Platos allegory of the Cave

A detailed Summary of Platos allegory of the Cave

Plato was born 427 BC and died 347 BC He was a pupil under Socrates.

During his studies, Plato wrote the Dialogues, which are a collection of Socrates'

teachings. One of the parables included in the Dialogues is "The Allegory of the

Cave". "The Allegory..." symbolizes man's struggle to reach understanding and

enlightenment. First of all, Plato believed that one can only learn through dialectic

reasoning and open-mindedness. Humans had to travel from the visible realm of

image-making and objects of sense to the intelligible or invisible realm of reasoning

and understanding. "The Allegory of the Cave" symbolizes this trek and how it

would look to those still in a lower realm. Plato is saying that humans are all

prisoners and that the tangible world is our cave. The things which we perceive as

real are actually just shadows on a wall. Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into

the light of the sun, we amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality:

prisoner in "The Allegory of the Cave." Plato's parable greatly symbolizes man's

the Galapagos Islands. Darwin found a wide array of animals. These differences in

prisoners know and perceive are just shadows on a wall which are just gross

in the mind. Yet, if someone goes into the light of the sun and beholds true

shadow on a wall. They could not possibly comprehend another dimension without

instance, the exact thing happened to Charles Darwin. In 1837, Darwin was

traveling aboard the H.M.S. Beagle in the Eastern Pacific and dropped anchor on

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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous

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