Monday, March 15, 2010

The Allegory

Plato’s The Allegory of the cave is a theory where men are all chained to a wall and forced to look at a wall of shadows their entire lives. When one of the men escapes and finds sunlight he is in shock and has no idea what to think or feel about this new environment. The point of Plato’s theory is that knowledge is based on experience. If all you know is darkness and shadows and you think that there is nothing else you have no need to know anything else.

When the prisoner is exposed to the sunlight he does not know how to handle it because he has never experienced and light other than that of a fire. The next proposed idea is what if the prisoner now returns to the cave to try to tell the fellow prisoners of his findings. The fellow prisoners would not accept this man because they have not witnessed the new sightings and would ultimately rebel against him if he pursued breaking them out.

Knowledge is based on experience and if you know all of your surroundings there is no need for further exploration of search of knowledge. The Allegory of the cave also can easily relate to “The Truman Show” where Truman is trapped in a TV set which he believes is his real life.

1 comment:

  1. "Knowledge is based on experience and if you know all of your surroundings there is no need for further exploration of search of knowledge." I dont believe theres ever an end to exploration. Knowledge is infinite. I dont think its necessarily true that if you know your surroundings and experiance many things that it means your done. Everything you know can change from one day to another.

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