We discuss your papers (the C or better policy) and the grammar summative assessment (semi-colons, FANBOYS).
Then, we'll discuss Galileo...
And Plato...
And Aristotle...
And Socrates.
Then, you'll get copies of "Allegory of the Cave."
Read as a group. Discuss these things:
Small group discussions – Choose a reporter to write down the group’s responses and report back to class when class comes back together.
Small Group Discussion Questions
- Describe how the people in the cave are situated in Plato's parable. Why can't they move their legs or necks to take a look around? What is the only thing they are capable of seeing? What is their only source of light?
- Would you want to be released from the cave? Why or why not?
- What do these prisoners trapped in the cavern believe is real?
- What is like the cave in our world?
- How do the prisoners react when they first see sunlight? Why?
- What are the stages of the liberated prisoner's experience outside the cave?
- What does Plato’s allegory of the cave tell us about how we recognize things?
- How is the way you understand the world, your ideas and beliefs, shaped by the actions of others?
- What does Plato’s cave tell us about what we see with our eyes?
- Who has the power to shape your ideas and beliefs? In what ways is this good and in what ways is it not so good?
- What is truth according to Plato in this allegory?
- Are there things you know to be true? What are they, and how do you know them?
- How is it possible that people can believe in illusion and accept it as reality?
- What sometimes happens to people when the illusion is shattered and reality is revealed?
- Describe other "caves" in modern life in which people might be "imprisoned" or feel "imprisoned".
- What happens if a prisoner is released and is compelled to look at the light? What does he see?
- If the liberated prisoner goes back to the cave and tries to explain to his former fellow prisoners, what kind of reaction will he get? Why?
- To what extent do you find Socrates point about human tendency to confuse "shadows" with "reality" relevant today?
- What could be the elements that prevent people from seeing the truth, or regarding "shadow" as the "truth"?
- What do the imagery of "shackles" and the "cave" suggest about the perspective of the cave dwellers or prisoners?
- In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?
- Compare the perspective of the freed prisoner with the cave prisoners.
Whole group discussion
Reports from small groups
Be able to answer this:
What is Plato trying to tell us in the allegory?Perception vs. reason – how can we know things about the world?
Homework:
Write one page discussing your ideas using what you have learned from the "Allegory of the Cave." Be sure to discuss this situation in terms of sight, vision, blindness, truth, reality, illusion, light, and dark as it is appropriate.
