Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Quotes 240. Today we have another quote by Plato. Okay and we have done a couple by him before. But let's take a look at the quote today. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. "The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. " Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. Tthe first part of the quote seems to be obvious and easy to understand. If a child is afraid of the dark he can easily be forgiven because he's just a child and he is still naive To really understand the quote one one must question what does Plato mean by the light ? So he's talking about men are afraid of the light. What does he mean by light here ? There are several ideas you know, there are people that could still be debating exactly what does he mean by light. So here are several ideas. First light could refer to exposure of evil or bad deeds. This of course could lead to great guilt or hold one back from one's potential out of fear of exposure. So if somebody did some bad things in their life and they they fear that one day this could come out and you know, they may be thought of in a different way. It may ruin their reputation or whatever and it can hold them back from you know from reaching their full potential. So this in itself could be a tragedy that they got to carry this around with them for the rest of their life. So this is one way that it could refer to light. Let's look at the second one here. The second possibility is light represents truth and knowledge of the world. Okay. Perhaps a particular man may prefer the comfort of ignorance rather than search out and face or deal with the truth. Yes. He may be unable to face ugly truth. So maybe there's some truths out there. That's not like he imagined could ever possibly be. He may be afraid to even think about it or deal with it. He won't dare to consider that something may not be real or true from what he thought before. Yeah. You , you might think about this like with today with fake news in our modern times or you know, news that we hear directly from either government or you know that we read in the books. Sometimes we find out if we search deeper that not all this is really is the way that we've been told and the way it's been written in the books. So if you if you look deeper, you may find there some truths beyond that and you know basically if you're afraid of finding out some of these truths, if you're afraid of searching and looking for these answers, this Plato might also think is a tragedy in many ways. Or and the third possibility. The third possibility is light may represent proper and moral behavior of life. Okay. The tragedy here is once a man admits this. Once he admits this . Once you figure out well this is the moral way. This is the right way, so you should follow it. You should do it. So the proper or moral way ... the tragedy here is once a man admits this to himself, he should follow it, but may be unwilling to sacrifice some comforts or he may prefer to justify his bad behavior with excuses rather than make an effort to change. And this in itself could also be a tragedy. So these are all three possibilities of what Plato might mean by this quote but either way it's a very interesting quote. It's an interesting quote to dwell on or to think about. Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope it was food for thought. Thank you for your time. Bye bye.
A2 US plato tragedy afraid admits moral child Tutor Nick P Quotes (240) Plato - We Can Easily Forgive a Child Who is.... 14 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/08/13 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary