Plato's Allegory of the Cave

[baller84milw]

This is only half the story....

[anmllvr234]

if u believe the escaped prisoner you could be seen as gullible but if you dont believe the escaped prisoner you could be seen as close minded. it goes both ways. dont believe everything u see or hear but, sometimes its best just to believe for fear of the unknown

[sasukerucker]

this relates to e docile education system

[PrinceOF9Imagination]

So they lived for years and years without eating nor drinking!

[hughejam]

now thats a mindfuck!

[daviesman90]

nice

[spazola789]

The announcer and creepy music makes this video seem like something straight out of 20/20 or Investigation Discovery. You should make a video spot for this on your next project: Terror in Plato's Cave with Dan Rather, at 11 on NBC. 

[ThinkingOfStars]

mindfuck ._.

[TreeLuvBurdpu]

Because PLATO requires TWO worlds to explain this One.

But there is only one Universe.

Otherwise you have to have a make-sure world, or a type-world, or a wish-world, and then you need a philosophy about how the worlds interact. It becomes a mess. It is a product of Plato's sloppy analytics. It is the source of all schisms and dichotomies.

[LeonAmarantos]

Plato described (a lot of things as ignorance of true world,world of ideas) also early "movie screenings" or shadow theater(???)

[RoemerS8]

People in the cave: ignorance

[ShaktiLila]

Well done.

[theholydonkey]

Where's the second half?

[diduhear]

well im rattled

[TreeLuvBurdpu]

We derive things all the time from their shadows, such as x-rays. We don't see the x-rays, but we know what they are because of their results.

I have difficulty imagining being stupid enough to believe this stuff.

[soeperman0]

@TreeLuvBurdpu If you're placed there from birth and never seen something else you will believe it

[RobRoyMH]

@TreeLuvBurdpu Lol, you are misinformed there's nothing to disbelieve or try to believe... This is one of many blueprints for creating a controllable society... Have people raised in a "group think" environment, so everything around them becomes everything they stand for, good or bad. It's a metaphor for raising obedient lambs. Anyone who "turned their head around to see whats making the shadows" would immediately look like a fool among their peers for stepping out of line.

[TreeLuvBurdpu]

@RobRoyMH "Lol, you are misinformed there's nothing to disbelieve or try to believe... "

What the heck does this mean? There is nothing to believe or disbelieve AND I am misinformed? Misinformed usually means that I believe the wrong thing. Have you merely replaced subjectivism with skepticism? And how am I misinformed?

[RobRoyMH]

@TreeLuvBurdpu Did you not read your comment I was replying to? You said this, I quote: "I have difficulty imagining being stupid enough to believe this stuff." ... Like I said, this is a blue print and explanation for societal group think. This isn't something you choose to believe in, it's just how it is, and this is as simply as Plato can put it (you STILL didn't catch it?)

You said you couldn't see yourself believing it... You don't have to, it's just the way a society is brought up to work.

[dronkey100]

To me Plato's cave is an attempt to demonstrate that what we percieve and make rules for and therefore call the truth may be far from it and indeed may be much more complex than we could ever imagine.

Its a bit like Newtons laws that while mostly functional and predictable and easy to understand (and therefore representing the truth) were superseded by Einsteins very different much more complex equations describing the same things. What do you think?

[HewManatee]

It is a metaphor for living a philosophical/virtuous existence according to Platonic thought? In Timaeus, Plato held that throughout one's life, one is subject to these 'shadows' brought about by the body without the soul's aid, and it is the telos of the soul to keep the body 'in check' so to speak...the man's recognizing the situation is a metaphor for 'awakening' via reason/introspection?

[ElleElastic]

I wish my Philosophy lecturer could make the lecture more fun by showing us videos like this!

[qwertyfshag]

in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.  dictators always try to stifle education

[JackWolfSchiner]

@coolasacoldsummer Ah! Yes, I would agree. Most of mankind refuse to look beyond the horse blinders that seem to wear a lot these days.

