Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Question 1: Describe how the people in the cave are situated in Plato’s parable. Why can’t they move their legs or necks to take a look around? What is the only thing they are capable of seeing? What is their only source of light.

Answer: There are prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained inside a cave. Behind the prisoners are a fire and people who are carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows, believing this to be their reality as they’ve known nothing else.

Question 2: What are the stages of the liberated prisoner’s experience outside the cave?

Answer: When one prisoner becomes free, he finally sees the fire and realizes the shadows are fake. He discovered a whole new world outside that they were completely unaware of. Outside, he believes, is far more real than inside the cave. 

 

Question 3: What do these prisoners trapped in the cavern believe is real?

Answer: These prisoners trapped in the cavern believe that the shadows are real, and they believe that they will be harmed if they try to leave the cave.

 

Question 4: How do the prisoners react when they first see sunlight? Why?

Answer: The prisoner was amazed when he saw the bright sunlight and it hurts his eyes. He saw that he casts a shadow, as do all objects that are directly exposed to the sun.

Question 5: What does Plato’s allegory of the cave tell us about how we recognize things?

Answer:  According to Plato's allegory of the cave, we may identify things using our senses and can be certain that something is real if we can touch it.

 

Question 6: What does Plato’s cave tell us about what we see with our eyes?

Answer: According to Plato's allegory of the cave, what we see with our own eyes is not always the real thing, it could instead be the half-seen of the truth of forms.

 

Question 7: What is truth according to Plato in this allegory?

Answer: If we only rely on our physical senses, such as believing what we see, we are making ourselves effectively blind. We should not settle for this, or else we will believe something to be true even though it’s not. It’s like living a life full of deception. 

Question 8: What other ideas could have been influenced by Plato’s cave?

Answer: The other idea behind Plato's cave is that you shouldn't just believe what you see or hear, but that it encourages us to go beyond and discover what is real and true. It tells us that we shouldn’t just believe any news or rumors out there without proof or evidence.

Question 9: Describe an experience you have had which something that looked true turned out to be false or looked false turned out to be true.

Answer: I was sleeping, and the light was turned off. When I awoke around 3 a.m., there was a man standing at the door; I was scared, but when the lights came on, it was just a shirt. It looked to be true, but it was false.

 

Question 10: How is it possible that people can believe in illusion and accept it as reality?

Answer: People's ignorance makes it possible for them to believe any illusion and accept it as reality. Most likely, the victims of this are the people who are close-minded.