Explain Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave

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Plato (c. 427-347 BC) was an Athenian philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Being an apriori philosopher, he devised theories through reasoning and thought, of which the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ is an example of. He also was the founder of the ‘Academy’, a prototype of a modern university where subjects were not ‘taught’ but rather took part amongst the students as a lively discussion. Here, as well as Philosophy; subjects included were Science, Astronomy and Mathematics. Plato believed in the immortality of the human soul. He put forward that we as humans, ‘recollect’ information and knowledge from a previous world and apply it to the material world that we reside in. In Plato’s major work, The Republic, the soul lives on after a person has died, and may go on to be another person, or an animal. The process is repeated until the soul is gradually cleansed and purified and goes on to a higher existence. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the scenario begins by describing a cave inhabited by three prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood; not only are their limbs held in place, but their heads are also fixed, which compels them to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire and between the fire and prisoners is a walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads including figurines of men and animals. The chained up prisoners interpret the shadows cast on the cave wall to be as real. Eventually a prisoner is released from the cave and permitted to be let out to see the outside world such as a river, the sun, the stars and begins to discover the ultimate truth. When the ‘enlightened’ prisoner returns to the cave and voices to the other prisoners how the shadows are not the reality they seem; he is brutally kicked to death by his fellow prisoners. The allegory of the cave has also

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