A paradox of Republic is that while it advocates a rigorous mode of dialectical thinking, devoid of images, Plato’s presentation relies heavily on images, analogies, and myths. Two myths—‘The Cave’, and ‘Er’s Journey into the Other World’—are presented from Republic, Plato’s most ambitious and most famous work. In it Socrates narrates a lengthy conversation dealing with the questions: what is justice (that is, morality) in an individual person, and who is happier, the just or the unjust person?
After an unsatisfactory exchange with the immoralist Thrasymachus, the discussion passes to the brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus who ask Socrates to investigate and to vindicate justice. In reply Socrates sketches an ideal polis (city), claiming that justice for such a polis will be analogous to, and will illuminate, justice for an individual person (or soul). Each entity, a city and an individual’s soul, consists of three parts: guardians, auxiliaries, and an economic class in the polis; reason, spirit, and unreasoning desires in the individual. For both, justice is when each part fulfils its true function, and when the superior part—in the city, the guardians; in the individual soul, reason—rules for the good of the whole entity. The doctrine of the so-called tripartite soul has been very influential and can be seen as a precursor of Freud’s psychological theories.
Can an ideal city come to be? Only, Socrates replies, if philosophers become kings or kings philosophers. The central books of Republic contain ‘The Cave’ (514a–517a), as well as the images of the sun (507a–509c) and the divided line (509d–511e) which refers to an imaginary alignment of different kinds of knowledge with their various objects. These central books determine the nature of true reality which would-be rulers must understand, and the education which will enable them to do so. A lengthy training in mathematics culminates in dialectical studies, intended to endow the would-be rulers with insight into the structure of reality, the world of the Forms, which lies behind and explains the unstable perceptible world. The highest branch of knowledge investigates the nature of the Good, but here Socrates must rely on an analogy with its ‘offspring’, the sun, to discuss the Good. As the sun is the source of light and is responsible for sight and for the genesis of visible things, so the Good is the source of truth and is responsible for knowledge and for the reality of that which can be known.
‘The Cave’ recalls the image of the sun and is a continuation of it. As Socrates explains from the outset (514a), it represents education and the lack of it (he will reiterate this point and discuss it at 518a-52od). We are to imagine men imprisoned and immobile in the depths of a long cave, facing the back wall and seeing only shadows cast by a fire behind them. Unbeknown to these prisoners, the shadows they see and the voices they hear emanate from men carrying puppet-like figures of stone and wood. In short, the prisoners take as true reality what is but a two-dimensional shadow-play cast by hidden puppets. Education is represented by the initially painful release of these prisoners (who are ‘no different from us’, says Socrates). When released, they are compelled to witness the realities in the cave and the even greater ones outside: first reflections, then natural phenomena, and finally stars, moon, and the sun. Here the connection with the earlier image is made explicit.
Ordinary, uneducated persons, then, suffer not from mere lack of knowledge but from pervasive and hard-to-shed illusions about what is real, and really valuable. True education requires the mind’s release and turning around, and the painful shedding of the pervasive misconceptions about reality due to upbringing in ‘the cave’. A third key theme of the image is found in the remarks at 517a. One who has achieved true understanding will get a harsh and uncomprehending reception from the ignorant when he tries to pass on the fruits of his enlightenment. The allusion to the condemnation and death of Socrates is unmistakable.
L.B.
514a ‘Next,’ I said, ‘here’s a situation which you can use as an analogy for the human condition — for our education or lack of it. Imagine people living in a cavernous cell down under the ground; at the far end of the cave, a long way off, there’s an entrance open to the outside world. They’ve been there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up in a way which keeps them in one place and allows them to look only straight
b ahead, but not to turn their heads. There’s firelight burning a long way further up the cave behind them, and up the slope between the fire and the prisoners there’s a road, beside which you should imagine a low wall has been built — like the partition which conjurors place between themselves and their audience and above which they show their tricks.’
‘All right,’ he said.
‘Imagine also that there are people on the other side of this wall who are carrying all sorts of artefacts. These artefacts, human statuettes, and animal models carved in stone and wood
c and all kinds of materials stick out over the wall; and as you’d
515a expect, some of the people talk as they carry these objects along, while others are silent.’
‘This is a strange picture you’re painting,’ he said, ‘with strange prisoners.’
‘They’re no different from us,’* I said. ‘I mean, in the first place, do you think they’d see anything of themselves and one another except the shadows cast by the fire on to the cave wall directly opposite them?’
