Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Essay
Deborah Lovell
Ancient & Medieval Political Theory
Professor Joshua Yesnowitz
4 December 2014
Intellectual Freedom
Plato was a Greek philosopher, born sometime around 428 B.C and died around 347 B.C. Among his many writings in the Republic, Plato spoke about government, education, justice, virtues, what qualities make people who they are. This paper will focus on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as it relates to intellectual freedom in contemporary education, specifically the limits put on individuals that may hamper their learning or allow them intellectual freedom, what those limited in what they are exposed to and how they are taught guide their perception of the world, if they don’t fight back. It will look at how limited intellectual freedom …show more content…
But, if those students are permitted to explore other concepts and ideas, they begin to learn new things and develop the idea that they already conceptualize what they are now learning, seeing for the first time was true and available all along, they just needed to be exposed to new things, get out of their cave and into a natural light, the world around them. Plato’s allegory of the cave is comparable to the theory of forms which theorized that there is more to reality than is visible to the human eye. This is a higher form of education, made up of endless solid units called forms that are incapable of being changed. These forms translate or is understood to make up what is good and beautiful, they are unchanging and surpass what we are able to see but should thrive to understand and be educated on. True form the underlying of what makes us who we are, think the way we think. Plato contends these forms give shape to our experiences. People are who they are due to what they are exposed to, things take shape because this is the form the universe says they are too shaped to. What we know of are Forms and according to Plato the most important form is the form of the good, though he himself lacks a proper explanation for why this is. He insists however that this particular form is where our intelligence comes from and is responsible for ones capacity to know things. The form of the good is the form that allows all other forms to make sense, like
Ancient & Medieval Political Theory
Professor Joshua Yesnowitz
4 December 2014
Intellectual Freedom
Plato was a Greek philosopher, born sometime around 428 B.C and died around 347 B.C. Among his many writings in the Republic, Plato spoke about government, education, justice, virtues, what qualities make people who they are. This paper will focus on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as it relates to intellectual freedom in contemporary education, specifically the limits put on individuals that may hamper their learning or allow them intellectual freedom, what those limited in what they are exposed to and how they are taught guide their perception of the world, if they don’t fight back. It will look at how limited intellectual freedom …show more content…
But, if those students are permitted to explore other concepts and ideas, they begin to learn new things and develop the idea that they already conceptualize what they are now learning, seeing for the first time was true and available all along, they just needed to be exposed to new things, get out of their cave and into a natural light, the world around them. Plato’s allegory of the cave is comparable to the theory of forms which theorized that there is more to reality than is visible to the human eye. This is a higher form of education, made up of endless solid units called forms that are incapable of being changed. These forms translate or is understood to make up what is good and beautiful, they are unchanging and surpass what we are able to see but should thrive to understand and be educated on. True form the underlying of what makes us who we are, think the way we think. Plato contends these forms give shape to our experiences. People are who they are due to what they are exposed to, things take shape because this is the form the universe says they are too shaped to. What we know of are Forms and according to Plato the most important form is the form of the good, though he himself lacks a proper explanation for why this is. He insists however that this particular form is where our intelligence comes from and is responsible for ones capacity to know things. The form of the good is the form that allows all other forms to make sense, like