Behind them, out of their view is a walkway on which people walk across holding objects above them. Behind this walkway there is a fire which then produces light, which shines onto the objects and produces shadows on the wall that the prisoners are facing. These prisoners have never been into the outside world and the only things that they see, other than each other, are the shadows on the wall. Within the analogy Plato explains that one prisoner is dragged out of the cave, blinded by the light and then realises that the cave was not all there is in the world. They see different surroundings and actual objects, not just shadows and of course they are stunned.
In this scenario Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave that is occupied by prisoners who have been in the cave since childhood with their legs and necks shackled by chains where there movement is restricted and their visibility is limited to one side of the cave. Behind the prisoners is a gigantic fire and between the fire and the prisoners is a walkway which is used by people who often pass through carrying an array of objects. Unable to turn their heads and only knowing the shadows the prisoners begin to see this as their own reality. Socrates begins to explain to Glaucon, what if one of those chained is released from their cave and walks into the real world where they are mesmerized by the light. Gradually the prisoner begins to feel fortunate and begins to become accustomed to his new world and.
Explain Plato’s analogy of the cave [25] Plato’s analogy of the cave describes some people who are prisoners and they are only able to see one wall of the cave. Behind them was a lit fire which gave light to be able to cast shadows onto the wall that the prisoners were facing. These shadows were cast by puppeteers who were behind a wall and held things up to tell stories to the prisoners via the wall. One prisoner is forced out of the cave, where he has been his whole life, to see the ‘real’ world. He finds out, after adjusting to the new sunlight, that the shadows were just representations of real objects and that the shadows he had believed to be real objects were in fact not.
Behind the prisoners was a large fire and between the fire and prisoners was a walkway. The fire cast shadows upon the wall and the prisoners believed the shadows to be reality. The walkway allowed people to walk through the cave with great ease. As the people crossed through the cave, past the fire, an illusion was created; the fire cast shadows onto the wall that the prisoners were watching. The prisoners spent their lives debating what the shadows were as they couldn’t see the walkway and had no knowledge that this existed.
Only true reality can be found in the world of forms, in which everything is unchanging. Plato’s analogy is set in a cave, the cave is meant to represent the physical world, from which people only see what Plato describes to be an illusion. The prisoners within the cave know of nothing but what they have seen for all their lives. Behind the prisoners are a low wall and a walkway, in the walkway a fire burns, every now and then people walk past the fire carrying objects that reflect into the cave as shadows. The prisoners see the shadows and think that what they see is reality, like we think about our world now.
Allegory of the Cave-Plato “Allegory of the Cave” presents a vision of a group of prisoners chained in front of a fire observing the shadows of artificial objects carried by persons walking in the trek behind them and what would happen if a prisoner is set free. Through a serious of metaphors, Plato argues that a hero is man of wisdom, prowess, and endurance. First of all, the cave, chains and shadows show a full-scale condition of US citizens-they are confined by the ideal democratic and peaceful images pictured by the government such as those promising speeches given by candidates for presidency. The prisoners--Citizens in the US are only exposed to those appealing words of the government—“Mission accomplished:)”-- that they are unable to make a positive change because they cannot see the relatively cruel reality until someone is set free to “walk with eyes lifted to the light” and come back down there to inform them. As this free man sees the light, an “eye ache” is inevitable because he’s been in the dark for too long.
The memory of the World of Forms is lost in the trauma of birth and the physical demands of the body. Plato uses the cave to represent the world of sense experience and the area outside of the cave is the World of Forms and transcendental ideals. He shackles his prisoners in the same way the soul is shackled by the body and the trauma of birth. Therefore Plato believed that after transmigration the soul forgets everything that it learnt in the World of Forms, thus learning is remembering. The prisoner who escapes is a philosopher, a seeker of Truth, whose journey out of the cave is a
Plato begins his analogy with a cave; the cave is said to represent the empirical world that we see and hear around us. Inside this cave there are prisoners who are facing a wall; these prisoners have been underground since they can remember and are chained into position by their necks and ankles. The prisoners are unable to look anywhere but at a wall. However behind the prisoners there is a fire, when the guards walk by the fire they carry statues on their head. The statues infront of the fire cause a shadow to be reflected onto the wall for the prisoners to observes.
Summary: Book VII, 514a- 521d In Book VII, Socrates presents the most beautiful and famous metaphor in Western philosophy: the allegory of the cave. This metaphor is meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul. Education moves the philosopher through the stages on the divided line, and ultimately brings him to the Form of the Good. Socrates describes a dark scene. A group of people have lived in a deep cave since birth, never seeing the light of day.
Unit 2 Plato’s “Allegory” Assignment Your Name Here Kaplan University HU250 – 08 In the book The Republic, Plato through “the Allegory of the cave” makes a difference between illusion as a truth and the truth as a reality. In that scenario, Plato used the cave, the flame, the shadow, the sun and the return to the old “world” to demonstrate: That knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the nature, it uses the cave as the hotbed of misunderstanding. He believes that the shadow seen in the wall and being interpreted by the prisoners as the truth is simply the reflection of the truth and that anyone no matter his rank within this “world of truth” is ignorant of the truth in real nature. Plato uses the sun as the light of life for philosophers and the knowledge of people and the period the prisoner spent out of the cave for its first time is seen as the journey of a philosopher trying to understand and establish the different between the “truth” in the cave and the reality. Once the reality established, the prisoner wanted to free other prisoners because he believes they were living a false reality and this persuasion created conflicts.