still living within the depths of the cave(521, a). The interesting part of this allegory is that it shows that this cave has an entrance and hence shows the possibility there is a light out of the tunnel and be able to reach the enlightened state. Plato clearly explains the difference between the people that are left behind the cave and those who ventured out on their journey to discover the universal truth: “…the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason” (517, c). All of this is especially relevant in Plato’s thinking. He specifies in his Republic only a few will manage the reach the status of Philosopher-King and hence grasp the universal truth. It is up for the Guardian class to accomplish such a task through hardships and tough education throughout their lives to prepare them for this difficult task. It also justifies his vision that not all men are born with equal status and therefore the Noble lie. With this allegory, he is able to show the Noble Lie idea and firmly affirms that not all men can become “gold” and that only a few will manage to endure the hardships of the light and become the philosopher-king. One who chooses such a path hence refuses to live his life in ignorance and by doing so, forgets the past: “Would he not find his eyes so dazzled by the glare as to be incapable of making out so much as one of the objects that are now called true” (516, a) It is the existentialist value that men have responsible for their own self community and in…

    • 1443 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Because I love Socrates I find everything Plato writes thoroughly interesting. The minute he opened this part of The Republic with “how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened,” I was interested. The part in the Allegory of the cave that stood out to me was the transformation of the man from the shadows to the sun then back again. It is here that everything seemed to fall in place. The people in the shadows seemed, t me, to have an erroneous conscious, simply because they were living in the shadows. The shadows represented the gist of reality. It was the appearance of an object but not the depth of it. The shadows seemed like a false reality, there to see but unable to be grasped in any way. When the ,an went from the shadows to the sun he refused to believe there was such a thing other than what he had learned from the cave, therefore the sun would represent what reality actually is. The prisoner of the cave was unable to accept reality when he was first introduced to it because for all of his life he had only been able to reach the shadows of reality, not the full thing and he believed he had learned all that there was of reality so he refused to believe there was anything else to say about the manner. The transition from the fake world to true reality took him a while but after one begins to live in reality when he is sent back nothing else will ever make sense. The sun, reality, was able to change a man’s mind, one who had been in the dark for his entire life, but…

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato’s Allegory of the Cave talks a lot about human beings and how they are generally fixed in a cave they’ve been in their entire life and some are chained to a wall. His core idea is about how humans are just barely trapped in the cave that they have lived in since…

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The great philosopher, Plato, back in the days of the ancient Greek civilization, concluded that man as a species can only draw from what his senses take about his surroundings. This includes his social relationships, eating habits, spiritual beliefs, and the many other attributes that make a person who they are. This theory/observation is very accurate about man back then and is also seen in everyday life even today. People are constantly leaving their imaginary caves in search of their inner-self and it begins in early childhood.…

    • 564 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Plato’s analogy of the cave he suggests that the prisoners are held back by their senses telling them that the world that they see is in fact reality, whereas Plato disagrees with this. Plato believed that once the escapee (Philosopher) is outside of the cave, that they can use the power of reason to truly know what reality is. He believes that the world around us is not real, and that the world of the forms is the true reality where we can gain knowledge and understanding.…

    • 260 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The prisoners in the story were only allowed to see shadows in the cave and it’s what they believed as true. In the story Plato states that the prisoners came to know reality as nothing more as “the shadows of those artificial objects” (Plato 50). Most people have only seen a narrow and small perspective of the world with a skewed sense of reality. They only know what’s happening around the globe from what’s told through the news outlets and from the surroundings. Lack of knowledge of things they haven’t seen or people they haven’t encountered before is someone’s personal “cave”. Throughout the story the theme of not believing everything you see and hear is prevalent and can be used in every person’s life.…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato's Cave

    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In Plato's "Allegory of the cave" the believed perception of reality is portrayed through images of shadows on a wall, in a cave, where the only existence of reality is what is seen in front of one's eyes. In today's present-day the shadows still exist and are depicted in a different form of media through television, computers, movies, and ones personal cell phone. All which are a big part of our daily life. We all have a choice to accept the realities given to us and believe in the shadows created.…