[JackWolfSchiner]

@coolasacoldsummer Are you saying that in support of my analogy?

[Carolsw1]

Our life on Earth itself is the" TV" some people are referring to. It is what we think we are experiencing as solid forms and images. Our reactions to them make them more permanent to our minds. The course in Miracles goes into this quite deeply.

[Soopahkoopah101]

The "if you look" guy was creepy...

[springlightgirl]

This is relevant today: The kids who are tied from childhood to watch the tv and cartoons and movies and MTV. For them the truth is nothing than what they see on television.

[JackWolfSchiner]

@springlightgirl I would like to argue or even debate your analogy of children watching cartoons or whatever. I have tried watching a few children shows like Chowder, SpongeBob and others. For the most part, these shows teach the future generation that is ok to be rude and crude to everyone and to disregard respect. I brought up old school and may be we need to return to those old values.

[springlightgirl]

@JackWolfSchiner well, that is true too. I was making my comment realated to the video not generally. I do agree children are rude do to their exposure to tv. My niece is very rude and my sister ask what am i gonna do to her cos she doesnt believe in hitting children. So, i think we should stop making kids watch cartoons. But there is another aspect of tv that is political. My previous comment was related to politics.

[JackWolfSchiner]

@springlightgirl Ever listen to our politicians, they sound more and more like children in bickering over who did what and who didn't that, whether something or someone illegal or legal. Scary how childish they are at times. Agree?

[ada1345]

This is an allegory of the nature of reality and what is real and what isnt. The "chains are like ingnorance a person may have which holds them back from realizing what is real. And this isnt true, it was a part form one of Plato's books

[tomoom165]

How would he be fed?

[seanopedia]

ha i totally can't concentrate on anything other than the fragmented speech of the movie-esq narrator.

did you find a program where you type in words and out comes the manly movie voice or what?

[DarkLordCallMeDickC]

Good job with this video.

[leathan7]

I never understood this,

I feel its an insult to humanity,

I understand they would not know for certain wtf was going on but if i was in their scenario i would know for certain something was stopping me from doing something that just felt natural... "Discover the existence"

AKA - ID BE ALL LAYK.. .UMMM WTF I CANT MOVE MY HEAD??? AND WITHOUT WORDS ID QQ INSIDE

[Samuelthemule]

@leathan7 it's an ALLEGORY :>

i.e symbolic.

[xxcool2tintxx]

it is symbolic of our limited knowledge of man. Sometimes we get so use to a certain way of looking at things that we forget what it is we stand for and let alone believe.  Now the question of the parable is ... once you are revealed a piece of knowledge will you keep it to yourself or will you share it with others??

[BeAsTm0aD]

If life was spent never moving, you wouldn't know what moving was. You're thinking of how you are now and what you know and can do now, but if you were in this situation you would not have knowledge of the action of moving.

[Ataturkistan]

Yess!! i understand more

[Samadhiatman500]

Good job. Thank you.

[minihamlet]

Good job for a school project, of course it is abbreviated. Anyway, the allegory is the journey of enlightenment. The lesson is no take fro granted what you think you know, but to mistrust all inherited knowledge and instead rely on your investigations of reality. This is all about enlightenment.

[Bonepoet666]

Using emergency situations to validate your philosophy shows weakness in philosophy.-if a man is chained?-if a there is a fire behind him?-if there are puppets and shadows. What about reality? What about men with freedom of movement and thought? Are we supposed to looked to a tortured prisoner for enlightenment?

[1110111011101]

This was in ancient times. This idea was originally brought to public by Socrates, which Plato wrote down and published. Back then, the average citizen PAID to watch slaves and warriors fight to the death in the Colosseum, how would anyone feel guilty raising a couple people in a cave?

[painxtreme]

Mr. Binary, Plato lived from 426-348, during a part of the Peloponnesian War, But Greece of his time was relatively peaceful.

