Preview

Plato Allegory of the Cave

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1354 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Plato Allegory of the Cave
Compare the film ‘the matrix’ with Plato’s allegory of the cave.

The Allegory of the Cave is one of Greek philosopher Plato’s most well known works. It is an extended allegory, where humans are depicted as being imprisoned by their bodies and what they perceive by sight only. In the allegory of the cave Plato wanted to show how true reality is not always what it seems. A group of prisoners were chained up in a cave since there childhood, each prisoner was chained to each other by their heads.The prisoners were forced to face a blank wall while they were in the cave. Behind the prisoners there was a fire however the prisoners could not see the fire but between the prisoners and the fire there would a be puppet show where people would walk, talk and carry objects to keep the prisoners amused. The prisoners perceive only shadows of the people and things passing on the walkway; the prisoners hear echoes of the talk coming from the shadows. They perceive the shadows and echoes as reality.
Whilst in the cave one prisoner is set free. He stands up and turns around and is forced to look at the fire, after the pain in his eyes from the fire he struggles to see anything. The prisoner is dragged out of the cave and into the world above. At first, the prisoner is so dazzled by the light that he can only look at shadows, then at reflections, then finally at the real objects like trees, flowers and houses. He sees that these are even more real than the shadows were, and that those were only copies of reality. The prisoner has now reached the cognitive stage of thought. He has caught his first glimpse of the most real thing, which is the Forms.
In the film The Matrix, the humans trapped in the Matrix are like the people in the cave. They see only what the machines want them to see, but they believe they see reality as it really is. They accept what their senses tell them all that exists. Neo suspects that this is all a lie, but he’s not sure how the Matrix works.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exist in the soul…

    • 1633 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Allegory of the Cave” (Plato) is a metaphor that shows how we believe reality. What it is showing is that the things we perceive are imperfect reflections of forms that only represent reality. In the Allegory, Plato uses a cave where prisoners are chained down and forced to look at the wall. Plato shows that the prisoners do not actually know what reality is. The readers understand that the puppeteers behind the prisoners are using objects to create shadows to real things and people, but the prisoners are unable to turn their heads, so they don’t know anything…

    • 1830 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Plato's Republic we have one of the best allegories told, the allegory of the Cave. The allegory of the cave goes basically like this:…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Initially, I would say that Plato’s Allegory of the Cave doesn’t tell us anything about reality, and by doing so I would have to agree with the statement. My reasoning for this is straightforward and simple, Plato implies that the senses are completely useless, and by doing so he also implies that empiricist ways are also useless for they rely solely upon the senses. This shows to us that the Plato’s allegory cannot tell us anything about reality as we have survived for millions of years by using empiricist techniques, or more specifically the senses. It would simply be impossible for us to live without them. These senses are sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, and Plato claims that in order to understand reality we mustn’t use them, instead relying on rationalist techniques like logic and reason, this, in some circumstances couldn’t tell us a thing about reality. An example of this would be that we cannot gain all of our knowledge through thinking alone. For example, I could think of a fruit like an apple or banana and I could think of what it would possibly taste like, however, you wouldn’t be able to imagine the taste, this simply isn’t possible. We couldn’t just think that bananas or apples taste delicious because we don’t actually know how they would taste without actually eating it, and if we were to do this we would have to rely on the sense of taste, an empiricist sense, this clearly shows how the Analogy of the Cave cannot possibly tell us anything about reality as humanity relies on empiricism for the most basic of tasks as my example above clearly shows.…

    • 591 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    However, one man breaks free from his chains and runs out of the cave. For the first time, he sees the real world and now knows that it is far beyond the shadows he had been seeing. He sees real birds and animals, not just shadows of birds and animals.…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Deception is the foundational issue prevalent in The Matrix, Plato’s allegory of the cave, and Rene Descartes meditations. In each of these excerpts the goal of answering the question of what is real and how to uncover the truth is essential. Another question that arises throughout all three excerpts is whether or not the individuals will be able to handle the truth when it is finally learnt. In The Matrix Morpheus reveals to Neo that the life he had previously accepted as an absolute reality is really a virtual reality that is manipulated by a computer which is essentially controlling the mind of every individual as they lie unconscious connected to this computer system. After taking the “red pill” that allows Neo to uncover the truth, he is no longer blinded by this virtual reality. While one may assume Neo would be grateful to be free of this kind of deception, he alternatively experiences a plethora of emotions such as denial, fear, and confusion. After some reflection on these events, Neo finally accepts the truth, but feels burdened by it.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In studying all of the symbolism included, it becomes apparent that the Allegory of the Cave is a representation of the philosopher’s place in society, and the other prisoners reaction to the escaped prisoner returning is representing the reaction people have of philosophers, and becoming aware of the truth philosophers hold. The Allegory of the Cave illustrates book 5 and 6 for us by showing the effect education has on the human soul, and how education helps us move through the different parts of the divided line, then will eventually take him to the form of the…

