Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which appears in book VII of The Republic, is a description of such a journey, as are the writings of Teresa of Avila.

The term Platonism is used because such a view is seen to parallel Plato's Theory of Forms and a " World of Ideas " ( Greek: Eidos ( εἶδος )) described in Plato's Allegory of the cave: the everyday world can only imperfectly approximate an unchanging, ultimate reality.

Philosophical texts have influenced the series as well: many similarities exist between Amber and Plato's Republic ( see the Allegory of the cave ) and the classical problems of metaphysics, virtuality, solipsism, logic, possible worlds, probability, doubles and essences are also repeatedly reflected on.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna

The Allegory of the Cave — also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave — is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate " our nature in its education and want of education " ( 514a ).

The Allegory may be related to Plato's Theory of Forms, according to which the " Forms " ( or " Ideas "), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.

Plato's Phaedo contains similar imagery to that of the Allegory of the Cave ; a philosopher recognizes that before philosophy, his soul was " a veritable prisoner fast bound within his body ... and that instead of investigating reality by itself and in itself it is compelled to peer through the bars of its prison ".

* Animated interpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave

The brain in a vat is a contemporary version of the argument given in Hindu Maya illusion, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Zhuangzi's " Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly ", and the evil demon in René Descartes ' Meditations on First Philosophy.

The Republic contains Plato's Allegory of the cave with which he explains his concept of The Forms as an answer to the problem of universals.

Theologian Gerard Loughlin interprets Dark City as a retelling of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

Both Plato's cave and Platonism have meaningful, not just superficial connections, because Plato's ideas were preceded and probably influenced by the hugely popular Pythagoreans of ancient Greece, who believed that the world was, quite literally, generated by numbers.

For more on forms, read Plato's parable of the cave.

An early written thought experiment was Plato's allegory of the cave.

Sometimes interpreted as symbols of Plato's cave or the Three Magi, they seem lost in a typical Giorgionesque dreamy mood, reinforced by a hazy light characteristic of his other landscapes, such as the Pastoral Concert, now in the Louvre.

Plato's allegory of the cave influenced western thinkers who believe that happiness is found by finding deeper meaning.

In his best-known dialogue, The Republic, Plato drew an analogy between human sensation and the shadows that pass along the wall of a cave-an allegory known as Plato's allegory of the cave.

Such steps follow the same pattern as Plato's metaphor of the sun, his allegory of the cave and his divided line ; progress brings one closer and closer to reality as each step explains the relative reality of the past.

* Plato's allegory of the cave

Having lobbied the ABC to screen the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, then packed the audience for a post-program audience discussion with members who made comments about " carbon 14, eugenics, Plato's cave and Nazism ", referring to fears of global warming as " Hitler-Nazi race science ... this will destroy Africa ".

The allegory of the cave primarily depicts Plato's distinction between the world of appearances and the ' real ' world of the Forms, as well as helping to justify the philosopher's place in society as king.

The shadows witnessed in the cave correspond to the lowest level on Plato's line, that of imagination and conjecture.

On leaving the cave, however, the prisoner comes to see objects more real than the statues inside of the cave, and this correlates with the third stage on Plato's line, understanding.

The novelist Herbert Gold in Bohemia ( 1994 ) called it " Sarfatti's Cave ," after Plato's cave:

Presupposed in Plato's system is a doctrine of levels of insight, in which a certain kind of detached understanding is alone capable of penetrating to the most sublime wisdom.

In much the same way, we recognize the importance of Shakespeare's familarity with Plutarch and Montaigne, of Shelley's study of Plato's dialogues, and of Coleridge's enthusiastic plundering of the writings of many philosophers and theologians from Plato to Schelling and William Godwin, through which so many abstract ideas were brought to the attention of English men of letters.

This painting by Anselm Feuerbach re-imagines a scene from Plato's Symposium ( Plato ) | Symposium, in which the tragedian Agathon welcomes the drunken Alcibiades into his home.

He is best known for his appearance in Plato's Symposium, which describes the banquet given to celebrate his obtaining a prize for his first tragedy at the Lenaia in 416.

Stylistic evidence suggests that the poem ( with most of Plato's other alleged epigrams ) was actually written some time after Plato had died: its form is that of the Hellenistic erotic epigram, which did not become popular until after 300 BC.

An example of ancient aesthetics in Greece through poetry is Plato's quote: " For the authors of those great poems which we admire, do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art ; but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own.

In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's Republic ( c. 380 BC ), and wonders if he and his guests might recollect a story which exemplifies such a society.

In the Timaeus, Plato's major cosmological dialogue, the Platonic solid he associated with fire was the tetrahedron which is formed from four triangles and contains the least volume with the greatest surface area.

Cerberus featured in many prominent works of Greek and Roman literature, most famously in Virgil's Aeneid, Peisandros of Rhodes ' epic poem the Labours of Hercules, the story of Orpheus in Plato's Symposium, and in Homer's Iliad, which is the only known reference to one of Heracles ' labours which first appeared in a literary source.

The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Plato's Timaeus, written circa 360 BC, in which the demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe.

Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's energeia with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind ( nous ), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism ( also called idealism ).

In Plato's Republic, the origin of the state lies in the natural inequality of humanity, which is embodied in the division of labour.

Plato actually returned for several appearances during the show's final 1986 season, which appeared on ABC, including an episode ( Plato's final appearance in the series ) in which Kimberly suffers the effects of bulimia.

For instance, something or someone ugly on the outside can be beautiful on the inside, which is one of the main points of Plato's dialogue, Alcibiades, and the Symposion, in which Alcibiades also appears.

Fortunately for Herbert, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classic works, including Plato's Republic, and More's Utopia.

In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which, from Plato's time on, has said that essentia precedes existentia.

Aristophanes, in Plato's Symposium, mentions women who love women, but uses the term trepesthai ( to be focused on ) instead of eros, which was applied to other erotic relationships between men, and between men and women.

The Myth of Er at the end of Plato's Republic tells of the dead arriving at the " plain of Lethe ", through which the river Ameles (" careless ") runs.

Larissa was indeed the birthplace of Meno, who thus became, along with Xenophon and a few others, one of the generals leading several thousands Greeks from various places, in the ill-fated expedition of 401 ( retold in Xenophon's Anabasis ) meant to help Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II, king of Persia, overthrow his elder brother Artaxerxes II and take over the throne of Persia ( Meno is featured in Plato's dialogue bearing his name, in which Socrates uses the example of " the way to Larissa " to help explain Meno the difference between true opinion and science ( Meno, 97a – c ) ; this " way to Larissa " might well be on the part of Socrates an attempt to call to Meno's mind a " way home ", understood as the way toward one's true and " eternal " home reached only at death, that each man is supposed to seek in his life ).

An olive tree in west Athens, named " Plato's Olive Tree ", was said to be a remnant of the grove within which Plato's Academy was situated, which would make it approximately 2, 400 years old.