Various student versions (thanks folks!)
"You may be wondering why exactly, I should need these trendy new shades. It is because, I have experienced ‘The Sun’, with all ‘The Good’ I could possibly desire. I have finally ceased the everyday monotony of trying to make sense of the fickle, vague and shadowed shapes that make up the physical world, and have experienced the sun in all its glory! Peace out".
Plato’s cave
Plato’s cave
His analogy is a metaphor for the way in which he believes we perceive our world. He believes that the world in which we believe to be “true” is merely reflections of the actual world we are yet to experience.
In his analogy, he depicts an image of prisoners chained inside a cave with their heads unable to move left or right, forcing them to look ahead at a wall only. He explains how there is a fire behind the prisoners and in between the fire and the prisoners are men who carry various objects. These objects then cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners and when the men speak, the prisoners believe it is the shadows in which they see on the wall.
Plato’s analogy suggests that the human condition and human life needs to be escaped from. He feels that we are trapped by “reflections” of the ‘real’ world and that we need to break free of this to allow us to see the world as it really is.
In his analogy, he depicts an image of prisoners chained inside a cave with their heads unable to move left or right, forcing them to look ahead at a wall only. He explains how there is a fire behind the prisoners and in between the fire and the prisoners are men who carry various objects. These objects then cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners and when the men speak, the prisoners believe it is the shadows in which they see on the wall.
Plato’s analogy suggests that the human condition and human life needs to be escaped from. He feels that we are trapped by “reflections” of the ‘real’ world and that we need to break free of this to allow us to see the world as it really is.
This is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
In the allegory he says that there are people inside the cave , tied in a way that they can only see the back wall of the cave. Behind them there is a fire with shapes moved across in front of it, thus casting shadows on the wall. The people in the cave however, do not know these things to be shadows, and accept them as the world itself. Someone who could foresee the next shadow would be considered clever in that society.
Now, says Socrates, imagine that one man is freed.
He would turn around, and see the fire and the men casting the shadows but as he has never seen things like this before he would not have a name for them. And if he were to climb all the way out of the cave he would be blinded by the sun. After some time he would become acclimatised and see that this world was the source of all the things that he and his companions had been seeing.
So he returns to the cave, to tell the others of what he has seen, but his eyes are unused to the shadows, and as he cannot foresee the order of shadows, they think his eyes corrupted and it not worth the journey to see then sun.
Socrates says that if the other people in the cave could reach the other man, they would kill him.
In the allegory he says that there are people inside the cave , tied in a way that they can only see the back wall of the cave. Behind them there is a fire with shapes moved across in front of it, thus casting shadows on the wall. The people in the cave however, do not know these things to be shadows, and accept them as the world itself. Someone who could foresee the next shadow would be considered clever in that society.
Now, says Socrates, imagine that one man is freed.
He would turn around, and see the fire and the men casting the shadows but as he has never seen things like this before he would not have a name for them. And if he were to climb all the way out of the cave he would be blinded by the sun. After some time he would become acclimatised and see that this world was the source of all the things that he and his companions had been seeing.
So he returns to the cave, to tell the others of what he has seen, but his eyes are unused to the shadows, and as he cannot foresee the order of shadows, they think his eyes corrupted and it not worth the journey to see then sun.
Socrates says that if the other people in the cave could reach the other man, they would kill him.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
People live in a cave, strapped to benches, watching shadows being cast upon the wall from shapes being held by a fire behind them. This is Plato’s view of how we look at the world. Our views of it are foggy and vague. Our knowledge is based upon the shadows of the good, not the good itself.
Someone could break free from the chains holding them to the benches, and attempt to escape of the cave. Plato’s allegory described this journey as the “ascent of the soul into the intellectual world”. This is a person’s journey through finding knowledge, breaking away from what they know in an attempt to find the good.
If they escape the cave they are greeted with the light and the knowledge “that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision”. They will have come to the revelation that their view of the world had be distorted and that his previous knowledge was false. They will have found the good.
However, if he was to return to the cave, with his new understanding of the good, those who had remained prisoners and never left the cave “would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes”. They would see his new knowledge as folly and remain with the belief that they have the true knowledge of the good. Yet the man who left the cave, and saw the light “would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner”
People live in a cave, strapped to benches, watching shadows being cast upon the wall from shapes being held by a fire behind them. This is Plato’s view of how we look at the world. Our views of it are foggy and vague. Our knowledge is based upon the shadows of the good, not the good itself.
Someone could break free from the chains holding them to the benches, and attempt to escape of the cave. Plato’s allegory described this journey as the “ascent of the soul into the intellectual world”. This is a person’s journey through finding knowledge, breaking away from what they know in an attempt to find the good.
If they escape the cave they are greeted with the light and the knowledge “that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision”. They will have come to the revelation that their view of the world had be distorted and that his previous knowledge was false. They will have found the good.
However, if he was to return to the cave, with his new understanding of the good, those who had remained prisoners and never left the cave “would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes”. They would see his new knowledge as folly and remain with the belief that they have the true knowledge of the good. Yet the man who left the cave, and saw the light “would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner”