    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Luv, Romance

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Upon reading Plato¶s ³Allegory of the Cave,´ I was impressed on how well the posed scenariogave such a mentally descriptive metaphor to any society and their stubborn unwillingness to look outsideof conventional ethics.In my eyes, the people inside the caves whose reality consists of the cave and its shadows relateto the people of a society who live their lives, doing whatever they can to meet the norms and fit in. Theseindividuals never question the shadows directly in front of them, as those shadows are the only realitythey know. They have no reason to look beyond or question the shadows because they have no idea thatthere may be more; there may be other ways of living life.The individuals who provide those who are chained with the images, and give them their falsereality are already enlightened individuals of society. These are the people who have already found their way out of the cave and have learned of the true world they live in. People such as these fuel the falsereality to those in the cave yet at the same time are the ones who will inspire the others own personalrealizations. You could think of these people as the individuals of society who don¶t follow all the normsand are true to themselves and live by what makes them happy, and not by society¶s standards.As the individuals in chains live life they are constantly exposed to those outside the cave. I believe that the more they are exposed to the ³free´ individuals and notice that they are not bonded tochains they begin to question their own reality. Here I believe that as those in chains gain their inceptionof the possibility of an alternate reality (or another way of living), they set themselves free of their own bonds and gain insight to the exit of the cave; the path to enlightenmentWhile walking out of the cave towards the light, the now free individual may be in the middle of shadows and bright light and begin to question his/her transformation. If they decide to continue however,they will be…

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Plato’s “Allegory of a Cave”, he depicts an area where prisoners live chained in a cave. All they see are shadows casted on the wall and these shadows shape the prisoner’s reality. One of the prisoners then escapes the cave. Initially, he is blinded by the sun and the reality of the new world. He can now see beyond the shadows. Over time, he recognizes that his life has been controlled by others and now knows the truth. Nonetheless, “Allegory of the Cave” can be perceived in several different ways.…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In his novel Being There, Jerzy Kosinski shows how present day culture has strayed away from the ideal society that Plato describes in his allegory of the cave. In his metaphor, Plato describes the different stages of life and education through the use of a cave. In the first level of the cave, Plato describes prisoners who are shackled and facing a blank wall. Behind them is a wall of fire with a partition that various objects are placed and manipulated by another group of people. These shadows are the only action that they ever see. They can only talk to the surrounding prisoners, and watch the puppet show on the wall in front of them. Naturally, the prisoners come to believe that the shadows on the wall in front of them are reality. The second level of the cave is where a prisoner is released of the chains and is forced to look at the light of the fire behind him. The light hurts his eyes, and after a moment of pain and confusion he sees the statues on the partial wall in front of him. These were what caused the shadows that he took to be reality. This enlightenment is the start of education for the prisoner. He then is taken from the cave into the light of the sun. At first the prisoner can see only shadows, then reflections, then real people and things. He understands that the statues were only copies of the things he now sees outside of the cave. Once he is adjusted to the light, he will look up to heavens to gain a true understanding of what reality is. This is what Plato refers to this understanding as the Form of Goodness. In Being There, Chance is in the deepest part of the cave, yet the world around him is too ignorant to realize this (Johnson 51-54)…

    • 1549 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the factual perception on what human’s ignorant minds accept whatever they perceive without envisioning the reality. His use of “dark” imagery illustrates how a person is trapped and isolated in his own “cave” and conceives everything without visually seeing the “light” outside the cave. He conveys the idea that the “prisoners” are stuck and “chained” in their own reality because they were only shown one perspective from “childhood”. Plato wisely suggests the idea of using our senses and how we individually depend on them to find the truth outside of our “cave”. Morality being that the prisoners can remain in the cave, scared of knowing the truth.…

    • 416 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics