THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE The following is an excerpt from Plato’s dialogue called “The Republic.” In this section of the dialogue called the “Allegory of the Cave,” Socrates creates an allegory to help illustrate his theory of knowledge. “Now then,” Socrates said, “let me tell you a story about ignorance and education which will explain the condition of man’s nature. Imagine that there is an underground cave with a long entrance open to the light. In this cave men have been chained from birth, fettered by the neck and legs so they cannot move. They cannot turn their heads around; they can only look forward at the wall of the cave.
In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”, one of the famous story portraits his idea, was written 2,000 years ago. Surprisingly the philosophy is still applicable in 22nd century. As such, we could elaborate the philosophy from the allegory about the way of thinking and learning. In the allegory, a group of prisoners in a cave were chained and unable to move. Behind the prisoners there is a fire and the shadows were cast on the wall, which are the only thing the prisoners could see.
Frankie is the prisoner being showed the images and his mother is the person holding the objects. Frankie believes that his father is writing to him and that the man who comes to visit him is his father because it is what his mother tells him. In Plato’s cave one of the prisoners decides to escape from the cave and leaves. He sees that the images he sees on the wall are projections from people carrying the objects and the fire. He now knows 100 times more than he did just sitting in the cave just watching the projections.
However it is reachable by passing through different limitations His Both Plato and Descartes argue that humans are trapped by wrong assumptions and beliefs. In his essay Allegory of The Cave, Plato proves how people are fooled to believe in wrong ideas. He uses a cave to present the world of sight, in which people are prisoners since the day they were born. The people in the cave cannot see the light, neither each other’s, because their hands and neck are chained and they cannot move. These people only see what in front of them is.
One of the most important allegories written by Plato was, “Allegory of the Cave”. In his writing “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato effectively describes his beliefs of the way in which he views the world by comparing the world through a strange cave (FYR: 5, FYR: 6). The philosophical writing “Allegory of the Cave” is a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Glaucon (FYR: 5). Plato begins his writing by giving us readers a description of the cave in the cave world. We are introduced to” human beings” who have been in this dark underground den since their “early childhood”, and have had their “legs and necks chained” ever since, preventing them from any kind of movement at all (FYR: 6).
They are not learning the moral and life lessons that are usually taught at home by Mom and Dad, and instead they are learning about morality and life from teachers and through videogames and TV programs. The world today had too many options for people without morals. We have television and internet to influence us. Plato's theory on the Allegory of the Cave is somewhat intricate, but basic at the same time, he discusses The Allegory of the Cave in that we are chained to a wall (all facing the wall), behind us is another wall with figures walking across it, behind that wall is a pit of fire, the firelight casts shadows upon the wall in front of those chained to the wall (515). Because we are chained to that wall we are afraid of what could be behind us, we never look.
After having set eyes on the sun, this man cannot go back to the cave, to the dark, and see the world as he used to before he started contemplating the truth. This man is Segismund. The limit of Segismund’s world is the walls of his cells; what he knows of the world, he has learned from Clotaldo the jail keeper. Basil, the King of Poland and Segismund’s father, can be likened to the people behind the wall in front of the fire; they are presenting images of what they deemed was acceptable to show the men in front of them just like Basil did to Segismund. Basil is like these men also because he feeds images to his son while he thinks he is living the truth, when these men are just as ignorant of the world that lies outside the cave they live in as the men that have been shackled since birth.
In other words, what would happen if people accepted philosophy and become enlightened by it? In the beginning of the Allegory of the Cave Plato represents man’s condition as being “chained in a cave,” with only a fire behind him. He sees the world by watching the shadows on the wall. He sits in darkness with the false light of the fire and does not realize that this way of life is wrong. It merely is his life — he knows no other.
a) Who is keeping the prisoners of the matrix ignorant and for what purposes? Are the chains keeping the prisoners of the cave and the prisoners of the matrix in bondage physical or psychological? b) Briefly list the similarities in the five stages of enlightenment for the freed prisoner in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and for Neo in The Matrix. c) What are three key differences between Neo’s enlightenment in The Matrix and Plato’s prisoner? 1a) As Morpheus says: “When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit.
In Plato’s Theory, the cave represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the world (empirical evidence). The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a ‘cave’ of misunderstanding. Once a single prisoner is set free from his chains, he ventures towards the light through curiosity and