One of Plato's most famous teachings is his allegory of the cave. Plato believed that truth was beyond our world, and that we live in an illusion. To find the truth we must pierce through the vale and discover true reality. Plato used this allegory to help explain his views on knowledge, and how one can really find it. Plato did not believe in knowledge gained through senses, he was against the empiricist belief, that knowledge depends on sensory organs, as the world is in constant change so there are no solid truths in the world is always in a state of change, “ you cannot step into the same river twice”, Heraclitus states.
Explain Plato's Analogy of the Cave Plato was a dualist, he believed there are two worlds, the world of the Forms and the world of Appearances. 'The Analogy of the Cave' portrays humans stuck in a 'world of appearances'. It depicts a cave in which there are prisoners who have been chained up since birth so they can only see in front of them. The prisoners have their back to a curtain, behind the curtain there is a road and further behind that and higher up in the cave is a fire. People walk alond the road carrying various objects such as models of animals on poles.
a) Explain the Platonic Concept of ‘Forms’ Plato believed that behind every concept or object in the visible world there is an unseen reality which he calls its ‘Form’. These Forms exist in the world of the Forms separate from the visible world. Within the world of the Forms the pattern or the objects and concepts for the material world exist in a state of unchanging perfection. Plato was more interested in the Forms of concepts such as good, truth and justice, than he was in the Forms of material objects. The meaning of the word beauty would correspond to some external reality (Plato called it the Ideal Form).
The prisoners are only able to see what the puppeteers are casting on the wall, which they perceive as reality. However, one of the prisoners escaped the cave of darkness into the light of the new world and realized that the truth is beyond the chains. The Cathedra compares to this illusion by the sick marriage between a husband and a wife. The husband’s anger and resentment are his chains when compared to the “Allegory of the Cave.” This marriage struggled until the presence of a blind man, Robert, visited their home. Robert helped the husband see a different perspective of life and what reality really is.
It was painful and horrible for me to leave the cave, as it was for the man, because it was like being in a whole new world of things I’d never experienced, such as joy. I had been creating shadows unconsciously in my head that warped my reality. We assume all things of the mind to be true. Plato’s writing shows that the creators of the cave scenario created a sort of alternate reality in the cave. The fire stands for the sun, and the man’s leaving the cave would symbolize the ascent
In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave we are show a story in which a prisoner raised in a cave chained to view a wall, unable to move or turn its head. And in the back of the cave a fire, while others move objects and statues of people, animals, ECT…. the only truths these prisoners have come to learn of reality are the shadows and themselves. Then suddenly one of the prisoners is set free to leave the cave. When finally able to turn its head around, the prisoner first starts to acknowledge that what they have been seeing are only the shadows of the objects that pass by the fire.
Explain the analogy of the cave in Plato’s Republic The analogy of the cave is an idea put forward by Plato to represent the human condition. It is meant to represent how we perceive what is reality and what is not. The main point is that everything we see is merely a “shadow” of its ultimate form and that reality only exists in the world of forms. He represents this by showing a prisoners ascent into the real world. The analogy starts by imagining a group of prisoners that are chained in such a way that they can only see the cave wall in front of them.
For all of the prisoner’s lives they have known of a wall and a small fire. It was until they were freed that they realized there was so much more to life than just that cave. Similar to when we are asleep in a dark room and someone rudely turns on the light and it pains our eyes is how the prisoners felt when they first saw sunlight. Once the prisoner became accustomed to this new light, he went back to tell the other prisoners of the new world he had been acquainted with. The other prisoners could not understand his fascination with this sort of outside world he had gone into.
Automatically the prisoners start to see little images and start to give it names, but there is a smart prisoners among them and he is the taken out of the cave; he then realizes that everything he thought was real was now nothing. He goes back to the other prisoners to show them what the truth really is and what a tree really looks like but they do not understand because they have not seen. Plato used Socrates to describe one of his main points in philosophy, senses can not be trusted and everything is related to logic and reasoning. A brief example being people see and experience and automatically think that what they have experienced was indeed the truth, such as the universe, because we can not see what is above and beyond we set our minds in our world much like the cave. Plato believes that sometimes things can not be understood by observation but by logic and meaning having a clearer picture on things.
The journey from the cave was described as impartially painful, like in the matrix; Neo seemed in some sort of uneasiness when getting to the real world; both men were given the option to stay or not; there was an image of both of them being pulled into the light; they were both prisoners, while in different ways, but never the less, still prisoners; and once they found the truth never the man in the cave or Neo could go back. Plato’s writing in the beginning was frightening. That man is shackled or confined and is only able to see what is presented to him is not a life worth living. When Socrates and Glaucon talk about the release from confinement and how that is surely better, it is easy to agree with their premises. To be able to study and question on one’s own terms is one of the great joys of life.