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Intro to Philosophy (HU) PHIL-1000-020 Humanities
April 12-2012
Plato: Allegory of the Cave
http://abdulkadir9.yolasite.com/
Plato (427-348 BC) was born in the city of Athens. Though people know him by the
name of Plato, his given name was Aristotcles which meant “best, most renowned”. Plato was
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his nickname rooted from the word Platon a Greek word that means “broad” or “wide”. Plato
was a tall handsome man and was gifted in music, science, and philosophy. When Plato met
Socrates, he had met his definitive teacher. As Socrates' disciple, Plato adopted his philosophy
and style of debate, and directed his studies toward the question of virtue and the formation of a
noble character. Socrates was subsequently murdered and Plato was very upset which led to his
hate for democracy and his city. After Socrates unjust death, Plato was determined to avenge his
mentor not though political action but through philosophy. Plato started to travel, went to Egypt
and maybe India. According to Aristotle, Plato developed the foundations of his metaphysics and
epistemology by studying the doctrines of Cratylus, and the work of Pythagoras and Parmenides.
At age 40 Plato was the founder of a school of young minds called the Academy. Only a select
few were ultimately allowed to study philosophical principles. Plato was highly respected and
died at the age of 80.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is based on Plato’s theory of how human beings limit their
notion to a point where they don’t desire to identify what is truly out there. This is an example of
Metaphysics, which is everything that exists, as well as the nature of existence itself. It says
whether the world is real, or merely an illusion. It is a fundamental view of the world around us.
Some people in today’s society cannot separate illusions from reality, especially with the growth
of technology and the gaming market increasing. This essay will discuss how Plato’s diagram of
the cave is ignorance vs. knowledge, how Plato’s Allegory of the Cave relates to the 1999 film
“The Matrix”, and how Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” major theme is appearance vs. reality.
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Plato’s diagram of the cave is ignorance vs. knowledge. The visual diagram of Plato’s
Allegory of the Cave theory is the prisoners are chained to the floor and unable to rotate their
heads to make out what goes on behind them. Behind the prisoners, under the protection of the
parapet, lie the puppeteers whom are casting the shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners,
which the prisoners perceive to be the reality. This represents an extended metaphor that is to
contrast the way in which we perceive and believe in what is reality. The puppeteers represent
powerful people in society. The image of prisoners chained in fetters that limits their movement
represents ignorant masses of society. They accept the image as reality and do not question their
“Knowledge”. As the prisoners turn and face the firelight, seeing for the first time those
representations that created those shadows on the cave wall, he disbelieves in their reality and
stick to his old notion. In the other hand the individual is restricted by the limits of his or her
education and environment. Individuals are narrowed within their view by what they have been
educated in past experiences, which is not always correct. The environment has an immense
effect on your views because that is your upbringing. For example a person from Canada is
going to have diverse view from a person from India. Images and shadows are representations of
those things surrounding us that we see but do not understand because of our limited knowledge.
As we obtain the ability to see things more visibly in the cave that is our ignorance, we begin to
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then loosen the fetters that bolt us and explore the objects and images around us. Eyes that have
been in the darkness for a lengthy time are aware of the tiniest of lights, or knowledge, from the
distant end of the cave. Constantly moving and gathering knowledge we observe that we are in
fact missing the bigger picture and focusing on the small. According to Plato’s quote “Human
beings possess the knowledge to all truth prior to birth”, one must agree that by the time children
reach the age at which they can reason, their minds are already filled with countless numbers of
ideas. Some of these ideas are correct while others are not. Thus more often than not, the truth
first involves realizing that one’s beliefs do not match reality.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” relates to the 1999 film “The Matrix”. In the film “The
Matrix” rebel Morpheus notifies Neo that the world he is living in is make-believe. At first Neo
does not believe him, but then is shown evidence. He is gradually updated from the point in time
where the world was disintegrated of all natural resources. In the wastelands android enslaved
the remainder of the humans. In order to create the perfect world, an artificial world is created to
fool the humans into believing that everything is all right in their world. Neo has always
questioned his reality but the truth was far beyond his imagination. Morpheus awakens Neo to
the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity has been captured by a race of
machines, which live off of their body heat and imprison their minds within an artificial reality
known as the Matrix. The main scene of this film is the red pill, blue pill dilemma.
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The blue pill will leave you how you are, in your comfort not needing the truth to live
and the red pill is unknown. You are told that it can help you to find the truth. You do not know
what that truth is, or even that the pill will help you to find it. The red pill symbolizes risk, doubt
and questioning. In order to answer the question, Neo gambled his whole life and world on a
reality he has never experienced. The question is asking us weather reality and truth is worth
pursuing. Both "The Allegory of the Cave" and "The Matrix" are stories in which there are two
appearances, one perceived and one real. Although "The Matrix" is not based exactly on Plato's
"The Allegory of the Cave," there are several parallels between the two works. For instance In
"The Allegory of the Cave," the people creating the shadows represent the powerful people in
society. In "The Matrix," the puppet-handlers are the computer machines also know as “The
Matrix”. The problem with the prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is people don’t risk
seeking the truth beyond their limits and they don’t question everything.
Furthermore, a more modernistic relation to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” theme of
appearance vs. reality is how the huge gaming market influences common thoughts of today’s
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society. Video games are part of the reason why individuals cannot differentiate appearance from
reality. Individuals in the present day spend hours of their day playing video games. For these
grounds people are so very to playing games like “WWE wrestling” and they tend to imitate the
moves they observe. A number of kids cannot separate appearance from reality and every so
often lead to accidental death. For instance “Lionel Tate, 12 years old and 170 pound child was
doing the same moves his favorite professional wrestlers perform on television when he
accidentally killed 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick, said attorney Jim Lewis”. He had been the
youngest child in modern US history to be sentenced to life imprisonment but later was release
on one year house arrest and 10 year probation.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is one of his many great philosophical theories. It
describes how human beings limit their notion to a point where they don’t desire to identify what
is truly out there. I discussed how Plato’s diagram of the cave is ignorance vs. knowledge, how
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” relates to the 1999 film “The Matrix”, and how Plato’s “Allegory
of the Cave” major theme is appearance vs. reality. The truth is a powerful thing. The majority of
individuals cannot handle the truth, and are also limited to discovering it given the very high
media influences of today. However, also in today’s world Plato’s notion of the cave is starting
to become false analogy because humans are now questioning life, earth and the universe and are
exploring outer space, in particularly Mars to discover potential life forms to save the human
race from possible extinction. Plato remains to be one of the great philosophers of his era which
is why he is my favorite philosopher. His intellect through his theories brings light into the
darkness, and challenges us to explore unknown territories of our thought process. His
philosophy remains to shine through his work featured by his book, The Republic.
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Work Cited
Soccio, Douglas J. Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy. 7th ed. United States
of America: Wadsworth, 2010. Print
Kraut, Richard, "Plato", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.). United States of America. 2011. Web
Carney, Shane. "Plato's Allegory of the Cave: Analysis and Summary." Yahoo! Contributor
Network. 1 Mar. 2006. Web