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘They’re forced to spend their lives without moving their heads.’
b ‘And what about the objects which were being carried along? Won’t they see only their shadows as well?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Now, suppose they were able to talk to one another: don’t you think they’d assume that their words applied to what they saw passing by in front of them?’
‘They couldn’t think otherwise.’
‘And what if sound echoed off the prison wall opposite them? When any of the passers-by spoke, don’t you think they’d be bound to assume that the sound came from a passing shadow?’
‘I’m absolutely certain of it,’ he said.
c ‘All in all, then,’ I said, ‘the shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality people in this situation would recognize.’
‘That’s absolutely inevitable,’ he agreed.
‘What do you think would happen, then,’ I asked, ‘if they were set free from their bonds and cured of their inanity?* What would it be like if they found that happening to them? Imagine that one of them has been set free and is suddenly made to stand up, to turn his head and walk, and to look towards the firelight. It hurts him to do all this and he’s too dazzled to be capable of making out the objects whose shadows
d he’d formerly been looking at. And suppose someone tells him that what he’s been seeing all this time has no substance, and that he’s now closer to reality and is seeing more accurately, because of the greater reality of the things in front of his eyes — what do you imagine his reaction would be? And what do you think he’d say if he were shown any of the passing objects and had to respond to being asked what it was? Don’t you think he’d be bewildered and would think that there was more reality in what he’d been seeing before than in what he was being shown now?’
‘Far more,’ he said.
e ‘And if he were forced to look at the actual firelight, don’t you think it would hurt his eyes? Don’t you think he’d turn away and run back to the things he could make out, and would take the truth of the matter to be that these things are clearer than what he was being shown?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘And imagine him being dragged forcibly away from there up the rough, steep slope,’ I went on, ‘without being released until he’s been pulled out into the sunlight. Wouldn’t this
516a treatment cause him pain and distress? And once he’s reached the sunlight, he wouldn’t be able to see a single one of the things which are currently taken to be real, would he, because his eyes would be overwhelmed by the sun’s beams?’
‘No, he wouldn’t,’ he answered, ‘not straight away.’
‘He wouldn’t be able to see things up on the surface of the earth, I suppose, until he’d got used to his situation. At first, it would be shadows that he could most easily make out, then he’d move on to the reflections of people and so on in water, and later he’d be able to see the actual things themselves. Next, he’d feast his eyes on the heavenly bodies and the heavens themselves, which would be easier at night: he’d look at the light of the stars and the moon, rather than at the sun
b and sunlight during the daytime.’
‘Of course.’
‘And at last, I imagine, he’d be able to discern and feast his eyes on the sun — not the displaced image of the sun in water or elsewhere, but the sun on its own, in its proper place.’*
‘Yes, he’d inevitably come to that,’ he said.
‘After that, he’d start to think about the sun and he’d deduce that it is the source of the seasons and the yearly cycle, that the whole of the visible realm is its domain, and that in a sense everything which he and his peers used to see is its
c responsibility.’
‘Yes, that would obviously be the next point he’d come to,’ he agreed.
‘Now, if he recalled the cell where he’d originally lived and what passed for knowledge there and his former fellow prisoners, don’t you think he’d feel happy about his own altered circumstances, and sorry for them?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Suppose that the prisoners used to assign prestige and credit to one another, in the sense that they rewarded speed at recognizing the shadows as they passed, and the ability to remember which ones normally come earlier and later and at the same time as which other ones, and expertise at using
d this as a basis for guessing which ones would arrive next. Do you think our former prisoner would covet these honours and would envy the people who had status and power there, or would he much prefer, as Homer describes it, “being a slave labouring for someone else — someone without property”,* and would put up with anything at all, in fact, rather than share their beliefs and their life?’
e ‘Yes, I think he’d go through anything rather than live that way,’ he said.
‘Here’s something else I’d like your opinion about,’ I said. ‘If he went back underground and sat down again in the same spot, wouldn’t the sudden transition from the sunlight mean that his eyes would be overwhelmed by darkness?’
‘Certainly,’ he replied.
‘Now, the process of adjustment would be quite long this time, and suppose that before his eyes had settled down and
517a while he wasn’t seeing well, he had once again to compete against those same old prisoners at identifying those shadows. Wouldn’t he make a fool of himself? Wouldn’t they say that he’d come back from his upward journey with his eyes ruined, and that it wasn’t even worth trying to go up there? And wouldn’t they – if they could – grab hold of anyone who tried to set them free and take them up there, and kill him?’*
‘They certainly would,’ he said.