Explain Plat’s analogy of the cave Plato explains his analogy of the cave in the republic book VI’. He uses the analogy to help describe his logical thoughts on the main difference between the physical world and the world of forms. Plato believed that his analogy could clearly and obviously explain to people why the physical world experience was nothing but an illusion and that reality must be found in the world of forms. Plat’s beliefs are predominantly about the reality of life and how, as humans we believe that reality is the Just five senses of touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight.
The analogy in which Plato talks about, begins in a cave. This cave is hypothetical representing the ‘real’ world or the world with senses. There are prisoners who are chained by their necks and legs so that they are restricted to movement and cannot turn around, from what we know, they have been in in this situation since birth and therefore know no other life to this. There is a wall, a walkway and a burning fire, when the prisoners walked past this burning fire their shadows are cast upon this wall, and the intelligent prisoners almost create a game to predict what movement the shadow will next create.
This can be interpreted as a scientist who studies the senses, the prisoners connect the sounds made by the individuals with the shadows as this is all they know and therefore they believe that the shadows are the true reality, as they are oblivious to the fact it is not real. Some of the sources that cause the shadows also come from puppets which are the representations of the reality of our true experiences. The free prisoner identifies the harsh truth that the shadows were lies and were Just an imitation.
Therefore, in these circumstances, the prisoners in the cave represent unaware and ignorant people who have yet to discover these senses in the physical world. They have been tricked into believing that the shadows they see are real objects and that the sounds that have been made by themselves and others around them are being made by the shadows also. Plato argues that the shadows are equivalent to the five senses which consequently deceives the individual. He believes that the objects in which we see in the physical world are poor imitations of the world of forms.
The prisoners are trapped in the cave, this means that they cannot e the reality of anything past the cave, representing how the truth is hidden from them. This is also portraying how oblivious these individuals are to what reality is and how it is presented in the real world. The prisoners whom have been chained by their necks and legs with limited movement are forced to watch a ‘screen’, where they are shown shadows of the objects. This involves things such as statues and figures of things including; animals.
This is all shown to them through a light, which in the world of forms is actually the sun. The truth to these prisoners means nothing cause of the fact they are unfamiliar as to what is really surrounding them in the atmosphere outside of the cave. If the prisoners were to be released into the real world and shown the genuineness of the world, they would firstly, be in pain as they are not used to the feeling of independence and if they walked towards the light, known as the truth, their eyes would not cope with the sudden change.
As they get closer the truth slowly becomes more visible to them. And their knowledge and Plato S Analogy Of The Cave Essay By lanthanum understanding of the true physical world starts to engage and advance. When the prisoner looks straight into the light, their eyes will be ‘dazzled’ and they will only be able to see the existence of the real life. When the prisoner gets used to the light they will then see the ‘upper world’, this is where they can see the truth of themselves and the whole of the world.
After being out in the open atmosphere and facing freedom for the first time in their lives and knowing the truth if the prisoner was to return to the ‘underground den’ they would feel as if they did not belong there. Plato then states how if the prisoner then tells the other prisoners alongside IM then what had happened to him, and the only way for them to see it would be to Walk towards the light’, however this idea seems ridiculous to some and those who do believe that there is an outside will ‘go up from darkness’. This is due to the fact of fear to return.
Nobody has a clear comprehension of what the true meaning of reality is. We all have our own views and opinions about what is true and what is not true, reality may have a deeper meaning then what you as a person experience in your daily life. I trust that reality is a place in which we are all trapped and cannot escape until the reality has ended. Reality is a state of things as they appear to exist rather than the thing being imagined or fantasized about. There are strong opinions about this argument because there is the belief in realism, meaning the tendency to view things as they really are.
The whole cosmos is ordered, but that order cannot be seen by the naked eye; Pythagoras argued that underneath the messy and chaotic cosmos there is an underlying order expressed in a mathematical equations, Just like how a boy who has never studied math can know the answer to a mathematical equation, Ruth exists independently of us; the answers exist independently of innately, beneath the physical world. Everything is a decaying copy of an ideal form, a permanent and indestructible existence outside of time and space.
Plato speaks about true beauty and perfection, but what really is perfect? What is beauty? Everybody has a different view and opinion on what beauty is, so who is to say the world of forms is the only place where there is one perfect beautiful copy of something or someone. A biblical example would be Adam and Eve in the bible genesis in the creation story; being the first man and woman alive, does that make hem the two most beautiful and perfect human beings that ever existed in time and space?
Plat’s analogy of the cave was intended to demonstrate two key points that were; all people are slaves to their sense experience and all experience is an illusion projected by forms that exist abstractly. All things, objects and ideas are Just like the shadows in the cave on the wall, they are poor imitations of perfect forms of things that truly existed in the abstract. These forms are a priori they exist before the examples of imitations not after.