The Colosseum was completed in 80 AD during the reign of Titus. The Romans are notorious for copying everything Greek, from the Great Classical Art and Architecture to some of the Republic thought of Plato, but they were the bloody ones.

The Greeks however, did not have fights to the death in Plato's time....They had Naked Olympics, and Plato was a wrestler, yuck.

[caramelitsaa]

it's an allegory..! there weren't ACTUALLY people living in a cave like prisoners..it's a symbolism of people's ignorance..we are all "prisoners" because we cant remember the truth..the one and only truth which is immortal and absolute like Socrates used to say..however some people can break their "chains" ,"go out of the cave" and see the light,the real world and the truth..these are the philosophers..

[Samuelthemule]

@1110111011101 except for that it's an allegory, as stated in the title.

[YiannisThiakos]

There was no Roman Empire yet. NO Colosseum.

[SnorklinWithCudas]

You r stupid

[BeachedWhale09]

time to come out of the cave

The Obama Deception - watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw

[LadyLaLa2009]

Good Job!

[jacksonmetai]

You are all wrong because you're missing the largest part of the allegory.

[dimalex8]

or u see what others want u to see.

and what u see maybe it isnt what u think.

[energizerninja]

it means you see what the prison guards tell u to see. its a metaphor for society and those who control society.

[YiannisThiakos]

Well, it depends. I dont think the allegory was only about the society. Also tried to get into the the world of conciusnes and what we cakll today free will. He supposed that peope cant see all world as it is, because something/someone doesnt let them to.Maybe their physiology, maybe their way of thinking.He didnt know exactly either, but maybe he had figured out, and tried to explain it to simple people of his time this way.

[josh66694]

@energizerninja I disagree, I'd say its to do with how we can never have understanding of anything other than our own reality, such as philosophical ideas like God, heaven and after death.

[TBird4490]

@energizerninja Religion can also be used as a comparison here.

[vasilije91]

@energizerninja HAHAHAAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAH­AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[TheOedipusKing]

@energizerninja Not at all. In the original text there are no prison gaurds. Essentially the analogy of the cave is about how the true philosopher will turn away from the empirical world (the world of opinion, illusion - represented by the shadows on the wall) and the particulars which exist within the empirical world (i.e. the fire) and begin an assent to find true, rational knowledge in the universal forms.

[TheOedipusKing]

@energizerninja The reason why some of the prisoners are chained is because Plato thought that only a few people had the rational, inherit capacity to realise true knowledge. Most are 'shackled' to the empirical world of thought.

[beammeawish]

did this actaully ahppen..and yes where was the end..it can bea metaphor for some peoples life though..living without the third eye

[Squish888]

no it didn't actually happen. Allegory means a moral story. It simply is an explanation for people who aren't philosophically awakened.

[jennifervision]

I'm so glad someone understands it.

[davidpaul8]

love this...great way to use Malcolm in a clockwork Orange.

peace

dp

[twothlesswonder]

If logic is still an ability, one COULD deduce a few things. For one, one would be able to see their own shadow and should be able to establish the difference between theirs and others. What seems, to me, to follow would be that that their shadow is not them, merely a representation of sorts, and so on.

I can't see how someone could stay sane while believing their 3rd person view of "life" is reality. I'm not sure our minds are wired for that.

Perhaps I am digging too deep?

[chrysostomster]

awesome comment!

i think that a person like you or me would go insane if we were placed in that situation, but these characters were in that state from birth

something like the truman show, one accepts what is common.

[twothlesswonder]

"but these characters were in that state from birth"

I understand. However, our minds are not blank slates. I don't think our minds are capable of remaining sane in such a circumstance because we come pre-wired to experience life in the first person, not the third person. Platos cave, I fear, subscribes to the notion of a blank slate which assumes the mind to develop only as a result of external input. This is untrue as much of our cognition/perception and the like are innate properties...

