Batman's+Lair

1. //As a group, write a multi-paragraph summary of the underlying arguments and positions presented in your assigned selection.// Be sure to provide examples from the text (quotes), explaining how your evidence reveals the author's arguments and positions. Be sure to represent every valid interpretation of the text posited by your group members (you might need multiple sections), even (especially) any dissenting interpretations.

[|Link to the Text]

Within //The Allegory of the Cave// Plato makes many underlying arguments about the nature of mankind. He argues that mankind starts as an ignorant populous in a cave of confusion. They can achieve freedom only by obtaining knowledge. "The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it." The prisoners are content with the world around them, only because they are ignorant. When man is stuck within the cave he thinks he sees what is going on the world, but he is wrong.

The prisoners have a set path which they have never strayed from. Those who escape the cave and see the light realize the importance of straying from this path. To stray from the path means that you will encounter the unknown and anything strange is naturally scary. So we keep to what we know and remain ignorant. When a man ecounteres a previously unknown notion, he will "fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him." While some stay in the shadows of mystery in the cave, others seek the knowledge of enlightenment by stepping out into the light.

Some men succeed in finding a way of out of the cave and attaining new knowledge. It is the duty of these men to venture back into the cave and attempt to convince others to follow them out, for he will wish to "facilitate himself on the change and pity them..." The cave is full of material objects. Within the cave are "...all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials..." When man looks at the light outside the cave he will have "pain in his eyes, which will make him turn away to take refuge in the objects of [his] vision..." The objects of his vision are of course the material objects and he is content with it.



1. Lawrence, Matt. "Allegory of the Cave." __Matt Lawrence__. 4 Dec 2007 [|http://home.lbcc.cc.ca.us/~mlawrence/Phil%206/cave.htm>.]
 * Bibliography:**

2. "Image:Plato's allegory of the cave.jpg - Wikipedia Commons." __Main Page - Wikipedia Commons__. 10 Mar 2005. Wikipedia. 4 Dec 2007 .