World of Appearances in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Russell’s Chapter on the Appearance

Platos’ World or Appearances vs World of Reality

Consider Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Russell’s chapter on the appearance/reality distinction.
What connections can you make between these two readings?
What common philosophical problem are they considering?
Can you think of any examples of why distinguishing between appearance and reality is important?

World of Appearance versus World of Reality Sample Answer

The work of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is an examination of the difference between appearance and reality. Plato asserts that there exists a world of appearances, and then there exists the world of reality. Plato doesn’t make any distinction between reality and appearance.

For instance, even those who have opinions that Plato considers to be the most primitive type of knowledge, may still be aware of some sort of truth. The difference is that when it comes to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it is the person who has reached the highest level of understanding. It’s not as if the world of appearances of reality are totally fake.

The world of appearance is what that we perceive by our sense organs, such as vision, touch the taste, smell, and the list goes on. But, Plato argues that there is a suprasensible universe that is beyond and above this realm of visuals. What, then, can make this sensory universe with its aplethora of differences even feasible.

In the same way, Bertrand Russell in his 1912 work The Problems of Philosophy argues that this is a philosophical problem and draws a distinction between appearance and real. Russell distinguishes reality from appearance in a different way than Plato. Russell’s theory is based on doubt, whereas Plato’s theories are based on ascent. In actual fact, if you read two texts at once, the term “ascent” appears in the Republic several times, but Russell doesn’t even mention Plato in any way. Russell is based on an entirely different method to determine that something is true…