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 ).

In his allegory of the cave Plato likens the achievement of philosophical understanding to emerging into the sun from a dark cave, where only vague shadows of what lies beyond that prison are cast dimly upon the wall.

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.

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 ).

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India.

" 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 allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.

Directed by Neill Blomkamp, a native South African, and produced by Peter Jackson, the action / science-fiction film depicts a sub-class of alien refugees forced to live in the slums of Johannesburg in what many saw as a creative allegory for apartheid.

The third shows his coronation procession through Prague as King of Bohemia, and the fourth depicts an allegory of his victory over the invading Turks.

Before Numenius of Apamea and Plotinus ' Enneads, no Platonic works ontologically clarified the Demiurge from the allegory in Plato's Timaeus.

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 name is also a reference to the allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic where a philosopher contemplates perception, reality and illusion.

There was some objection to the term, as many writers preferred terms such as " poetic painting " ( poesia ), or wanted to make a distinction between the " true " istoria, covering history including biblical and religious scenes, and the fabula, covering pagan myth, allegory, and scenes from fiction, which could not be regarded as true.

The parable can be distinguished from other narrative types which have a moral content, such as the apologue and the allegory, although this distinction has not always been clear.

The distinction between allegory and ' real-life ' in Piers is by no means absolute, and the entire passage, as Wendy Scase observes, is suspiciously reminiscent of the ' false confession ' tradition in medieval literature ( represented elsewhere by the Confessio Goliae and by Fals-Semblaunt in Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose ).

( The paragraphs above do not seem to distinguish between typology and allegory, but there is an important distinction.

The obscure and extravagant imagery has led to a wide variety of interpretations: historicist interpretations see in Revelation a broad view of history ; preterist interpretations treat Revelation as mostly referring to the events of the apostolic era ( 1st century ), or -- at the latest -- the fall of the Roman Empire ; futurists believe that Revelation describes future events ; and idealist or symbolic interpretations consider that Revelation does not refer to actual people or events, but is an allegory of the spiritual path and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.

Some Christian readers consider this story to contain an allegory, representing the interaction between the church as ' bride ' and God.

Since Star Trek has consistently used alien interactions as an allegory for the real world, the Prime Directive has served as a template to tell stories which resemble those of real human societies and their interactions with less technologically advanced societies, such as the interaction between modern cultures and indigenous peoples.

The story, about a young boy who orders a Montreal Canadiens sweater from the Eaton's catalogue, but receives a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey instead, is considered by many to be a literary allegory for the linguistic and cultural tensions between English and French Canadians, and is thus considered essential reading for anybody who seeks to understand the complex realities of linguistic and cultural identity in Canada.

Joe Nickell identifies parallels between the accounts of Oak Island and the allegory of the " Secret Vault " in York Rite Freemasonry, similar to the Chase Vault, identifies many prominent excavators as Freemasons, and suggests that the accounts explicitly include Masonic imagery.

In Ishmael, Daniel Quinn puts forth the idea of the story of Cain and Abel being an allegory describing the conflict between agricultural and pastoral peoples in the Fertile Crescent.

Virgil introduces two very important uses of pastoral, the contrast between urban and rural lifestyles and political allegory most notably in Eclogues 1 and 4 respectively.

In the New Testament, Paul the Apostle made Hagar's experience an allegory of the difference between law and grace in his Epistle to the Galatians ().

The allegory in the second part of Canto IX sees Camões describing, the scene between the Nautas-and the Nymphs that were expecting them-prepared by Venus.

The film contains obvious allegory that reflect the political situation between the two countries at the time it was produced.

Later dissenting theorists, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, held that this focus on allegory was faulty and based on a wrong analogy between the plastic arts and poetry rooted in the Horatian dictum ut pictura poesis (" as is painting so is poetry ").

* Some critics distinguish between the allegory ( in which characters and events have political, religious or other meanings ) and the novel ( in which characters and events stand only for themselves ) and so exclude The Pilgrim's Progress and A Tale of a Tub.

In Ramadhanyacharitre, an allegory on the conflict between the socially strong and weak castes and classes, presented as an argument between two foodgrains, rice and ragi, is a most creative literary piece with a powerful social message, In the work, rice represents the socially powerful and ragi ( millet ) represents the working people.

However, audiences immediately recognized the play as an allegory for the stormy relationship between Spain ( the black pieces ) and Great Britain ( the white pieces ).

The Qur ' an further describes the followers of the Gospel, that is the Christians, in a highly positive allegory, saying :" Muhammad is the messenger of God, and those who are with him are severe against the rejecters, but merciful between themselves.

Chester's main poem is a long allegory in which the relationship between the birds is explored, and its symbolism articulated.

In addition to an allegory of an ideal marriage, the poem can be seen as an elucidation of the relationship between truth and beauty, or of fulfilled love, in the context of Renaissance Neoplatonism.

Something Wicked This Way Comes can be interpreted as an allegory of the struggle between good and evil, with the human characters Will, Jim, and Charles on the side of morality, and Mr. Dark and his carnival on the side of sin and temptation.

In the Middle Ages, typology was the dominant Christian allegorical interpretation, which developed sets of correspondences between the Old and New Testaments, believing that the events described in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament had occurred in order to pre-figure events in the life of Christ in the New ; there were other classes of allegory in the Middle Ages.