Social Science

The first 200 words of this essay...

Vicky Mouyat

Student ID: 16536917

Minor Essay:

Question 1

Plato's parable of the cave serves as an allegory for ignorance and lack of knowledge (Cohen, 2006), as well as changing perceptions of 'reality' and what one believes to be 'real' (Scruton, 1995). The parable describes prisoners who have been chained down in this cave, depicted as being ignorant and having a limited understanding of the world beyond this environment in which they are being held captive (Cohen, 2006). The prisoners have been positioned to face a wall, unable to turn their heads (Plato, 1901), and as the result of a fire burning behind them, they are only able to observe the flickering shadows of puppets being played behind them on the wall before them (Scruton, 1995).

As a result, the prisoners assume that the shadows on the wall they are facing to be 'real' (Cohen, 2006), when, in actuality, they are completely oblivious to the fact that these shadows have come about as a result of the puppets being played behind them (Scruton, 1995). Similarly, the civilians on Earth in the movie The Matrix fail to see that they too are living in a