Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Allegory of the Cave
The beginning of Plato's book VII of the "The Republic" (514a -- 520a) is a written dialogue between Glaucon, Plato's brother, and his mentor, Socrates - The Allegory of the Cave. Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave' presents a world whereby prisoners lived chained to the wall of the cave. The people carrying puppets or objects, the puppeteers, create shadows of the objects on the wall, and for the prisoners, these shadows are real. The shadows create reality for them. Plato then supposes that if one prisoner was set free and departed from the cave, he will find it difficult to see because of the sun and will be anxious about what he sees around him. The prisoner's version of reality had always been the shadows on the wall. According to Aquileana (2016), after acquainting himself to his new world, he subsequently recognizes that his entire presence has been contained and manipulated by others and the truth is now apparent to him.
The Prisoners in the Cave
Rader describes that the prisoners in the 'Allegory of the Cave' are not able to see the objects or "puppets," the real objects that were being carried behind them. The discussion echoes off the wall, and shadows created by puppeteers, the objects not seen by the prisoners, are what prisoners hear and see. Prisoners, as such, mistake the presence for reality. Since the prisoners have not seen the carried objects before, they accept the shadows of the puppets as the true and real objects.
Plato proposes that prisoners would later on embark on a guessing "game" to determine the shadow that will come next. If one of...
Suppose one of them escapes and leaves the cave, he would be shocked by the world he sees outside, not to believe it is real. As the prisoner becomes accustomed to his new world, he recognizes that his prior perception of reality was incorrect. He then begins to comprehend and appreciate this real world. At first, he was only seeing shadows of artificial things. Then, he is able to see reflections of objects and people on the water, and later objects and people themselves. After a while, he is able to see the moon and stars at night and then the sun itself. Lastly, he is able to look at the sun, the main spring of knowledge. When a returning prisoner goes back to the cave, his former dwelling, and tells the other prisoners what he saw, they do not believe him. According to Rader (2016), they would kill him if he attempted to drag them out.
The Allegory of the Cave and Popular Imagery
According to…
Works Cited
Aquileana. Plato's "Republic": "The Allegory of the Cave and the Analogy of the Divided Line." 3 April 2014, https://aquileana.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/platos-republic-the-allegory-of-the-cave-and-the-analogy-of-the-divided-line/. Accessed 15 Dec 2016.
Godowski, Jeff P. "Out of the Shadows and into the Light: Liberation through Education." The Vermont Connection, Vol 38, Article 8, 2015, pp. 50-57, http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=tvc. Accessed 15 Dec 2016.
Haymond, Bryce. "A Modern Worldview from Plato's Cave."Temple Study, 2009, http://www.templestudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/A-Modern-Worldview-from-Platos-Cave-by-Bryce-Haymond.pdf. Accessed 15 Dec 2016.
Rader, Patrick. "Book VII of Plato's The Republic "The Allegory of the Cave"." 2009, http://lssc.edu/faculty/patrick_rader/Documents%20%20Downloads/Plato's%20Allegory%20of%20the%20Cave.pdf. Accessed 15 Dec 2016.
The Limits of Deontology and Utilitarianism in the Trolley Problem Introduction The trolley problem is an old moral quandary that essentially has no wrong or right answer. It is a kind of worst case scenario in which one must choose the lesser of two evils. For example, a runaway trolley is set to crash and kill five people, but by throwing a lever you might spare those five but take the life
But even many devout believers in America today state that we all worship the same God, and thus participate in the same 'truth' regardless of our affiliation. Even atheists validate the feeling of believers and state that although science is factually true, the human mind and faith has its own truth that can emotionally and psychologically move mountains. In other words, there are different kinds of truths -- truths
If however she had achieved the ideal non-attachment of Buddhism, her grief would still be real, but she would experience it in a different way. Her grief would be part of a process of letting go the son who is no longer there. A degree of non-attachment would then allow her to experience the grief as outside of herself rather than as part of her individuality. This would help
Airbrushing John Rawls' philosophical theme centers on the topic of "justice as fairness." It's hard not to relate this to one of the growing topics of discussion, namely the importance of digital deception which might well include the idea of airbrushing photos and images. Technology has the capacity today to provide us all with a Veil of Ignorance (Freeman, 2009) that even Rawls did not see coming and one that has
Similarly, the phases of the image evolves from art reflecting basic reality, through three progressive stages that culminate in art that has no relation to reality at all. The same happens with utopian and science fiction writing. The first stage requires no such writing, as the world is viewed as utopian in its current state. The second stage recognizes the world as imperfect, and compensates for this by means of
Thus, studying psychology is morally and intellectually improving. Psychology is so all encompassing as a field of study that it makes a person's mind more flexible. In psychology classes, a student must learn about analysis from a qualitative, even literary approach, as encompassed in the words of Sigmund Freud and William James. In other psychology classes, a student must understand how to interpret an Excel spreadsheet used in a research