Words of Plato

Plato is one of the world’s best-known philosophers, who has influenced philosophy in a major way. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, which has also influenced philosophy too. Plato founded the academy of Athens, where he trained youth in philosophy, science, and politics. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave illustrate that the prisoners are those who do not thirst for knowledge like most people in school, they don’t want to be there.

The cave dwellers can be students in school, while the people who uses the fire for shadows are like professors (people with power). Lastly there are people that seen the light, those people felicitate themselves on their advancement. The enlightened are those who asserts themselves to thrive for knowledge then think like those of the ignorant and those who never want to learn. Those who don’t want to learn are like high school drop outs, they feel like school is not for them and therefore find another path that can be for them. In this allegory, the cave is the sensible world, the physical world, and those who has journey upward has enter the intellectual world, the world of ideas. Plato seems to think that mental reality, the world of ideas and of intelligence, is more real than the material world where things change all the time.

The cave dwellers are people that has accepted what they’ve been shown. They are passive observers and passive inheritors of the opinions that they have. There’s nothing wrong with the cave dwellers minds, they’re just looking at the wrong information. If they were to reorient themselves instead of waiting for an opportunity to come they can make their own opportunity by turning around and escape the cave themselves. Plato says you must turn the whole soul around to turn the mind around. People minds are created equal, there’s no difference in their mental capacity. The only thing that’s different is their desire to learn. A high school drop out can become a college graduate if he has the desire to seek knowledge. Everyone has desire, like wanting to play games but also knowing that you have an essay that’s due tomorrow. But it depends if your desire has turn towards the task of education, that will determine your success. Everyone can understand and doing a task but it’s about whether you want to. That’s the problem with the people in the caves. They’re not only looking at the wrong things, they also got disordered desires.

The journey of walking out of the curve can be painful. The guy who is escaping the cave, who is getting an education will not always be happy about what’s happening.

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