7/30/2019 Plato Was a Greek Philosopher and Mathematician Who Left His Mark in History

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Plato was a Greek philosopher and mathematician who left his mark in history. His classicalphilosophies on human nature reveal the basic truth as well as the flaws in the psychological evolutionof mankind. Plato's allegory of the cave is a hypothetical scenario depicted by an enlighteningconversation between Socrates and Plato's brother, Glaucon. The conversation basically deals with the

ignorance of humanity trapped within the precincts of conventional ethics. As indicated by the termHomo sapiens, they refer to the not-so sapient humans, but to the more civilized and cultivated formof animals. For spiritual evolution, an in-depth understanding of mother nature and the truth behind

the things which cannot be seen, is also very important.

Description of the CaveWhile describing the story, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by people. These men

are prisoners, and their hands and legs are shackled by chains. Moreover, the movement of their faceis also restricted, so that they can see nothing but the wall in front of them. This restricted movementlimits their visibility to the wall, thus circumscribing the scope of any encounter beyond it. There is anenormous fire on the ground, and between the wall and the fire is a walkway meant for objects topass. The shadows of these objects fall directly on the wall providing the sole view for the prisoners.Hence, the only way for the prisoners to get acquainted with their surroundings is to decipher the

shadows and consider them to be a part of the real world. They start naming each and every object,and amongst all the prisoners, the intellect of an individual is governed by his ability to judge thoseobjects.

According to Socrates, the idea of the world for prisoners is limited within the boundaries of the cave.The shadows are treated as real objects and there are pseudo intellectuals who claim to understandthe world based on these shadows. The prisoners are not able to perceive the truth of nature because

of their limited view.

Escape of a Prisoner from the CaveMoving on with the description, Socrates says that if somehow a prisoner manages to break theshackles and escapes from the cave, the world he gets to see outside goes beyond his comprehension.He, like all the prisoners, is accustomed to dim light, and the light of the sun makes him turn his gazeaway from it. Slowly he gets accustomed to the existence of the new world, which delineates thefallacy of that inside the cave. On his intellectual journey, he discovers the true reality, the beauty ofmother nature and an almost divine experience of the newly found mystical world.

Interpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Now as the prisoner returns back to the cave, he feels his moral duty to make others aware of thetruth he has just discovered. He tries to persuade his companions that outside there is a more realworld, and what all has been seen by them are mere shadows of the real objects. He tries to point outthe deep-rooted ignorance of the fellow prisoners who are trapped within their own confinement ofpseudo intellectualism. But the prisoners try to resist enlightenment and condemn him for the moralmisconduct and loss of ethical values. These values, which are not governed by the tautologies ofnature but the fallacy of shadows cast on the wall, are considered to be the truth by the prisoners ofthe cave. Everything that goes beyond these values, tends to lie in the domain of unconventionalthoughts, which are always resisted by human beings. This cave metaphor can be replaced by a movietheater, where the screen serves as wall of the cave and the projector as the fire. In this case also,the objects seen are not real ones, but a reflection on the movie screen.

The creativity of Plato, along with his deep understanding of human nature, makes him to create ascenario which shows the mankind a true picture of an imaginary world. We all may acquire and

comprehend the world around us as our experience of physical objects, but it would be a mistake tolimit ourselves to the conventional thoughts indentured by our stubbornness towards change.Read more at Buzzle:http://www.buzzle.com/articles/platos-allegory-of-the-cave-meaning-and-interpretation.html

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7/30/2019 Plato Was a Greek Philosopher and Mathematician Who Left His Mark in History

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The son of a wealthy and noble family, Plato (427-347 B.C.) was preparing for a

career in politics when the trial and eventual execution of Socrates (399 B.C.)

changed the course of his life. He abandoned his political career and turned to

philosophy, opening a school on the outskirts of Athens dedicated to the Socratic

search for wisdom. Plato's school, then known as the Academy, was the first

university in western history and operated from 387 B.C. until A.D. 529, when it wasclosed by Justinian.

Unlike his mentor Socrates, Plato was both a writer and a teacher. His writings are in

the form of dialogues, with Socrates as the principal speaker. In theAllegory of the

Cave, Plato described symbolically the predicament in which mankind finds itself and

proposes a way of salvation. TheAllegory presents, in brief form, most of Plato's

major philosophical assumptions: his belief that the world revealed by our senses is

not the real world but only a poor copy of it, and that the real world can only be

apprehended intellectually; his idea that knowledge cannot be transferred from teacher

to student, but rather that education consists in directing student's minds toward what

is real and important and allowing them to apprehend it for themselves; his faith that

the universe ultimately is good; his conviction that enlightened individuals have an

obligation to the rest of society, and that a good society must be one in which the truly

wise (the Philosopher-King) are the rulers.

TheAllegory of the Cave can be found in Book VII of Plato's best-known work, The

Republic, a lengthy dialogue on the nature of justice. Often regarded as a utopian

blueprint, The Republic is dedicated toward a discussion of the education required of a

Philosopher-King.

The following selection is taken from the Benjamin Jowett translation (Vintage,

1991), pp. 253-261. As you read theAllegory, try to make a mental picture of the cave

Plato describes. Better yet, why not draw a picture of it and refer to it as you read the

selection. In many ways, understanding Plato'sAllegory of the Cave will make your

foray into the world of philosophical thought much less burdensome.