Man or a Mouse? Victims Essay

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This responsibility -- using knowledge to actualize others, is a predominant theme in much of Plato's works that resonates directly with contemporary pedagogical theory.

The Allegory itself is written as a fictional dialog between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon. In the allegory of the cave, the reader, whom Plato assumes is also a philosopher on a path towards enlightenment, is treated to a play within a play. There is a dark cave, cavernous and damp. Individuals (prisoners) have been chained in this chasm since birth so that they are able to move in a way that they can only look at the wall in front of them; otherwise they are immobile. "Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads" (vii: 515). There is only dim light in the cave, a smoldering fire lit behind the prisoners. Behind the wall, though, there is a cloth screen that allows a pseudo-wall in which others can manipulate puppets that will cast shadows so the prisons can view these events (the only stimulation they have). Behind them, there is a fire, the only light in the cave. It appears these puppeteers are those in transition between the light and the dark, having been unchained, yet still not wise enough to arise out of the cave.

For the prisoners, then, reality would "be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects,"(vii: 517) representing any person of authority trying to educate others in their own way of thinking.

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Thus, for Plato, not only are the ideas that are placed upon the individual somewhat artificial (a shadow rather than a material object, form yet no substance), but they are an abjectly false reality in that they are manipulated by those still unenlightened. "Then, if this is true, our view of these matters must be this, that education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions"(vii: 535)

For the student of Nietzsche, however, one of the issues that is immediately apparent for this concept is that of the translation. Ubermensch may be alternatively translated with connotations of excessiveness, intensity, transcendence, superiority, greed, or heightened leadership. Mensch refers to homo sapiens, a human being, as opposed to a specific character. Thus, when used as a noun the term means one thing, but as an.....

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