Thinking Outside the Box

While Sartre and Plato both play on ideas of reality and what limits man, there are key differences in their thought. The key differences is that Sartre believed that our chains, so to speak, that inhibit us from thinking more about life are created by ourselves. We are the ones holding ourselves back from a higher thinking. Plato believed though that the shackles found in his allegory are created by society and not the individual. Both trains of thought stem from their views of philosophy. Sartre was writing about existentialism. Plato was writing about a republic and society. That is the origin of their diverging paths of thought.

Sartre was an existentialist. This means that he was thinking about the existence of mankind and how we think. He was also trying to tear down traditional conceptions of mankind. It is traditional to think that mankind has an innate natural. Something that is part of every man. Sartre argued against this. He believed that there wasn't any innate natural. He believed that mankind creates himself. Applying this to the allegory of the cave, the chains that inhibit the cave dwellers, are according to Sartre created by them, the people that the chains belong to. In No Exit, Sartre delves deeper into this his own metaphor. All of the characters in his play placed themselves in their situations. It was their own actions that caused them to end up in hell. As a side note, No Exit, is a short play about hell. To be more specific, people. People aren't sent to hell because of some preset society standards but because of the actions of the individual and their own truths and rights.

Plato on the other hand believed greatly in the traditional view of society. In his allegory, he believed that the chains had already been on the people as some preset societal standard. The allegory itself is part of a larger work about republics and how society should be. This reflects even more Plato's view of society. Society according to Plato is what stops people from thinking, not the individual.