Please read from Key Lessons from Plato’s Republic — Book I, as this story is part of a broader series on Plato’s Republic.
Socrates introduces the most exquisite and renowned metaphor in Western philosophy in Book VII: the allegory of the cave. This metaphor is intended to demonstrate the impact of education on the human soul. Education pushes the philosopher up the divided line, and eventually gets him to the Form of the Good.
The Allegory of the Cave
Socrates portrays a gloomy scene. Since birth, a group of individuals have existed in a deep cave, never seeing the light of day. Such entities are constrained so that they do not glance on either side or behind them, but only straight ahead. There is a fire behind them, and there is a partial wall behind the fire. There are different sculptures on the top of the wall, which are manipulated by another group of individuals, lying behind a partial wall out of sight.
Because of the flames, the statues cast shadows over the wall that the prisoners are facing. The inmates are watching the stories played out by these shadows, and since these shadows are what they will really see, they feel that they are the most true thing in the world. They respond to these shadows as they speak to one another about “men,” “women,” “trees,” or “horses.” Such inmates represent the lowest step of creativity on the rows.
Freed from his chains, a prisoner is compelled to stare at the flames and at the statues themselves. After an initial period of discomfort and uncertainty because of overt exposure to his eyes to the light of the fire, the prisoner discovers that what he sees today are something more real than the shadows he has previously taken to be true. He knows how, together the fire and the sculptures create the shadows, which are copies of these more actual things. He acknowledges sculptures and flames as the world’s most real objects. In the cave, this step reflects belief. He has made contact with actual objects, the sculptures, but he is not conscious that there is a world outside his cave, things of greater reality.
Next this convict is pulled into the universe beyond from the tunnel. He is so dazzled by the light up there at first that he can only look at shadows, then at mirrors, then at actual things, real plants, flowers, buildings, etc. He sees that they are much more genuine than the statues, and they were all clones of them. Now he has passed the cognitive stage of reasoning. His first sight of the most true elements captured him, the Forms.
When the eyes of the prisoner are sufficiently used to the brightness, the prisoner raises his sight towards the horizon and beams at the sun. He understands that everything he sees around him the light, his ability to see the life of flowers, leaves, and other things, is induced by the sun. The form of the good is represented by the light, and the former prisoner has entered the stage of awareness.
The object of education is to pull any man as far as possible out of the cave. The aim of education should not be to bring knowledge into the mind, but to turn the soul to the right desires. Socrates states, continuing the comparison between mind and eyes, that a wise, evil man’s vision could be almost as sharp as a philosopher’s. The concern lies in what he is turning his keen vision towards.
Key Observations: When reading the allegory of the cave and the line, it is important to remember that Plato means representing not only four ways of thought, but four ways of life. To use an example, assume that a person has been asked to say what courage is in both of these processes. The perception of courage can vary greatly from stage to stage.
Working with a potential interpretation of the stage of imagination, the notion of bravery of a person in this period will refer to images from culture. Such a person could attempt to illustrate bravery by saying something like, “Captain America seems very brave, so that’s courage.” An entity with convictions might still refer to a concrete example, but that would take the example chosen from real life. The Marines or Firemen may be listed.
Someone in comparison, will strive to offer a description of bravery at the point of contemplation. Perhaps they will provide the description given in Book IV by Socrates: bravery as the awareness of what should be feared and what should not be feared. What divides the person speaking from thought from the person possessing comprehension is that with experience of the form of the good, the person speaking from thought does not notify his views.
Rather than the real first theory, they are dealing on unproven theories. Even if their definition is correct, when their interpretation of the related terms ceases at a certain point, it is left vulnerable to attack and objection. Someone offering a definition, speaking from understanding, knows all the words in the definition and may justify each of them on the basis of the first concept, the Form of the Good.
Although the Good Form illuminates all comprehension until it is understood, knowledge is holistic. To understand everything, you need to understand anything, because if you know anything you can move on to an understanding of everything. All forms are interconnected and interpreted together in the following way: through thinking, you work your way up to the form of the good before you understand the form of the good. All is illuminated, then.
Education of the Philosopher-King
To make the guardians turn their hearts to the supreme reality and to seek the form of the Good. The solution, it turns out is simple: they have to learn philosophical dialectics and mathematics. These are the two topics that pull the soul from the domain of being the tangible realm, to the intelligible realm, the realm of what is.
Of these two, mathematics is the preparation and dialectic the ultimate form of study. In order to achieve the positive itself, dialectic leaves aside meaning perceptions and uses only pure logical logic. Eventually, Dialectic excludes theories and leads to the first theory that illuminates everything information. Socrates admits that there is a considerable risk in it, but he is enamored of dialectics.
Dialectics can never be introduced to the wrong kind of people, or sometimes, when they are too young, to the right kind. Instead of proceeding towards it, anyone who is not trained for dialectics will “treat it as a game of contradiction.” They will actually argue for the sake of arguing, and forget all sense of fact.
The true philosopher must be trained to ignore his senses in his search for truth. He must rely on thought alone. The true philosopher probably makes no use of empirical investigation — that is, he does not observe the world in order to find truths.
