Allegory of the Cave

In Western Civilization, we had a very different approach to learning. Instead of just taking notes of what was on the board, we instead had to listen for the key meaning out of a story by the Greek Philosopher Pluto regarding what I believe to be  "enlightenment". I'll set the stage for this allegory, several prisoners are shackled and forced to look upon a wall which shadows are cast unto. These shadows, brought from a flame as light, were common things among  Greece and were announced to the prisoners every time they saw them. The prisoners would then guess what the next object shown would be in order to earn the respect of the other shackled prisoners. This all changes one day when one of the prisoners is exposed to the real world (enlightened) and becomes intellectually independent. When he decides to return to the cave to inform the other prisoners, instead of thanking him and being freed, they opt to kill him if he continues with such nonsense, rather they were happy.

To be fair, listening and comprehending all this was quite hard, and some of the findings I discussed were brought upon by a classroom discussion. I also would've liked a visual representation of what was going on, which I have found and have linked below. Although this gave me a better idea of what was happening, I'm still interested to learn about what happened outside of the cave when the prisoner was out and about. It's just difficult to comprehend how they had been imprisoned so long that they were fearful of any differences.








With that said, I conclude my February 12th Blog Post.