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    Allegory of Cave

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    Tondonba Elangbam
    Plato's Allegory of the Cave illustrates the difference between appearances in the transient world and reality in the world of Forms. In the allegory, prisoners are chained in a cave seeing only shadows on the wall from objects passing by a fire, believing them to be reality. One prisoner escapes and sees the true Forms, realizing appearances are just shadows of reality. When he returns to tell others, they don't believe and may kill him. The allegory represents Plato's view that philosophers who perceive the Forms, like the Good, should rule over those who don't understand this higher reality.

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    Allegory of Cave

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    Tondonba Elangbam
    106 views1 page
    Plato's Allegory of the Cave illustrates the difference between appearances in the transient world and reality in the world of Forms. In the allegory, prisoners are chained in a cave seeing only shadows on the wall from objects passing by a fire, believing them to be reality. One prisoner escapes and sees the true Forms, realizing appearances are just shadows of reality. When he returns to tell others, they don't believe and may kill him. The allegory represents Plato's view that philosophers who perceive the Forms, like the Good, should rule over those who don't understand this higher reality.

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    Plato's Allegory of the Cave illustrates the difference between appearances in the transient world and reality in the world of Forms. In the allegory, prisoners are chained in a cave seeing only shadows on the wall from objects passing by a fire, believing them to be reality. One prisoner escapes and sees the true Forms, realizing appearances are just shadows of reality. When he returns to tell others, they don't believe and may kill him. The allegory represents Plato's view that philosophers who perceive the Forms, like the Good, should rule over those who don't understand this higher reality.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    106 views1 page

    Allegory of Cave

    Uploaded by

    Tondonba Elangbam
    Plato's Allegory of the Cave illustrates the difference between appearances in the transient world and reality in the world of Forms. In the allegory, prisoners are chained in a cave seeing only shadows on the wall from objects passing by a fire, believing them to be reality. One prisoner escapes and sees the true Forms, realizing appearances are just shadows of reality. When he returns to tell others, they don't believe and may kill him. The allegory represents Plato's view that philosophers who perceive the Forms, like the Good, should rule over those who don't understand this higher reality.

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    9/26/2019 Picking A Fight With Plato | Issue 90 | Philosophy Now

    Allegory of the Cave


    Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, as told in the Republic, Book VII, is a fable related by Socrates to illustrate the gap
    Plato perceives between the transient world as it appears to us, and the unchanging world of the Forms, which
    exists behind or beyond appearances.

    In an extended metaphor, Plato/Socrates considers dwellers in a cave. All their lives they’ve been chained up so
    that they cannot move their heads to look around. The entrance to the cave – the exit to the daylight of truth – is
    behind them, and so is a fire, with a walkway in front of it. People walk along this path, or things are paraded on
    it, and the shadows of these people and things are cast by the fire onto the wall in front of the prisoners. Because
    they have no experience which might suggest a different interpretation, the cave-dwellers assume that the
    shadows they see moving on the cave wall are the reality of the people and things. This idea seems to be
    confirmed by the whispers of voices or other noises they hear echoing around the cave in time with the
    movements or gestures of the shadows. In an analogous way (the argument goes), we assume that the world we
    experience is absolute reality, never imagining that there might be a hidden reality which is the source of our
    flickering experiences, but which is quite different from them.

    Socrates goes on to relate how one day one of the dwellers in darkness is dragged up out of the cave to the light
    of truth. Plato clearly is referring to himself here, as going beyond appearances to perceive the world of the
    Forms – the highest of which, the dazzling ‘sun’ of the Forms, is the Form of (the) Good. He has Socrates say of
    this Form “Once [the Good] is perceived, the conclusion must follow that, for all things, this is the cause of
    whatever is right and good: in the visible world it gives birth to light and to the lord of light, while it is itself
    sovereign in the intelligible world [of Forms], and the parent of intelligence and truth. Without having had a vision
    of this Form no one can act with wisdom, either in his own life or in matters of the state.”

    Plato tells us that the freed man, having seen the truth, will return to tell his former companions what he has
    experienced. Plato also thinks they won’t believe him, will abuse him for his foolishness, and will kill him if he tries
    to free others. Nevertheless, for Plato it is the duty of the enlightened to try and convince the endarkened of the
    deception they suffer under; and he goes on to explain why the philosopher, who has knowledge of the Good,
    should rule over those who do not have such knowledge.

    https://philosophynow.org/issues/90/Picking_A_Fight_With_Plato#1 1/1

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