It's an allegory presented by Plato in his book "Republic" to explain ignorance and the nature of sensorial perception.Kro92813 wrote: ↑24 Sep 2019, 20:52what is Plato's Allegory of the cave?Lunastella wrote: ↑23 Sep 2019, 20:11 I would like to know if he inspired his idea of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I know it's a nerdy question , but I've been wondering since I read the review...
"In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.
The philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners.
The inmates of this place do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. The prisoners manage to break their bonds one day and discover that their reality was not what they thought it was. They discovered the sun, which Plato uses as an analogy for the fire that man cannot see behind. Like the fire that cast light on the walls of the cave, the human condition is forever bound to the impressions that are received through the senses. Even if these interpretations are an absurd misrepresentation of reality, we cannot somehow break free from the bonds of our human condition—we cannot free ourselves from the phenomenal state just as the prisoners could not free themselves from their chains. If however, we were to miraculously escape our bondage, we would find a world that we could not understand—the sun is incomprehensible for someone who has never seen it. In other words, we would encounter another "realm", a place incomprehensible because, theoretically, it is the source of a higher reality than the one we have always known; it is the realm of pure Form, pure fact."
https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave