You can see how universal it is and how it can be applied to your own film. For more about allegories in general and how they relate to filmmaking, we have a more in-depth post on that subject. The text is formatted as a dialogue between Plato and his brother, Glaucon. Within this conversation, they discuss what would happen if a group of prisoners realized the world they were watching was a lie.
Plato uses this allegory as a way to discuss the deceptive appearances of things we see in the real world. Through it, he encourages people to instead focus on the abstract realm of ideas. In a literal sense, a movie is just a series of images.
But digging deeper, they present unique ideas and themes that we can take with us into the real world. To a prisoner in the cave, Parasite is a film about a family who gets jobs working for another family.
A person has to recognize everything up until this point in their life has been a lie. What if when they finally recognize the lie, they resort to violent revolution? Watch this terrifying scene and see what similarities you can find between it and the allegory. The scene holds many direct correlations with the "Allegory of the Cave.
This is a direct reference to the fire in the cave, casting shadows for the prisoners to view. Red also makes several references to shadows. Specifically, how they are the shadows to the regular family. Us could almost be viewed as an alternative version of the allegory. Namely, what if the prisoner returned to the cave and all of the other prisoners wanted to follow him out?
They saw other people living normal lives, making them angry. The tethered hold hands in the sun, leaving destruction in their wake. It's a somewhat pessimistic view of the cave allegory, but what if there were a story that looked on it more positively. The text demonstrates that the Idea of the Good Plato capitalises these concepts in order to elevate their significance and refer to the idea in itself rather than any one particular instantiation of that concept , which we are all seeking, is only grasped with much effort.
Our initial experience is only of the good as reflected in an earthly, embodied manner. It is only by reflecting on these instantiations of what we see to be good, that we can start to consider what may be good in itself.
The closest we can come to truly understanding such Forms the name he gives these concepts , is through our intellect.
Human beings are aiming at the Good, which Medieval philosophers and theologians equated with God, but working out what the good life consists of is not easy! Plato claims each Soul or mind chooses what is good, saying:.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy. Article Being Human. As to the question…it depends on the friend and the nature of the friendship. Hi Laura, as always a delight to read your work. In answer to your question, it depends. A true example when I chose not to ruin a friends bliss concerns a time when I was driving a friend of mine somewhere. This friend is blind. While stopped a traffic lights, she commented on how lovely it was to hear the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees.
In this example though, no harm was done. Of those who have ruined my blissful ignorance many have done so through their own blissful ignorance… the less ignorant I become the more bliss there is in the wonder of the nature of ignorance and the delight in the greatness of diversity… until I realise how ignorant I am. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Ancient History and Latin Expert. Gill is a Latinist, writer, and teacher of ancient history and Latin.
Updated August 11, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Gill, N. Plato and Aristotle on Women: Selected Quotes. Plato and Aristotle on the Family: Selected Quotes. Summary and Analysis of Meno by Plato. Summary and Analysis of Plato's 'Euthyphro'. Howland, J. The Republic: The Odyssey of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Irwin, T.
Plato's Ethics. Joseph, H. Knowledge and the Good in Plato's Republic. London: Oxford University Press, Karasmanis, V. Lidz, J. Malcom, J. Morrison, J. Murphy, N. Nettleship, R. Lectures on the Republic of Plato. London: Macmillan and Company Limited, Robinson, R. Plato's Earlier Dialectic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Pappas, N. Plato and the Republic. London: Routledge Philosophy Guide Books, John M.
Cooper and Douglas S. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Raven, J. Sallis, J. Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Sayers, S. Plato's Republic: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Seery, J. Smith, N. Smith, W. Ancient Education. New York: Philosophical Library, Strang, C. Sze, C.
White, N. A Companion to Plato's Republic. Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Wilberding, J. Wood, R. Gabriel Zamosc gabriel. Received: 24 June Accepted: 17 November I The audacity of attempting another reading of Plato's allegory of the Cave may require some kind of justification. II The standard story concerning the allegory of the Cave is familiar enough. III Let me begin with the first claim. IV I have argued that the admonition to link the Cave with what was said before could be read as an invitation to recall Socrates's first pedagogical discussion in Book VI concerning the bad effects of sophistic education.
He tells Glaucon that sight tries at last to look at the animals themselves, and, in the end, at the sun itself. VI I hope that by now a different interpretation of the Cave is more forcefully recommending itself to us.
References Adam, J. APA: Zamosc, G. Ideas y Valores, 66 , He listened patiently and approvingly to what must have been a somewhat conceited tirade against the orthodox reading of the parallelism between the Line and the Cave. I obviously did not know at the time that Ferguson and others, with much greater discernment and more dignified aplomb, had actually already articulated the main elements of the position that I took myself to be pioneering with youthful bravado in the confines of my high school philosophy class.
Many thanks are also due to Rachana Kamtekar who had the fortune of reading a more coherent and better-reasoned version of the argument that was composed many years later, while I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and who gave me very valuable comments. I am also grateful for the invaluable feedback provided by my colleagues, Robert Metcalf, David Hildebrand, Sam Walker, and Candice Shelby, as well as for that offered by the anonymous referee.
A much shorter version of this paper was presented at the Ancient Philosophy Society conference in I wish to thank attendants at the event for their questions and feedback. Throughout this paper I will use the capitalized word, "Cave," to refer to the allegory itself and its lowercase counterpart, "cave," to refer to the actual physical location or cave-like dwelling that Socrates describes as part of the various elements of the allegory.
I will also use the words "allegory" and "image" interchangeably. In his essay on the Cave, Hall does not fully reject the orthodox interpretation of parallelism, and attempts to walk a middle path that emphasizes both the epistemological reading and also the political interpretation favored by Ferguson. However, given his general focus on reading the Cave as an allegory about the human condition, his compromised position seems to me to be much more reliant on the political reading, and to lean overall more heavily towards it than towards finding a one-to-one correspondence between Line and Cave cf.
Hall Cooper and D. Hutchinson of Plato: Complete Works. Karasmanis On the contrary, I take the fact that difficulties are so easily encountered to be an indication that the default assumption of parallelism is likely wrong and that the interpretation is not "natural". The use of the plural in the italicized portion of this quote suggests that the human images that the prisoner sees reflected in the water are not exclusively his own, which I take to be an indication that there are other human beings living and walking freely outside of the cave.
Who are these men? Nothing in the text suggests that they are former prisoners. In fact, the full description of the allegory would militate against this reading, since, on the account given by Socrates, the released prisoner is compelled to return into the cave to take his place among the others cf.
I thus take Plato's suggestion of the existence of these other men outside of the cave to be another indication that the prisoners do not represent all of humanity and that their cognitive condition is not that of the ordinary human being. In my view, the prisoners represent a much narrower segment of the population than has been traditionally assumed: namely, the philosophically inclined souls like Glaucon and Socrates who are interested in justice and the good life.
While presumably some of the interlocutors would also fit this description, it is by no means necessary to imagine that they all would. Similarly, on my reading, it is also quite possible that some of those present and, obviously, also some of the readers could see themselves as being represented, though in different respects, by both the prisoners and the puppeteers.
As I will indicate below, I suspect that the character of Thrasymachus probably conforms to this dual role. In response to a possible objection to the interpretation of the Cave he defends, Wilberding also argues that perhaps a more adequate understanding of Socrates's comment that the prisoners are "like us" would be to take "us" to refer narrowly to Socrates and his listeners.
However, he thinks that the respect in which Socrates and his interlocutors are like the prisoners is that they are among the few who must cater to the public at large cf.
Wilberding I disagree with this aspect of his interpretation for, on my reading, pandering to the multitude is not the most important feature of the prisoners, but the fact that they are philosophically inclined souls who have unfortunately grown in a cultural milieu that has kept them away from their authentic selves and their true vocation cf.
Smith , who at page also literally likens the prisoners to Socrates and those in his company, including some whom I would more readily associate with the puppeteers and not necessarily the prisoners, like Cephalus and Polemarchus.
While in the case of the metaphor of the prisoners, I lean towards a reading that extends the symbolism narrowly to just a few targeted people, namely, the philosophically inclined see previous note , in the case of the puppeteers, I would argue that the intended referent of the metaphor is actually broader in scope: it refers to any representative of cultural forces that has a direct impact on the upbringing of citizens in general, but especially on that of the philosophically inclined given the purpose of the allegory as I see it.
The list would include not just playwrights and artists, but, as I will argue shortly, also sophists, and perhaps legislators, wealthy men, and many others.
Wilberding , While I partly agree with Wilberding's reading, it should be obvious from what I said above that I do not share his narrow understanding of the puppeteers as representing only the multitude of ordinary citizens and craftsmen, for, as I indicated earlier, I think that Plato intended for them to play a metaphorically much broader function see previous note.
That poets and playwrights are among the intended targets of those represented by the puppeteers is established not only by the fact, mentioned previously, that the whole setup of puppets and puppeteers seems to deliberatively mirror and recall the theatrical culture of popular entertainment, but also by the many other ways in which the Cave establishes a poignant and ironic dialogue with salient epics, tragedies, and comedies that formed an integral part of the cultural heritage of the Greeks.
I will explore this latter link in more detail in section 4 below. In this connection, it is also worth bearing in mind Howland's observation that in Book x Socrates mentions "shadow painting" and puppeteering together in the context of his criticism of art and imitation in general cf.
Bloom and Howland This claim and the one that follows it, indicate that Socrates himself focuses this first discussion of bad education not so much on what it would do to the ordinary human being, but rather on the effect it would have in the philosophically inclined whom he regards as the best natured. If I am right in suggesting that there is a parallel between this argument and the later discussion of education in the image of the Cave, then this should be taken as another indication that the prisoners in the cave are probably not ordinary people, but rather philosophically inclined souls enslaved by bad education.
That seems to imply that there is some sort of bad intention, some ulterior, perhaps self-interested, motive behind the educational techniques of the sophists. This may seem to contradict the interpretation I am defending which should see them instead as symbols of political oppression. However, Socrates's description of the chains occurs within the context of discussing the effects of bad education on the virtue of reason, and the more propitious effects of an educational program that turns reason away from appetitive pleasures and towards the truth.
Thus, in the final analysis, the chains can be seen as signs of political oppression too, since the enslavement of reason to the appetites results from the political dynamics of the city which places the upbringing of the noble and philosophically inclined citizens in the hands of sophists, poets and playwrights, as well as the many, all of which pander to the appetitive side of the soul, thereby corrupting its harmonious constitution.
That is why the discussion in culminates with the suggestion that the best natures, who manage to break free from the bonds of appetitive pleasures and ascend to the good, should be forced to descend again into the cave so that the prisoner's dwelling can stop being governed, like the majority of cities, "by people who fight over shadows and struggle against one another in order to rule" dc thanks to the anonymous referee for pressing me on this point.
In his very insightful analysis of The Republic, Sallis also focuses principally on the Socratic reenactment of the myth of descent into Hades cf. Sallis Referring to Thrasymachus's initial pouncing attack, Socrates comments: "I think that if I hadn't seen him before he stared at me, I'd have been dumbstruck" d. Since the reference is to an ancient popular belief that a man will be struck dumb if a wolf sees him first, the implication of Socrates's words is that Thrasymachus is a wolf, that is to say, a wild dog like Cerberus.
At the end of their exchange, Socrates, like Heracles, has tamed the wild dog.
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