Platos Allegory and Pericles Democracy Principles - Essay Example

HERE HERE YOUR HERE HERE Plato’s Allegory and Pericles’ Democracy Principles In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, theauthor attempts to use the cave as a comparison to a prison that twists reality and blocks the process of learning. The people who are chained in the cave do not understand what they are being shown. They only see shadows of figures on the walls and, having no experience in the real world, the cave prisoners are unable to perceive reality from the shadows. It is an effort to show that people are simple-minded and do not have much self-awareness when it comes to learning processes or the desire to learn.

Without someone to guide them, people will act much like the prisoners in the cave: ignorant about their lives and unmotivated to study and better themselves. People who live in darkness, like those in the cave, see things only from a surface perspective and are unable to understand wisdom. Once one of the prisoners is led from the cave to see the truth of reality, they are no longer able to return to the darkness because the prisoners will not believe the truth. They will instead remain rigid in their thinking even though it is completely distorted.

In Pericles’ work, he talks about freedom enjoyed in a liberal government system when praising the dead for this help in fighting an important war that benefits all members of Athenian society. He says that he is concerned about giving too much praise to the dead individual without giving similar praise to other men. This leads to Pericles trying to talk about equality which is an important concept under democratic law. When he says that everyone in society is fair judges who live according to their own wishes, he is admiring Athens and the concepts of liberty enjoyed by everyone.

Being free is part of happiness and sometimes this takes war.