Thinking Outside the Box

Both Sartre and Plato provide an interseting perspective on human thinking. Its obvious that both philosophers know how to "think outside the box."

In Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," he expresses that we, as humans, are like chained up prisoners confined to a cave. We are completely oblivious to the world outside our cave. So anything that is real, in our minds, is in the cave. Nothing else exists. Plato is suggesting that the reality we are subject to is false. There is a better, more accurate reality out there that we cannot acquire due to the chains of the human mind. A solution to the problem would be avoiding the conventional thinking that society so easily accepts. Critical and abstract thinking can break through the chains that are confining us to society's modern day cave.



Sartre addresses the idea that our thoughts are influenced on the information given by others. If false information is given, our interpretation will, as well, be false. Sartre's writing describes four characters trapped in a mental hell. "Mental" meaning that the hell they are subject to disturbs them in an emotional way rather than the conventional physical hell that most people predict. The characters' anguish comes from the frustration they all press upon each other. They just don't seem to get along and they amplify the frustration by lying to each other about how they got to hell. Honesty would solve this problem.

Both philosophers are addressing a problem that the human mind endures. Both stories display the struggles of humans in breaking down the comfortable ways of thinking. In No Exit, the characters must face themselves and be honest with their actions that led them to hell. In "Allegory of the Cave", the prisoners in the caves have to realize that there is a true reality out there and everything they previously thought of as real is not true.