Abstract: In this paper I claim that Plato’s Cave is fundamentally a political, not an epistemological image, and that only by treating it as such can we appreciate correctly its relation to the images of the Sun and the Line. On the basis of textual evidence, I question the two main assumptions that support (in my view, mistakenly) the effort to find an epistemological parallel between the Cave and the Line: first, that the prisoners represent humankind in general, and, second, (...) that the cave itself represents the visible world of ordinary experience while the world outside the cave represents the realm of the Forms. Disrupting these assumptions opens up a reading that highlights the cultural and political themes at play in this famous allegory and allows us to make better sense of it. -/- Keywords: Plato, Cave, Politics, Culture -/- Resumen: En este ensayo sostengo que la Caverna de Platón es fundamentalmente una alegoría política, no epistemológica, y que solo tratándola como tal, podremos apreciar correctamente la relación que guarda con las imágenes del Sol y de la Línea. Sobre la base de evidencia textual, pongo en duda las dos hipótesis principales sobres las que se funda (a mi parecer, equivocadamente) el esfuerzo por encontrar un paralelo epistemológico entre la Caverna y la Línea: la primera, que los prisioneros representan a la humanidad en general, y la segunda, que la propia caverna representa el mundo visible de la experiencia corriente, mientras que el mundo fuera de la caverna representa el reino de las Ideas. La suspensión de estos supuestos posibilita una lectura que pone de relieve los temas culturales y políticos que están en juego en esta famosa alegoría y nos permite así entenderla mejor. -/- Palabras Clave: Platón, Caverna, Política, Cultura . (shrink)

‘The similes of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic remain a reproach to Platonic scholarship because there is no agreement about them, though they are meant to illustrate.’ So wrote A.S. Ferguson in 1934, and so he could write to-day. Four decades have produced at least twenty more substantial contributions to the debate, but no agreement. I shall not attempt to arbitrate between existing interpretations, nor shall I offer an account of the ‘simile of light’ as a whole. (...) I shall confine my attention to a single point: the significance of the shadows in the cave, and of the objects which cast them. The suggestion I shall make seems an obvious one, but I have not found it in the literature. I hope to show at least that it deserves serious consideration. (shrink)

This allegory is among the most well-traversed passages in Plato's dialogues and deservedly so. Its emotional impact is undeniable, yet it confronts the reader with several problems of interpretation. There is a strong sense that it is of central importance to the crucial questions of the Platonic philosopher's education and his role in society, and it possibly holds one key to an understanding of the Republic as a whole.

This allegory is among the most well-traversed passages in Plato's dialogues and deservedly so. Its emotional impact is undeniable, yet it confronts the reader with several problems of interpretation. There is a strong sense that it is of central importance to the crucial questions of the Platonic philosopher's education and his role in society, and it possibly holds one key to an understanding of the Republic as a whole.

The article refers to the issue of freedom from a philosophical perspective. First of all, it discusses Plato’s metaphor of the cave in Politeia, in which the philosopher writes of freedom in its individual and collective forms. Then the article indicates how the metaphor was read by such contemporary philosophers as Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, who interpret Plato’s metaphor from existential-phenomenological and political perspectives. Heidegger stresses the freedom of a human being, who in the light of the subjective existential (...) experience begins to live objectively in an authentic way. He frees himself up from the impersonal-I. A person, who experienced the truth as un-concealment, is not enslaved anymore to the impersonality of the crowd. He is able to face his own mortality and to take responsibility for his own fate. A special expression of freedom is shown in his care for others, even if it means risking one’s life. Hannah Arendt interprets Plato’s metaphor from the perspective of political philosophy. Her assessment becomes some kind of memento. What if the prisoners of the cave simply do not want to leave their place? Does the philosopher have a right forcefully to pull them out of the cavern? What is better, the attitude of Socrates, who dialogues with people or the attitude of Plato, who simply lectures the mob? In this way Arendt refers to the concept of freedom, as it is sketched in Plato’s cave. At the same time, she argues with Heidegger’s interpretation of the Platonic metaphor. Heidegger stresses the freedom of a human being, who in the light of the subjective existential experience begins to live objectively in an authentic way. He frees himself up from the impersonal-I. Human, who experienced the truth as un-concealment and freedom, is not enslaved anymore with the impersonality of the crowd, which reject individualism and authenticity. He is able to face his own mortality and to take responsibility for his own fate. A special expression of so understood freedom is shown in his care for others, even if this way he risks his own life. Hannah Arendt interprets Plato’s metaphor rather from the perspective of political philosophy. Her assessment, rooted in the very foundation of the political-philosophical thought becomes some kind of memento. What if the prisoners of the cave, simply do not want to leave their place? Does the philosopher have a right to forcefully pull them out of the cave of shadows? What is better, the attitude of Socrates, who dialogues with people and treats them as equal partners or the attitude of Plato, who simply lectures the mob? (shrink)