[Fallen0paper]

It's a metaphor in way people see reality. your not looking deep enough. trust me I'm doing this in one for one my courses theres a lot more to the alleogry of the cave, there is a reason why it is so famous. The shadows these people see are the perceptive reality in which ignorance is spawned from. You need the second part of the allegory for this to make better sense.

[PTFAbedeh]

Agreed, Fallen0paper. This isn't the complete allegory, which the Socrates character explains in the second half!

"[T]he prison-house is the world of sight...and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world."

In the allegory, the outside world is reason, and the more real of the two, while the shadows represent physical sense. I don't agree with this necessarily, but this video doesn't present the whole picture.

[YiannisThiakos]

I totally agree. Our physiology is also affected by the way of life and ecxercise we make on something as well. Our genes/bodies/minds are just a machine with many cappabilities, and maybe Plato meant also this.

[BR177]

@YiannisThiakos that is nurture over nature... it has been proved already... nurture is what defines us

[Adam93084]

Never digging too deep. If all you knew were shadows you *wouldn't* deduce that the shadow is caused by you. Your outside knowledge of shadows is clouding the allegory. You would assume that the shadow is moving in relation to you but not emanating from you. That's how I see it.

[4stjohn4]

@twothlesswonder they wouldn't see their own shadow because of the wall in front of the fire that is behind the chained people would block the chained people's shadow

[plentyplus1]

@twothlesswonder very insightful comment. what makes you think we're not in that situation? yes we think we perceive "reality" in our daily lives, but what if all of this is merely a shadow. if that's the case then our consciousness is the true us. we can see our "shadows" in physical reality, but can then conclude that the ME that conceives these illusions (shadows) is the real me!

[Jrezky]

@twothlesswonder well it may not be explained completely, there is a wall blocking the shadows of the men holding the puppets, which in turn blocks their own shadows. They could not see their own shadows. This is more used to compare to reality, what we really assume as reality may just be a shadow of what's actually there. Take a cube, or example. A cube has all of its corners at right angles, all of its sides even, but the shadow of a cube in the 2nd dimension is warped.

[Jrezky]

@Jrezky This is the best that can be understood by somebody in the 2nd dimension, as the 3rd dimension simply can't be perceived. Take a tesseract, for example. What we understand as a tesseract is merely a shadow of its true appearance, which is evidently warped, whereas our understanding of a tesseract is just a shadow of its true nature, all of its lines are in fact even and its angles 90 degrees, yet we can only comprehend it in such a way that it is warped, like the shadow of a 3d cube.

[gummowaldow]

@twothlesswonder haha that's why there's a raised wall before them and after the fire, so they don't see their own shadow...and i also agree with the person who is also commenting on this

[MissxCrayonsx]

I really enjoyed that, it's helped me understand it a bit better. (:

[SnorklinWithCudas]

good! but no end!

[YiannisThiakos]

Don't you know the end? There is one.

[ParkourBlog]

very detailed on the start, but where was the end :'(

[5hiv4n]

Yeah where is the end??

[HeWillBeManchester]

This is the unexamined life (yours).

[isafazada]

dude u i need some help guys... i need to do a project comparing the Cave to matrix..

[SooahnChoi]

Thanks a lot for making this video. It's helping me with my own project.

[chrysostomster]

awesome!

glad i could help!

[Smartteaser192]

What's missing is a prisoner freeing himself facing the fire and go out to the open world (World of Eidos (Forms)). Then go back into the cave and tell the truth to the prisoners. The Free man died becaus of telling the truth. The freeman is Symbolized as Socrates.

[YiannisThiakos]

So is not impossible that he told the truth and this is why he was made to drink the cinium. Or just he was a crazy huy, which i doupt...

[garside100]

good but need finishing

[MAM16127]

well done

[nofx221984]

uh...FINISH IT!

[pokerworld]

very well done

[chasingecho]

Good overview and set-up of the allegory. Dug the montage of various images used in the piece.