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What would you say if someone told you that your dreams and goals are merely phantoms in your own mind? A video analysis of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" from The Republic takes high schoolers through the famous metaphor, which likens the enlightened to those emerged from a dark cave, and the unenlightened to those who refuse to believe that anything exists outside of the cave.
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CCSS:
Adaptable
Concepts
Additional Tags
Instructional Ideas
- Have learners draw their own caves, complete with the phantoms of intractable beliefs on the cave walls
- Include in a discussion about cognitive dissonance
Classroom Considerations
- Comment section is open to the public and contains both thoughtful and argumentative remarks
- This video is hosted on YouTube
Pros
- A valuable topic of discussion for political science or psychology as well as philosophy
Cons
- The illustration of the allegory contains an image of a naked man, which may be distracting or inappropriate for your class; consider skipping this part or only playing the audio of the video until the 2:48 mark