Plato Essay

Plato’s Analogy of the Cave
Plato was Greek philosopher. He lay down the foundations of natural philosophy. Plato start started as a student of Socrates and later on followed on from his teachings after his death. Plato then created the analogy of the cave.

This starts with Plato imagining a group of human beings living in an underground den. They have lived there all their lives, chained from head to toe restricting them to only see a dark blank wall which has shadowed projections projected onto it from passing objects in front of the fire that blazes behind them. Having no other previous knowledge they began to believe and follow the understanding they got and they perceived from the shadows projected before them. Plato believed that the shadows were the closest the humans would ever get to seeing reality. They had their legs and necks chained up so that they couldn’t move and they had restricted vision of the cave before them. The fire blazed behind them from a distance. The shadows were projected from the puppeteers, like what marionette players see before them. Because of the restrictions this was the only knowledge and understanding of life the humans had and knew about and so they absorbed all of this information because that it what they interpreted as reality.

The Analogy Plato created was very much related to his theory of the forms, where he believed that there is two worlds. One worlds where people just accept that it is the only world and they depend immensely on the basic knowledge given and are satisfied with only knowing this much which represents the Cave, And the other world which provide extra knowledge and better understanding and perception of life which represents the real world. But Plato believed that people need to ask the question of whether they want to know more knowledge and find, learn and have a better understanding of life and true reality.

So this is where he shows one of the prisoners of the cave escaping...