Plato used the word aeon to denote the eternal world of ideas, which he conceived was " behind " the perceived world, as demonstrated in his famous allegory of the cave.

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

), the same doctrine is elaborated in the famous allegory of the cave ( 514a-520a ).

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

Plato considered there were rewards for the virtuous in the heavens and punishment for the wicked under the earth ; the soul was valued more highly than the material body, and the material world was understood to be imperfect and not fully real ( illustrated in Socrates's allegory of the cave ).

In The Republic, these concepts were illustrated using the metaphor of the sun, the analogy of the divided line, and the allegory of the cave.

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.

Key epistemological features of the charioteer myth are ( 1 ) an emphasis, as with the cave allegory, upon true knowledge as ascent, ( 2 ) and the need to tame one's passionate nature to obtain true knowledge.

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

The centre piece of the Republic, Part II, numbers 2 – 3, discusses the rule of the philosopher, and the vision of the Agathon with the allegory of the cave, which is clarified in the theory of forms.

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.

At the end of this allegory, Plato asserts that it is the philosopher's burden to reenter the cave.

John Murdoch's escape from the prison parallels the escape from the cave in the allegory.

It is next and in support of the idea that philosophers are the best rulers that Plato fashions the ship of state metaphor, one of his most often cited ideas ( along with his allegory of the cave ).

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 ).

Like the Mahābhārata, the Ramayana is not just a story: it presents the teachings of ancient Hindu sages ( Vedas ) in narrative allegory, interspersing philosophical and devotional elements.

In 1794 Humboldt was admitted to the famous Weimar coterie and contributed ( June 7, 1795 ) to Schiller's new periodical, Die Horen, a philosophical allegory entitled Die Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius.

Philo used philosophical allegory to attempt to fuse and harmonize Greek philosophy with Jewish philosophy.

There, Dennis waxes philosophical about the dump, thinking of it as an allegory for his life up to that point, and possibly his life in the future.

Like the Ramayana, it is a philosophical allegory, exploring the ideals of justice and fidelity as embodied by the protagonists, Prince Rama and Queen Sita.

He vehemently fought the extreme rationalism of philosophical interpretation as well as interpretations based on philosophical allegory.

His opposition to philosophical allegory must also be ascribed to the conditions of his time, the fear of undermining the unquestioning faith of the simple Jew, and the danger to Jewish survival in exile.

He writes firmly that Sartre, " is not content, like some philosophers, to write fable, allegory, or a philosophical tale in the manner of Candide ; he is content only with a proper work of art that is at the same time a synthesis of philosophical specifications.

" Hamsa " may be a religious pun or allegory with a philosophical meaning.

This attached a level of temptation to the button itself, and is often used in religious or philosophical allegory, a parallel to Adam and Eve's consumption of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

The rationalistic method pursued by the new school of Maimonists ( including Levi ben Abraham ben Chayyim of Villefranche, near the town of Perpignan, and Jacob Anatolio ) especially provoked his indignation ; for the sermons preached and the works published by them seemed to resolve the entire Scriptures into allegory and threatened to undermine the Jewish faith and the observance of the Law and tradition.

But these are quickly refigured into a personal system informed by the scientific and organized like a machine ... in the Irreal work, allegory operates according to an altered, but constant and orderly iconographic system.

Abilgaard used pictorial allegory like ideograms, to communicate ideas and transmit messages through symbols to a refined public that was initiated into this form of symbology.

The myths refer to a beast with one horn that can only be tamed by a virgin ; subsequently, some writers translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary.

Another story, " The Tale of Truth and Falsehood ", adapts the conflict of Horus and Set into an allegory, in which the characters are direct personifications of truth and lies rather than deities associated with those concepts.

Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, without intentionally creating an allegory or falling into didacticism.

This is an obvious allegory on the supposed power of prayer to mitigate the misfortunes into which one's folly has led one.

It is a story told as a sermon might be delivered: an allegory ... each scene is at once so simple and so charged and layered that it catches us again and again ... Somehow all of Bergman's own past, that of his father, that of his reading and doing and seeing, that of his Swedish culture, of his political burning and religious melancholy, poured into a series of pictures which carry that swell of contributions and contradictions so effortlessly that you could tell the story to a child, publish it as a storybook of photographs and yet know that the deepest questions of religion and the most mysterious revelation of simply being alive are both addressed.

With William Empson's notion of placing the complex into the simple, Alpers thus critically defines pastoral as a means of allegory.

" Conceived initially as a pictorial allegory the book quickly evolved into a much deeper work, drawing inspiration from Taoism and Buddhism, but primarily from his experiences as an artist.

The Romaunt of the Rose is a partial translation into Middle English of the French allegory, the Roman de la Rose.

In his 1999 study of the effect on British literature of the diseases and climates of the colonies, Alan Bewell read " the landscape of ' To Autumn as " a kind of biomedical allegory of the coming into being of English climatic space out of its dangerous geographical alternatives.

Rather, it is interpreted as an allegory for the Holy Spirit and an expression of God's sovereignty over and intervention into the material world.

For example, his short work To the Princess Margaret marked the arrival of Margaret of England into Scotland and the extended allegory The Thrissil and the Rois commemorates her subsequent marriage to King James.

The manticore made a late appearance in heraldry, during the 16th century, and it influenced some Mannerist representations, as in Bronzino's allegory The Exposure of Luxury, ( National Gallery, London )— but more often in the decorative schemes called " grotteschi "— of the sin of Fraud, conceived as a monstrous chimera with a beautiful woman's face, and in this way it passed by means of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia into the seventeenth and eighteenth century French conception of a sphinx.

" For the first time, the allegory of Marianne condensed into itself Liberty, the Republic and the Revolution.

Brecht's Life of Galileo ( premiered on May 17, 1966 ), transformed by Lyubimov into a powerful allegory of Soviet intelligentsia's set of moral and intellectual dilemmas, brought Vysotsky his first leading theater role ( along with some fitness lessons: he had to perform numerous acrobatic tricks on stage ).

It is still a matter of discussion among theologians whether the story talks of an actual material transformation of water into wine, or is a spiritual allegory.

This interpretation changes the work into an allegory of purgatory and damnation.

From 1955 through 1960 Erdman toured extensively as a solo artist throughout the U. S. Notable works from her repertory of that period include Changingwoman ( 1951 ) with a commissioned score by Henry Cowell including vocalizations by Erdman as she moved through a multi-colored abstract projected environment, Portrait of a Lady created to jazz recordings that were layered by John Cage into his eight track commissioned score, Dawn Song, a lyrical solo with commissioned score by Alan Hovhaness, Fearful Symmetry ( 1956 ) an allegory in six visions inspired by William Blake's poem, The Tyger to Ezra Laderman's Sonata for Violincello in which Erdman emerged from and interacted with a metal sculpture by Carlus Dyer, and Four Portraits from Duke Ellington's Shakespeare Album ( 1958 ), a suite of comic portrayals of Shakespearean heroines.

Film critic Marek Haltof sees the film as a political allegory in which Weronika represents Poland and Véronique France, or the West: both are highly cultured, but while Véronique is seemingly free to choose her destiny, Weronika's early death represents the sacrifice of Poland during the Second World War and its subsequent incorporation into the Soviet bloc ; Véronique senses this loss without realizing what it is, and that she is incomplete without Weronika.

It is still a matter of discussion among theologians whether the story talks of an actual material transformation of water into wine, or is a spiritual allegory.

" Priest Skear ", a pamphlet that turns the drowning of the 23 Chinese cocklepickers in Morecambe Bay in 2004 into a political allegory, appeared in 2010 and was the Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice for winter 2010.

While these works were not the first in the " Magic Universe " or " Warlock " series, they marked a turning point after the 1973 oil crisis and Niven's subsequent transformation of the series into an allegory for a modern-day energy crisis ; the novella was also the first work longer than a short story.