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Plato and The Cave

            
             The "Myth of The Cave", written by Plato had a very profound impact on the world, philosophically speaking. The "Myth of the Cave" is the story of a group of people that were put in a cave and were made to live there all of their lives. Their backs were to the entrance of the cave and they were tied down in a manner that they could not turn around to see anything. They were placed lower in the cave and high above them was a fire and a quarry where men worked all day, the fire projected the shadows of whatever was about them onto the wall in front of the cave dwellers. This was all they knew their entire life time and this was all they were meant to know, but on man broke loose and found the real world. He found out that there was much more to life than shadows and he was overwhelmed by the beauty of everything. He was so overwhelmed that he wanted to share this beauty with the other cave dwellers. None of them believe a word that he said and he was killed because of his silly notions. Plato had two things in mind when writing this story and those two things were; The World of Senses and The World of Ideas.
             Plato puts the world into two categories, The World of Senses and The World of Ideas. The World of Ideas illustrates how things can be called by the same name. It is because they all have something in common. He called this common factor the thing's form or idea. Plato insisted that the forms differ greatly from the ordinary things that we see around us. Ordinary things change but their forms do not. One good example is the horse. The philosopher asked Sohie how all horses were alike and it is because they all share some characteristic that enables them to be identified as a horse. Horses can be altered in shape, but their forms can never change.
             The second "world" that Plato speaks of is The World of Senses. The world of senses would state that things can be known not only by the intellect but also by the senses.


Essays Related to Plato and The Cave

1. Plato

... believed that it was possible. The Cave Allegory is used to answer the question, "What is Plato's view of humanity and how can we obtain real knowledge?" At the beginning, people fettered in the cave, seeing only the shadows of things. Since they had not been exposed to anything else they believed that this was the world. During Plato's time, the cave dwellers could be compared to those ... the prisoner to see the sun, feel the warmth of it and all the other surroundings. When returning back to the cave, back into the darkness, the prisoner is ridiculed for what he tells them. The others ...

  • Word Count: 657
  • Approx Pages: 3
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2. Arguments of Plato's Republic

... understood on a basic level before it can be truly understood as an overarching concept. By analyzing the contradiction itself, the allegory of the cave, the structure Plato defines for a just individual, , and the overall mission of a philosopher, it becomes clear as to why Plato presents justice and its justification in the manner which he does. Plato presents a contradiction within his argument to rationalize justice, but by analyzing this tension it becomes clear ... Socrates takes a long time to define justice, because it is complicated and can only be truly understood with deep kn...

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3. Plato's Cave: Escaping The Shadows

... example that Plato would use if he were alive today would be television. For the average American, hours upon hours out of each day are spent in front of a television set. The broadcast waves would be the fire. The program being aired would be the shadows reflected on the wall. The viewers are the prisoners. A parallel can be drawn between the shadows on the wall in the cave, and the programs being ... too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies."" This corresponds directly to Plato's cave. People's beliefs and ideologies represent the artificial that is all the prisoners in the ca...

  • Word Count: 1393
  • Approx Pages: 6
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  • Grade Level: High School

4. Plato's Philosophical Concepts in The Matrix

... century. Only after viewing this film several times and focusing solely on the text and not the graphics, the viewer may recognize the depth of the script and the many philosophical concepts throughout. Plato's work "The Allegory of the Cave", a selection from his text "The Republic", is the strongest example of the use of philosophical views in The Matrix. Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is a story used to describe the control that society and the government has over ordinary citizens. He begins his ... story by describing a dark underground cave where a group of citizens ... ...

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5. Plato's Philosophical Concepts in The Matrix

... century. Only after viewing this film several times and focusing solely on the text and not the graphics, the viewer may recognize the depth of the script and the many philosophical concepts throughout. Plato's work "The Allegory of the Cave", a selection from his text "The Republic", is the strongest example of the use of philosophical views in The Matrix. Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is a story used to describe the control that society and the government has over ordinary citizens. He begins his ... story by describing a dark underground cave where a group of citizens ... ...

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  • Approx Pages: 4
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6. Plato's Republic - The Three Great Analogies

... , walking in front of a fire behind the prisoners. Plato says that to the prisoners, reality is only the shadows thrown onto the wall. Next he describes releasing a prisoner from his chains and how his movements are difficult, his eye adjustment painful and suggestions of the effects of returning to the cave. The Cave suggests to us that Plato saw most of humanity living in "the cave", in the dark, and that the vision of knowledge was salvation from ... darkness. He put it this way, "the conversion of the soul is not to put the power of sight in the soul's eye, which already has it, but ...

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7. Plato's notion of Justice and how it's self-contradicting

... the Cave then, instead of enjoying and analyzing his new knowledge? Here lies Plato's discrepancy; if the philosopher learns the Forms, of Good and Justice, would it not be 'meddling with the affairs of others' to return to the Cave and rule? From the beginning of his book, Plato compares justice in a City to justice in the individual, equating the ruler with one's mind and brain, and the will of the own person is the same as the will of all the ... City and its citizens. However it ... ...

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  • Approx Pages: 17
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8. Plato's Allegory of the Cave

... advice from one who has already experienced something it is more believable than someone with no experience or just insight on a subject. Plato described this experience ascoming out of the cave and into the light.? A person's childhood could be considered being in the cave and coming into the light could be college life because it's a whole new world that you slowly learn to adjust to. When an individual experiences ... opportunities given to them its like slowly receiving light and when a personreturns to the cave? they may give their audience a glimpse of the light. Plato's work rela...

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9. Plato

... front of a fire behind the prisoners. Plato states that for the prisoners, reality is only the mere shadows thrown onto the wall. Another vision is releasing a prisoner from his chains, how his movements are difficult, his eye adjustment painful and suggestions of the effects of returning to the cave. The Cave suggests to us that Plato saw most of humanity living in "the cave", in the dark, and that the vision of knowledge and the "conversion" to that knowledge ... was salvation from darkness. He put it this way, "the conversion of the soul is not to put the power of sight in the soul's...

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10. Allegory of the Cave and The Truman Show

Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and the film, "The Truman Show," have many similarities in which both encourage its audience to question what they perceive as reality. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is used to illustrate the physical world as an illusion, the cave signifying the world, the prisoners representing the people who inhabit the world and the shadows representative of everything that the people see such as objects and their surrounding as real. In the Truman Show, Sea Haven symbolizes the cave and the protagonist ... , Truman Burbank, represents the prisoner. Both, Plato's allegory and...

  • Word Count: 1065
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