Explain Plato’s Parable of the Cave Plato’s parable of the cave is an analogy of what Plato thought reality was. It tells us a story of a group of prisoners found deep within a cave. The prisoners were chained together and forced to watch a large wall in front of them. This was their life since childhood, watching this wall. Behind the prisoners was a large fire and between the fire and prisoners was a walkway.
Summary: Book VII, 514a- 521d In Book VII, Socrates presents the most beautiful and famous metaphor in Western philosophy: the allegory of the cave. This metaphor is meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul. Education moves the philosopher through the stages on the divided line, and ultimately brings him to the Form of the Good. Socrates describes a dark scene. A group of people have lived in a deep cave since birth, never seeing the light of day.
It can be a scary experience as children often become confused at the changes to their bodies. It is common for young people to feel self-conscious due to peer pressure and comparing their body changes, to that of their peer group. Children may become argumentative and dismissive as feel they have no control over what is happening to them. Starting a new School is a definitive transition that children make. Whether it’s a nursery, primary or secondary School there will be many feelings of anxiety.
Plato describes the cave as having prisoners chained up facing the cave wall. These prisoners are in an illusory world (our world- the world of appearance). These prisoners are chained to the floor, these chains could symbolize our senses, saying our senses (the chains) cause us to accept everything that we see and hear around us. There is a fire burning behind them, of which they can see the shadows of on the wall in front of them, they believe the shadow is real and is the reality of the fire. As well as the shadow of the fire, the prisoners can also see shadows of people crossing the footbridge behind them, carrying stone animal statues; again they believe these shadows to be real.
A) Explain the analogy of the cave Plato’s analogy of the cave is taken from the republic and is used to illustrate his theory of the forms. The analogy uses elements of the story to symbolise the situation in which people find themselves in reality. The analogy can be broken into three different sections: the description of the cave, a prisoner breaking free and the prisoner returning. Within the cave there is a section facing a wall with prisoners chained in such a way that they cannot turn their heads or move from their spot. Behind them, out of their view is a walkway on which people walk across holding objects above them.
This imitation shadows the concept revealed in The Allegory of the Cave when the freed prisoner could only look at reflections of things and not their true form. The third stage of knowledge, explained as looking at the “dark light” in Allegory of the Cave, is most nearly exposed in The Matrix when Neo and Trinity rescue Morpheus. When Agent Smith finally catches up to the duo, he fires his gun at Neo. Neo, who has still not accepted his role, dodges the bullets in
Explain Plato’s analogy of the cave [25] Plato’s analogy of the cave describes some people who are prisoners and they are only able to see one wall of the cave. Behind them was a lit fire which gave light to be able to cast shadows onto the wall that the prisoners were facing. These shadows were cast by puppeteers who were behind a wall and held things up to tell stories to the prisoners via the wall. One prisoner is forced out of the cave, where he has been his whole life, to see the ‘real’ world. He finds out, after adjusting to the new sunlight, that the shadows were just representations of real objects and that the shadows he had believed to be real objects were in fact not.
Only true reality can be found in the world of forms, in which everything is unchanging. Plato’s analogy is set in a cave, the cave is meant to represent the physical world, from which people only see what Plato describes to be an illusion. The prisoners within the cave know of nothing but what they have seen for all their lives. Behind the prisoners are a low wall and a walkway, in the walkway a fire burns, every now and then people walk past the fire carrying objects that reflect into the cave as shadows. The prisoners see the shadows and think that what they see is reality, like we think about our world now.
A cave is a dark, dingy place that a normal, civilized human cannot fathom of spending their life in. However that is not the case for these prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. “Here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads.” Reading this quote one can sense that these prisoners are pitiful. Restrictions are put on them where these puppeteers --as I shall call them-- are manifesting shadows. As one might think, “Shadows?” These shadows represent an object to the prisoner.
Plato begins his analogy with a cave; the cave is said to represent the empirical world that we see and hear around us. Inside this cave there are prisoners who are facing a wall; these prisoners have been underground since they can remember and are chained into position by their necks and ankles. The prisoners are unable to look anywhere but at a wall. However behind the prisoners there is a fire, when the guards walk by the fire they carry statues on their head. The statues infront of the fire cause a shadow to be reflected onto the wall for the prisoners to observes.