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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 4 page examination of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, contained in Book VII of The Republic. The paper asserts that Plato's model helps us understand the dangers of accepting other people's views of reality -- a lesson just as applicable today as it was in Plato's time. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Platcave.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
the rigor of critical thought. In this allegory, Plato suggests that we imagine a situation where a group of human beings are chained from their earliest infancy so that they
are facing the rear wall of a cave. Behind and above them there is a fire, and the only things that these prisoners have ever perceived (presumably, aside from their
own bodies) are the shadows that play on the wall ahead of them -- shadows created by the fire they cannot see. In front of the fire, but behind the
prisoners, the wardens hold up puppets whose shadows also dance on the wall before the prisoners eyes; because these puppets are the only things the prisoners have ever seen, and
because the puppets have bodies which resemble in form the shape of the prisoners own bodies, the prisoners assume that these puppets are actually human beings like themselves. Thus they
are the victims of a double illusion: first off, they do not realize that what they are seeing are only shadows, and they also do not realize that what they
take to be human and animal forms are not even that -- theyre puppets. Plato now asks us to try to imagine what would happen if one of the
prisoners were suddenly unshackled and forced to turn around and face the fire. To begin with, he would be blinded by its brilliance -- so much so that he would
still be unable to perceive the puppets which have cast the shadows he believed to be real. In this imaginary scenario, Plato surmises that even when the prisoner is informed
of his deception, he would not believe it, because those shadows had been his only reality, his only way of defining the world. He would not believe the evidence of
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