    • 264 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Allegories of Life

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato uses a vast spectrum of imagery to explain ones descent from the cave to the light. While Plato uses this Allegory to explain his point through Socrates to Glaucon. This allegory has many different meanings. The Allegory can be used in many different ways, from religion to politics to ones own intellectual enlightenment, or it can be interpreted as the blinded person in a colt like reality. Are we all prisoners in a world that is forced on us through the media? How do we really know that we are not just pawns in some one’s chess game. What meaning was Plato trying to introduce to Glaucon? This cave can represent many aspects in the world. And the prisoners can be any one. The puppeteers can be a symbol for people or for the things in life that hold us back from seeing and thinking clearly. As we look further into Plato’s work we will explore many different meanings for this allegory and attempt to give our life some meaning. I would like to start off with a summary of the allegory of the cave as I have understood it.…

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The great philosopher, Plato, back in the days of the ancient Greek civilization, concluded that man as a species can only draw from what his senses take about his surroundings. This includes his social relationships, eating habits, spiritual beliefs, and the many other attributes that make a person who they are. This theory/observation is very accurate about man back then and is also seen in everyday life even today. People are constantly leaving their imaginary caves in search of their inner-self and it begins in early childhood.…

    • 564 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this movie, we are introduced to a world in which machines had imprisoned man into a virtual world called “the matrix”. There the main protagonist “Neo” founds himself living in this world in questioning whether is real or not, and manages to scape with the help of a group of survivors from the real world. Yet the real world was not what he expected, earth was devastated by a long war between man and machines, and what is left of humanity lives in an underground city were the sewers of the old world use to be. We can consider the Matrix to be the cave, and the shadows projected by the fire, it also presents two possible outcomes from finding true knowledge. In the allegory, Plato believes that if an individual manages to escape from the cave it could end up in two ways. The first way indicates that if a man manages to escape the cave, he would be overwhelmed by the light, and the actual shapes of the shadows he saw, “Don’t you think he would be puzzled, and believe what he saw before was truer than what was shown to him?”(Plato pg2) indicating that the individual who got out would have trouble believing the things from outside the cave would be real. In the movie Neo faces the same problem when he is liberated from the matrix believing that the real world was actually a dream. The second way this could end up is if the individual finds himself to overwhelm by the real world to the point that…

    • 1325 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plato's Allegory of the Cave

    • 3079 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Prompt: Define Plato 's “Allegory of the Cave”. What is the central message? Is he describing education alone? Where does politics come in?…

    • 3079 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The movie Matrix can be considered a modern allegory of the allegory of the cave. Like the people in the cave, humans, trapped in the Matrix, see only what the machines want them to see. They are deceived into believing that what they hear and see is the only reality that exists, and accept the illusions of their senses as the only part of truth. But Neo, the main character, is forced to face the painful truth, when he is pulled out of the capsule that kept him prisoner of the virtual reality of the Matrix. Neo suddenly discovers that what was before his life, were only shadows, reflections of…

    • 111 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Allegory of the Cave

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato represents an extended metaphor that is to contrast the way in which we perceive and believe in what is reality. The thesis behind his allegory is the basic tenets that all we perceive are imperfect "reflections" of the ultimate Forms, which subsequently represent truth and reality. The purpose of this allegory defines clearly the process of enlightenment. For a man to be enlightened, he must above all desire the freedom to explore and express himself. Plato's main concept of the cave is: people see reality as the visible world when reality really is more than the visible world.…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    True knowledge can only be gained from the world of ideas. The world of things merely generates opinions or illusions. lato depicts these worlds as existing on a line that can be divided in the middle: the upper part of the line is the world of ideas and the lower part is the world of things. Each region can further be divided in two. In the world of things, there are “illusions”, which composes the lower region, and “beliefs”, which composes the higher region. The illusions are the shadows represented by the artistic works of the craftsmen and poets. The beliefs are man’s knowledge of individual things, which may sometimes be true but is often times false because individual things are constantly changing. The world of ideas, on the other, can be divided into “reason” (the lower part of the region) and “intelligence” (the higher part of the region). Under reason is the knowledge of things like mathematics. And under intelligence is the knowledge of the highest and most abstract categories of things, for example, understanding the…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Behind the prisoners their captors build and light a fire so that any shadows caused will be shown on the wall the prisoners are chained to face. The captors make objects such as animals, people and machines. Whilst they impersonate these things they make noises whilst doing so this leads the prisoners to believe that these shadows in front of them are real objects when they in-fact are not at all real. The prisoners begin to name the shadows of not even real objects but shapes and models of them to continue to feed their delusion. Another explanation being that between the prisoners and fires there is a raised walkway. In which people go down and up carry items “including figures of men and animals made wood, stone and other materials”. Since the prisoner’s neck are tightened also by chains they cannot see the people walking through or the raised walkway. They continue to watch the shadows that are casted by there captors perceiving it as reality and unknowing they are just shadows. The echoes of the wall are just of the noise produced from the walkway. The shadows represent what we perceive as reality all around us. The things we see everyday such as other people, food, animals, computers are all…

    • 889 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics