The parable of the cave by Socrates

Table of Contents Definition of the Cave Meaning of Fire Meaning of Puppets Rene Descartes and the Parable of the Cave Augustine and the Parable of the Cave Conclusion Work Cited In The parable of the cave book vii, Socrates tells us about people who have lived in a cave since their existence and they know nothing more than the darkness and shadows in the cave. This is a world in which prisoners are chained in a cave. Behind them, there is a fire and puppets. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and they can not clearly see some things that are passing by. The things are real in the world of light but they can only see them as shadows. Above the fire there is the sun which is very bright.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The parable of the cave by Socrates specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Definition of the Cave The cave is the region which can be accessed by sight and unfortunately it is what the prisoner can access. The shadows of the puppet makers which are seen by the prisoners represent and/ or build a reality to them (Reeves 191). Socrates tells us that one of the prisoners escaped from the cave and at first he was blinded by the light he meets outside the cave. After he spent time in the new world, he gets a different view of the world and he realized that his life was all along a mere illusion and controlled by other people. Meaning of Fire The prisoners are chained and they are unable to see the actual objects and the puppet makers since they can turn neither their heads nor their legs, hence they can only see what is in front of them. This is what Plato explains in â€Å"the truth will be nothing but shadows of their images†. The fire signifies the sun and the sun represents the whole truth; the light that the prisoners need to see in order to gain their freedom from the world of darkness. Socrates says that the prisoner who went out of the cave and saw the light, repr esents the philosopher who is enlightened and goes back to the rest of the people to tell them about the truth they don’t know. Meaning of Puppets Socrates asserts that, â€Å"they seem less real than shadows.† This implies that the prisoners can only see the shadows of the things reflected to them from the wall. They cannot give a clear account of what they see because it portrays half truth of the reality, which is the good in the world of light. Glaucon says that people who are still not enlightened can construct justice by making agreements after deliberations among themselves. This means that the prisoners can only tell the truth based on the ability they see the shadows. The puppets are being held by the puppet handlers, who are the masters of the prisoners in the cave. In my own view, the puppets are the things and ideas used by the masters to continue keeping the prisoners in the dark.Advertising Looking for essay on philosophy? Let's see if we can help y ou! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The intensity of the fire is frightening and it is used to blackmail the prisoners. The prisoners will be frightened by the brilliant light of sun because it will burn their eyes so much such that, they may want to go back to the cave. Some people will follow the sun and will know the whole truth. They may then go back to tell the others about what is found outside the cave, which is the light and the real truth. The prisoners believe in shadows because this is all what they have seen in their lives, hence their truth. The ignorance of some prisoners will prevent them from attaining the genuine truth hence they will continue to be chained in their illusions. The freed person is enlightened and goes ahead to face the truth. Rene Descartes and the Parable of the Cave According to Rene Descartes, people become what they think they are. He further asserts that people are only aware of what has existed around them. Based on his p hilosophy, the prisoners in the cave knew the life they were in and nothing beyond. Though we view their life as a dream, it was their reality (Wartenberg 56). On the contrary, the reality could also be a dream. To some extent, Descartes defends the prisoners’ ignorance to the truth and reality because all they knew was their lives in the cave. Unless they were taken out to experience life outside the cave, they will strongly hold that the shadows they see are the reality. Augustine and the Parable of the Cave Augustine poses that people cannot say that they know the truth when they don’t know how the truth looks like. On the same line of thought, people cannot say that A resembles B when one does not know how B looks like (Olivier 49). The prisoners in the cave do not know what truth and reality are because what they have seen are mere shadows and not the real objects that emit the shadows. Conclusion In conclusion, the parable of the cave takes place in the mind of Socrates and Glaucon, Plato’s Brother. From a general stance, Plato is concerned with the revelation of truth and the manner in which the psychology of people evolves. The cave is used metaphorically to portray how people are trapped in their ignorance of basic ethics. Plato further seeks to dig into the truth of things that do not exist in reality. Following the parable of the cave, the power of an individual to interpret situations that do not exist in reality determines one’s intellectual capacity. The prisoners in the cave perceived and understood reality as it was through the shadows reflected on the wall they saw inside the cave. Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The parable of the cave by Socrates specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The whole difference comes out when one prisoner gets out and found a completely different world outside. It is obvious that people define their world based on thei r experiences of what surrounds them physically. The challenge is on whether people will give room for other influences on the truth they have. Work Cited Olivier, Bert. Philosophy and the arts: collected essays. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2009. Print. Reeves, Francis. Platonic engagements: a contemporary dialogue on morality, justice and the business world. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2004. Print. Wartenberg, Thomas. Thinking on screen: film as philosophy. Oxford, UK: Taylor Francis, 2007. Print. This essay on The parable of the cave by Socrates was written and submitted by user Samiyah Davis to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Hurricane Etymology

Hurricane Etymology Unlike most words that Spanish and English share because of their shared history with Latin, hurricane came to English directly from Spanish, where it is currently spelled huracn. But Spanish explorers and conquerers first picked up the word from Taino, an Arawak language from the Caribbean. According to most authorities, the Taino word huracan meant simply storm, although some less reliable sources indicate that it also referred to a storm god or an evil spirit. This word was a natural one for the Spanish explorers and conquerors to pick up from the indigenous population, since winds as strong as the hurricanes of the Caribbean were an unusual weather phenomenon for them. Use of ‘Hurricane’ and Huracn The fact that the Spaniards introduced the word to the English language is the reason that our word hurricane generally refers to tropical cyclones that have their origin in the Caribbean or Atlantic. When the same type of storm has its origin in the Pacific, it is known as a typhoon (originally a Greek word), or  tifà ³n  in Spanish. There is a slight difference in the way the storms are categorized in the languages, however. In Spanish, a  tifà ³n  generally is considered to be a  huracn  that forms in the Pacific, while in English hurricane and typhoon are considered to be separate types of storms, even though the only difference is where they form. In both languages, the word can be used to refer figuratively to anything that is powerful and causes turmoil. In Spanish,  huracn  can also be used to refer to a particularly impetuous person. At the time the Spanish language adopted this word, the h was pronounced (it is silent now) and was sometimes used interchangeably with f. So the same word in Portuguese became furaco, and in the late 1500s the English word was sometimes spelled forcane. Numerous other spellings were used until the word was firmly established at the end of the 16th century; Shakespeare used the spelling of hurricano to refer to a waterspout. The word huracn is not capitalized  when referring to named storms. It is used as in this sentence: El huracn Ana trajo lluvias intensas. (Hurricane Ana brought heavy rains.) Other Spanish Weather Terms in English Hurricane isnt the only Spanish weather term that has found its way into English. The most common of them, tornado, is especially interesting because of the way the two languages played off each other. The Strange Story of ‘Tornado’ and Tornado Although English got its word tornado from Spanish, Spanish surprisingly got its word tornado from English. Thats because the Spanish word that English borrowed wasnt tornado but tronada, a word for a thunderstorm. As is common in etymology, words often change form when imported into another language. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the change of -ro- to -or- was influenced by the spelling of tornar, a Spanish verb meaning to turn. Although tornado in English originally referred to various types of whirlwinds or rotary storms, including hurricanes, in the United States the word eventually came to refer primarily to a type of funneled windstorm common in the U.S. Midwest. In modern Spanish, tornado, borrowed from English, can still refer to various kinds of storms and whirlwinds, including hurricanes. A windstorm on the scale of a tornado, or smaller such as a whirlwind, can also be called a torbellino. Derecho Another type of storm phenomenon is known as a derecho, a direct borrowing of the Spanish derecho, which can, confusingly to foreigners, mean either right (as an adjective) or straight. In this context, it is the second meaning that matters. A derecho refers to a cluster of thunderstorms that travels in a straight line and is capable of causing great destruction. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Gustavus Hinrichs of the Iowa Weather Service started using the term in the late 1800s to avoid confusing a certain type of storm system with tornadoes. Key Takeaways The English word hurricane started out as an indigenous Caribbean terms that was adopted into Spanish and then spread to English via Spanish explorers and conquerors.Because the word hurricane came from the Caribbean, a different term is used for the same type of storm when occurring in the Pacific Ocean.The weather terms tornado and derecho also come from Spanish.

Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution - Freedom from Cruel and Research Paper

Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution - Freedom from Cruel and unusual Punishment - Research Paper Example The cruel and usual punishment case laws and statutes have helped to define our current application of the law with respect to the 8th amendment. George Cole (2006) emphasized cruel and unusual punishment includes death penalty, torture, inhuman and degrading punishment, and excessive fines and excessive deprivations. Such punishment is unpopular because it unnecessarily imposes excessive torment or embarrassment on the convicted criminals. Historically, the law makers of the English Bill of rights if 1689 coined the words cruel and usual punishment in its crafting of the English version of the bill of rights. William Schabas (2008) states the United Nations General Assembly included in its international bill of rights the phrase â€Å"No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumn or degrading treatment or punishment† in Article 5 of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Following suit, the United States included the same provisions in it 1787 Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 2008, Greg Roza (2011) reiterated the United States Supreme Court ruled that cruel and usual punishment wa s meted by American soldiers when they use waterboarding to torture the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Likewise, the American soldiers mistreated and forced the prisoners to participate in humiliating activities. According to the Eight Amendment, the law preventing the implementation of cruel and unusual punishment was enforced to eliminate prior methods of punishments classified as cruel and unusual. For example, impalement was form of cruel and unusual punishment becauese the punishers should pierce the person’s body with a long killing tool. Here, the person would suffer a painful and slow death. This type of European and Asian punishment was popular during the time of Ivan the Terrible. Other forms of cruel and unusual punishment included drawing and quartering, embowelling alive, public dissecting, beheading, and burning alive [Wilkerson V. Utah, 99 U.S. 130, 135 (1878)]. The courts allowed electrocution to be excempt from the list of cruel and unusual punishment [In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436 (1890)]. Complaints about cruel and unusual punishment had been voiced in 1789. Back then, the bill rights proponents included the fight to eliminate cruel and unusual punishment. This is fou nd in the Annals of Congress 754 (1789). English history laid the path to the inclusion of the â€Å"cruel and unsual punishment† clause in its 1689 bill of rights. This is shown in E.g., 2 J. Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Constitution 111 (2d ed 1836); 3 id.at 447 -52 (Ref: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment08/03.html#1). Likewise, the Supreme Court rulings include Granucci, â€Å"Nor Cruel and Unusual Punishments Inflicted†: The Original Meaning, 57 Calif. L. Rev. 839 (1969). The term without proportionality had been used by the Court in the case Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910). Greg Roensch (Roensch, 2007) agrees it is vague that the ``unusual'' can be included under the term cruelty Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 276 n.20 (1972) ( with Justice Brennan seeing eye to eye)], even though it may be significant in Weems, 217 U.S. at 377, and in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 100 n. 32 (1958) (plurality opinion), and it was significant in the case of Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 994-95 (1991) (``severe, mandatory

Compare and contrast Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Compare and contrast - Essay Example The story takes the help of a simple dream or illusionary craze of the young boy to show him the stark reality of Dublin’s life that is very different from the world of is own making. This describes the boy’s experience, emphasizing more on the character portrayal than anything else. The narrator describes how the city and the surroundings had eaten into the health of the young boy’s life and contributed towards creating the person that he was. The protagonist of the story is the matured boy who had once been the innocent boy depicted in the story. The story opens with the lines â€Å"North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers School set the boys free† (Joyce). Ironically, even though they were free from school, even their play did not give them the desired pleasure, for it was an equally dull world, where not even play brought any refreshment for the children. All these descriptions of dullness actually creates the backdrop against which the boy took resort of imagination larger than life and hence encounters a surprising disillusionment The antagonist in the story is the culture and life of Dublin, which has a significant role in shaping the boy’s mind along with the other inhabitants in the city. Joyce refers to Dublin as â€Å"indeed sterile†. This coaxes the innocent mind to seek shelter to a world of his own making or imagination where the boy seeks peace and happiness that the reality could not give him. The narrator himself is the young boy in the story who brings out the stark reality and the disillusionment undergone by the innocent soul. In his allegorical piece of work, Joyce intends to make the reader realize the harsh life that people were compelled to face in Dublin. And creates a platform for disillusionment which was a combination of wisdom and

Film Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 6

Film Analysis - Essay Example also tries to answer some major concerns like why these people have always remained so poorly understood and why their history is fraught with endless stories of struggle and strife. This essay aims to concentrate on one planning issue in particular which is cultural awareness and assimilation. This issue has a lot of depth and intensity to it which is why following discussion will be based on it. There are clear evidences present in the film to support this planning issue, each of which will be scrutinized in this essay. First piece of evidence supporting the fact that the film promotes cultural awareness and assimilation is when the FBI agent Ray Levoi begins to go deeper and has his first look at what is hidden under the surface. The surface image of Native Americans is very stereotypical which is created by the white elite forces. It speaks that all Native Americans are wild and deranged especially the infamous Indian tribes. The unmitigated hatred spawned by white people for Indian tribes is a very grave issue which forms the bedrock of this film. Levoi is more culturally aware than others and so, he believes that some Indian tribes may be vicious, but the same cannot be said for all. There is no reason to possess such racial hatred for the Indians as is possessed by characters like Agent Frank â€Å"Cooch† and Jack Milton in the film. Levoi has a different attitude than his partner Cooch toward Native Americans. He understands that there are power inequalities between the Indians and whi tes. After developing a harmonious standing with some tribal elders like Grandpa Sam, he come to know that these inequalities range from political power to social relationships. He sees that whites are certainly more privileged than Native Indians are and he sympathizes with local Indian tribes. This shows how culturally aware he becomes which helps him to swiftly assimilate with them. Another point highlighting Levoi’s cultural awareness is his association with Maggie

The Celts Religion And Society Religion Essay

The Celts Religion And Society Religion Essay The Celts are traditionally ignored in world history textbooks and course, but the Celtic way of life, Celtic institutions, and the Celtic world view were superimposed onto Germanic and classical culture. The later monolithic European culture is greatly influenced by these early peoples. Most of what we know about Celtic life comes from Ireland-the largest and most extensive of the Celtic populations, the Gauls in central and western Europe, we only know about through Roman sources-and these sources are decidedly unfriendly to the Gauls. We know that the early Celtic societies were organized around warfare-this structure would commonly characterize cultures in the process of migration: the Celts, the Huns, and later the Germans. Although classical Greek and Roman writers considered the Celts to be violently insane, warfare was not an organized process of territorial conquest. Among the Celts, warfare seems to have mainly been a sport, focussing on raids and hunting. In Ireland, the institution of the fianna involved young, aristocratic warriors who left the tribal area for a time to conduct raids and to hunt. When the Celts came into contact with the Romans, they changed their manner of warfare to a more organized defense agains a larger army. It was these groups that the classical writers encountered and considered insane. The Celtic method of warfare was to stand in front of the opposing army and scream and beat their spears and swords against their shields. They would then run headlong into the opposing army and s creamed the entire way-this often had the effect of scaring the opposing soldiers who then broke into a run; fighting a fleeing army is relatively easy work. If the opposing army did not break ranks, the Celts would stop short of the army, return to their original position, and start the process over agina. Celtic society was hierarchical and class-based. Tribes were led by kings but political organizations were remarkably plastic. According to both Roman and Irish sources, Celtic society was divided into three groups: a warrior aristocracy, an intellectual class that included druids, poets, and jurists, and everyone else. Society was tribal and kinship-based; ones ethnic identity was largely derived from the larger tribal group, called the tuath (too-awth) in Irish (meaning people) but ultimately based on the smallest kinship organizational unit, the clan, called the cenedl (ke-na-dl), or kindred, in Irish. The clan provided identity and protection-disputes between individuals were always disputes between clans. Since it was the duty of the clan to protect individuals, crimes against an individual would be prosecuted against an entire clan. One of the prominent institutions among the Celts was the blood-feud in which murder or insults against an individual would require the entire clan to violently exact retribution. The blood-feud was in part avoided by the institution of professional mediators. At least an Ireland, a professional class of jurists, called brithem, would mediate disputes and exact reparations on the offending clan. Even though Celtic society centered around a warrior aristocracy, the position of women was fairly high in Celtic society. In the earliest periods, women participated both in warfare and in kingship. While the later Celts would adopt a strict patriarchal model, they still have a memory of women leaders and warriors. Celtic society was based almost entirely on pastoralism and the raising of cattle or sheep; there was some agriculture in the Celtic world, but not much. The importance of cattle and the pastoral life created a unique institution in Celtic, particularly Irish, life: the cattle-raid. The stealing of another groups cattle was often the proving point of a group of young warriors; the greatest surviving Irish myth, the TÃ ¡in BÃ ³ Cualingne, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley, centers around one such mythically-enhanced cattle-raid. There was no urbanization of any kind among the Celts until the advent of Roman rule; in Ireland, urbanization did not occur until the Danish and Norwegian invasions. Society was not based on trade or commerce; what trade took place was largely in the form of barter. Celtic economy was probably based on the economic principle of most tribal economies: reciprocity. In a reciprocal economy, goods and other services are not exchanged for other goods, but they are given by individuals to individuals based on mutual kinship relationships and obligations. (A family economy is typical of a reciprocal economy-parents and children give each other material goods and services not in trade but because they are part of a family). Religion From the nineteenth century onwards, Celtic religion has enjoyed a fascination among modern Europeans and European-derived cultures. In particular, the last few decades have seen a phenomenal growth not only interest in Celtic religion, but in religious practices in part derived from Celtic sources. For all this interest, however, we know next to nothing about Celtic religion and practices. The only sources for Celtic religious practices were written by Romans and Greeks, who considered the Celts little more than animals, and by later Celtic writers in Ireland and Wales who were writing from a Christian perspective. Simply put, although the Celts had a rich and pervasive religious culture, it has been permanently lost to human memory. We can make some general comments about Celtic religion based on the often-hostile accounts of classical writers. The Celts were polytheistic; these gods were ultimately derived from more primitive, Indo-European sources that gave rise to the polytheistic religions of Greece, Persia, and India. The Romans in trying to explain these gods, however, linked them with Roman gods as did the Romanized Gauls-so we really have no idea as to the Celtic character of these gods and their functions. We do know that Celtic gods tended to come in threes; the Celtic logic of divinity almost always centered on triads. This triadic logic no doubt had tremendous significance in the translation of Christianity into northern European cultural models. It is almost certain that the material world of the Celts was suffused with divinity that was both advantageous and harmful. Certain areas were considered more charged with divinity than others, especially pools, lakes and small groves, which were the sites of the cental ritual activities of Celtic life. The Celts were non-urbanized and according to Roman sources, Celtic ritual involved no temples or building structures-Celtic ritual life, then, was centered mainly on the natural environment. Celtic ritual life centered on a special class, called the druides or druids by the Romans, presumably from a Gaulish word. Although much has been written about druids and Celtic ritual practice, we know next to nothing about either. Heres what we can gather. As a special group, the druids performed many of the functions that we would consider priestly functions, including ritual and sacrifice, but they also included functions that we would place under education and law. These rituals and practices were probably kept secret-a tradition common among early Indo-European peoples-which helps to explain why the classical world knows nothing about them. The only thing that the classical sources attest is that the druids performed barbaric or horrid rituals at lakes and groves; there was a fair amount of consensus among the Greeks and Romans that these rituals involved human sacrifice. This may or may not be true; there is some evidence of human sacrifice among the Celts, but it does not se em to have been a prevalent practice. According to Julius Caesar, who gives the longest account of druids, the center of Celtic belief was the passing of souls from one body to another. From an archaeological perspective, it is clear that the Celts believed in an after-life, for material goods are buried with the dead. http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MA/CELTS.HTM

Search for Perfection in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye Essay -- Blues

Search for a Perfection in The Bluest Eye    The concept of physical beauty and desire to conform to a prescribed definition of what is considered beautiful can destroy a person's life. In Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye, many characters are obsessed with attaining the idealist definition of what is considered beautiful. The characters of Geraldine, Pauline, and Pecola all believe that physical perfection leads to acceptance; however, it is the same belief that causes their personal downfalls and prevents them from recognizing their own inner beauty.   Ã‚  Ã‚   Geraldine's anxieties over wanting to comply with what others think is beautiful, damage her existence. For example, the character of Geraldine is so consumed with physical perfection that she prevents herself from accepting her black heritage. When the author illustrates how woman like Geraldine act, she asserts, "They hold their behind in for fear of sway too free; when they wear lipstick they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips to thick, and they worry, worry, worry about the edges of their hair" (Morrison 83). Geraldine is so ashamed of her black characteristics that she tries to hide them. She thinks black people are ugly, and she wants to appear white because she equates having lighter skin with being a better person. Geraldine thinks she will be discriminated for being black, therefore, she refuses to accept and own any physical features of her culture. In addition, when the author illustrates how Geraldine is more concerned with her baby's physical appe arance than with his emotional needs, she writes, "He was always brushed, bathed, oiled, and shod. Geraldine did not talk to him,coo to him, or indulge him in kissing bouts, but she saw that every o... ...ining an ideal appearance in order to accommodate what others view as beautiful can ruin one's existence. The characters of Geraldine, Pauline, and Pecola all erroneously believe that obtaining a certain look will enhance their lives. However, as a result of their search for a perfect outward image they are never able to value their inner selves. Works Cited Bayles, Martha. "Special Effects, Special Pleading." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz. Michigan: Gale Research Inc., 194-213. Davis, Cynthia. "Self, Society, and Myth in Toni Morrison's Fiction." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Draper, James P., ed. Michigan: Gale Research Inc., 1994. 215-273. Morrison, Toni.   The Bluest Eye. New York, New York: Plume, 1994. Steiner, Wendy. "The Clearest Eye." Contemporary Authors. Trosky, Susan, M., ed. Michigan: Gale Research Inc., 1994. 239.