PHL 1000 / Intro to Philosophy
Section: OL1
Semester: Fall 2023
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| Plato’s Allegory of the Cave |
Paper Assignment on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – 75 points
Due: in BlackBoard by 11:59 pm Monday, December 4 (Submit in the Term Paper content area in the Control Panel)
I am willing to look at a rough draft of your entire paper or just parts (a) and (b), if you can get it to me by 11:59 pm on Wednesday, November 8 . Just email it to me directly at olajrea@udmercy.edu.
Suggested length: 5 - 7 typed DOUBLE-SPACED pages (1375-1750 words). This is just a suggestion as to length, not a hard and fast page or word count.
Introduction: summarize what you will do in the paper in parts (a) and (b) below, and summarize briefly the impact of the Allegory of the Cave on you (about ½ - ⅔ of a page – 5 points).
(a) (1) Summarize the Allegory by describing the stages in the prisoner’s journey out of the Cave. Make sure to pay attention to the initial state the prisoners are in, as well as their ‘discovery’ of the puppeteers and the cutouts.
(2) What surprising claim does Socrates make about what Glaucon calls these “strange prisoners”?
(3) Next, explain what kind of reality the world of the Cave represents in Plato’s thought by explaining the “two realms” in Plato’s metaphysics. The world inside the cave symbolizes one of these realms, and the world outside the cave symbolizes the other realm. (about 1 ½ - 2 pages – 20 points)
[You will be expanding this discussion of the two realms or kinds of reality in the next section of the paper.]
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| Plato’s Allegory of the Cave |
(b) Integrating your understanding of Reading 2A, Reading 4, and Reading 4A, fully explain Plato’s metaphysical dualism. (about 1 ½ -2 pages pages – 25 points). You should do the following FIVE things here:
(1) explain what metaphysics is;
(2) explain what dualism is – you should be able to produce 2-3 sentences in discussing each of these; and then.
(3) explain the details of Plato’s specific version of dualism by describing the differences between the physical world and the world of Forms. You must discuss both the Allegory itself as well as Reading
4A: how is Plato’s dualism illustrated in both of these readings?
In addition to defining metaphysics and dualism, you should be able to connect at least two of the ideas in Reading 2A (in addition to dualism) to Plato’s metaphysics, by completing tasks (4) and (5):
(4) choose EITHER the appearance/reality distinction OR the permanence/change issue (p. 203 of Reading 2A), explain it, and then connect it to Plato’s metaphysics, and last
(5) state the two definitions of fundamental reality (p. 210 of Reading 2A) and connect them to Plato’s metaphysics.
(c) Impact on you and current application to human beings: What lessons did you learn from the Allegory of the Cave? What impact did the reading have on you? Did Plato’s discussion of education resonate with you? Do you think the Allegory applies to us now? How do we mistake appearances for reality and what are the consequences of this? (1-2 pages - 10 points)
Writing, Clarity, Style: 15 points: Your audience here is a philosophically naïve but intelligent reader, so think about including the level of detail that will make your paper understandable to others. One way to test this is to have someone read your paper who has not taken philosophy and see if they understand it. All of the elements of writing will be graded: complete sentences, proper capitalization, order of words that makes sense, proper punctuation, etc. Developing your own original examples to illustrate ideas in the paper is always a good idea.
DO NOT include the prompts above in your paper. The prompt is to tell you what to do; you don’t have to state the prompt itself in the paper, and doing so would detract from a smoothly flowing essay.
If you want to divide your paper into sections, that is fine, and can be helpful. But in that case, here is how you might name the different sections:
Introduction
Summary of the Allegory
Plato’s metaphysical dualism
Impact of Allegory of the Cave
Conclusion
Citations: the standard way of citing any text of Plato is to give the title of the work followed by the Stephanus number. Titles of Plato’s dialogues are like titles of books, and should be italicized. For example, suppose that in your paper you write the following: As Socrates said, “the visible realm should be likened to the prison dwelling…” (Republic 517b). Notice that the period goes after the citation in parentheses. Even if you are paraphrasing rather than quoting directly, you should use this citation format. You can also cite other readings in the body of the paper using the reading number (e.g, 2A) and page number within the reading, and give the complete citation information in a works cited page.
Here is the citation information you need – I’m including here those readings that you may want or need to cite. You can copy this information directly to your works cited page :
- Reading 1: (pp. 4-9) What is Philosophy? William F. Lawhead. The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach, 5th edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill 2011
- (pp. 10-11): From Landscape of Wisdom: A Guided Tour of Western Philosophy by Christopher Biffle. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 1999.
- Reading 4: Plato. Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube, revised by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1992.
- Reading 4A: Plato’s Metaphysics: Divine Forms. From Landscape of Wisdom: A Guided Tour of Western Philosophy by Christopher Biffle. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 1999.
- Reading 2A: Overview of Metaphysics. William F. Lawhead. The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach, 5th edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill 2011, pp. 202-211
Academic Integrity: As members of an academic community engaged in the pursuit of truth and with a special concern for values, University of Detroit Mercy students must conform to the highest standard of honesty and integrity in their academic work. The fundamental assumption under which the University operates is that work submitted by a student is a product of their own efforts. Among the most serious academic offensives is plagiarism, submitting the ideas or work of another source without acknowledgement or documentation. The consequences of plagiarism or any act of academic dishonesty may range from failure in a course to dismissal from the university.
Note that the key here is acknowledgement and documentation of sources. If you do these two things, then you are not plagiarising. Whether you are paraphrasing or directly quoting a source, it must be acknowledged and documented. Writing this paper does not require any sources other than the assigned readings, but make sure you cite any and all sources you use.
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