This paper takes a detailed look at the Republic’s Divided Line analogy and considers how we should respond to its most contentious implication: that pistis and dianoia have the same degree of ‘clarity’ (σαφήνεια). It argues that we must take this implication at face value and that doing so allows us to better understand both the analogy and the nature of dianoia.

Socrates, in the Republic , uses the symbol of a divided line to illustrate the distinction between the Visible and Intelligible Worlds, and between the kinds of perception appropriate to each. This paper will present a new hypothesis: that the proportions of the line are derived from optical theory. The construction of the Divided Line is described as follows: Socrates asks his interlocutors to represent the Visible and Intelligible Worlds by a line divided into two unequal segments. The ratio in (...) which the division is to be made is not specified, and it seems that any ratio is acceptable provided that one segment is longer than the other. Socrates then tells them to cut each part again according to the same ratio as the original division. After describing the division of the line thus into four parts, Socrates goes on to explain the philosophical significance of each part. For the purposes of this paper the following brief identification of each segment of the line will suffice. (shrink)

Socrates, in the Republic, uses the symbol of a divided line to illustrate the distinction between the Visible and Intelligible Worlds, and between the kinds of perception appropriate to each. This paper will present a new hypothesis: that the proportions of the line are derived from optical theory. The construction of the Divided Line is described as follows: Socrates asks his interlocutors to represent the Visible and Intelligible Worlds by a line divided into two unequal segments. The ratio in which (...) the division is to be made is not specified, and it seems that any ratio is acceptable provided that one segment is longer than the other. Socrates then tells them to cut each part again according to the same ratio as the original division. After describing the division of the line thus into four parts, Socrates goes on to explain the philosophical significance of each part. For the purposes of this paper the following brief identification of each segment of the line will suffice. (shrink)

Current interpretations of Plato’s cave are obviously incorrect because they do not explain how what we hear does not come from what we see. I argue that Plato is saying that the colors we receive from our faculty of vision do not cause the sounds that we receive from our faculty of hearing. I also show how we do not see ourselves or one other, how the shadows on the wall of the cave are images of that which casts them (...) and therefore have less reality than them, and how the cave illustrates the divided line’s concern for the relationship between Forms and visible reality. The paper is structured around the two great riddles of the divided line: how Forms can be more real than everyday objects, and how one can know the unhypothesized beginning with complete certainty. I further argue that the puppets that cast shadows stand for the immanent Forms of the Phaedo and also for the moving Forms of the Timaeus. That of which these puppets are themselves images would thus stand for the Forms as they are in themselves of the Phaedo or the indestructible Forms of the Timaeus. ‘Plato used to ask whether the discussion was proceeding from or leading up to fundamental principles, just as in a race course there is a difference between running from the judges to the far end of the track and running back again.’ – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1095. (shrink)

There is a problem about belief and knowledge in Plato's epistemology that has exercised serious students of Plato only to settle into a recent orthodoxy. Guthrie characterizes the problem and its current resolution this way: ‘In the Meno doxa appeared to be a dim apprehension of the same objects of which knowledge is a clear and complete understanding … in the Republic each is directed to different objects, knowledge to the Forms and doxa to the sensible world alone … at (...) least the opinion seems now to prevail that on the relationship between doxa and knowledge Meno and Republic are irreconcilable, and exhibit a complete change of mind on Plato's part.'. (shrink)

This paper defends a reading of eikasia—the lowest kind of cognition in the Divided Line—as a kind of empirical cognition that Plato appeals to when explaining, among other things, the origin of ethical error. The paper has two central claims. First, eikasia with respect to, for example, goodness or justice is not different in kind to eikasia with respect to purely sensory images like shadows and reflections: the only difference is that in the first case the sensory images include representations (...) of value properties. Second, eikasia is not the bare awareness of images or simply a label for an error (mistaking image for original) but a kind of empirical, image-confined cognition, and one that has an important part to play in characterising the cognitive abilities of the non-rational parts of the soul. (shrink)