Activity 1

By What Values Shall I Live in the World? Activity 2

Plato
What Constitutes a Human Person?
This leads up to the famous simile of the cave or den. According to which,
those who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave who
are only able to look in one direction because they are bound and who have the For Socrates, to be happy, a person has to live a virtuous life. Virtue is not
fire behind them and the wall in front. Between them and the wall, there is something to be taught or acquired through education, but rather, it is merely an
nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves and of objects behind them awakening of the seeds of good deeds that lay dormant in the mind and heart of a
casted on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably, they regard these shadows as person. Knowing what is in the mind and heart of a human being is achieved
real and have no notion of the objects to which they are due (Price 2000). At last, through self-knowledge. Thus, knowledge does not mean only theoretical or
a man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time, speculative, but a practical one. Practical knowledge means that one does not only
he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by know the rules of right living, but one lives them.
shadows. He is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian; he will feel
Hence, for Socrates, true knowledge means wisdom, which in turn, means
it is his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into
virtue. The Greek word arête, which we translate as virtue, seems originally to
the cave, instruct them as to the sun of truth and show them the way up.
have been associated with valor in battle and may be connected with the name of
However, he will have difficulty in persuading them, because coming out the Greek god of war, Ares, whom we know better under his Roman name, Mars.
of the sunlight, he will see shadows clearly than they do and will seem to them Both the Greek word arête and its English equivalent, virtue, have connotations of
stupider than before his escape. machismo and manliness. So, when Socrates came to define virtue, he thought of
courage as one of its prime components, and he came up with the proposition that
Plato seeks to explain the difference between clear intellectual vision and courage, therefore, as virtue is also knowledge.
the confused vision of sense perception by an analogy from the sense of sight.
Sight, he says, differs from the other senses since it requires not only the eye and
the object, but also light. We clearly see objects on which the sun shines; in
Instruction: Answer the question: What is “right” or “wrong” for you? (Not less
twilight, we see confusedly; and in pitch-darkness, not at all. Now the world of
than 10 sentences)
ideas is what we see when the sun illumines the object; while the world of passing
things is confused twilight world. The eye is compared to the soul, and the sun, as
the source of light to truth or goodness.

Instruction: Draw your own interpretation of Plato’s cave.