SOCRATES AND PLATO’S CAVE

Abstract

If we assume that the stages of the Cave allegory, from the freeing from bonds to gazing at the f ire, represent the typical progress of a pupil trained in accordance with the Socratic educational method, it is possible to provide a detailed Interpretation of the allegory and to discover connexions between the allegory, the Line, the doxophiüst passage) and Book 1.1 shall try to show that although Plato intended the allegory to represent the inferiority of the Socratic method of education to the new method outlined in the Republic, his more fundamental purpose was to exhibit the error of contemporary Socratic philosophers who claimed or sought knowledge of the good without postulating its separate existence; and that the allegory is the focus of a critique of Socratism which although communicated obliquely is nevertheless a major theme of the Republic. The immediate problem is that of ascertaining whom Plato intended the bound prisoners to represent, for unless this starting point is accurately determined the Interpretation will be subject to systematic distortion. Because they agree that the bound prisoners are men "like ourselves" and because of the difficulty in interpreting the ordinary state of man äs eikasia, Cross and Woözley suggest that the bound prisoners are the majority who unreflectively accept misrepresentations of justice etc. propagated by sophists, rhetoricians and politicians, not recognising these äs "mere imitations of the real thing"; and that the second stage in the Cave (looking at the images) represents the state of mind of the man who looks at the facts for himself and reaches his own conclusions about what is right and good). According to the allegory, however, the freed prisoner cannot see the images clearly or say what they are—so that it would be more appropriate to say that he is unable to reach any conclusions at all. But a more obvious objection to the view expressed by Cross and Woözley is that it contradicts Plato's own opinion äs it is stated in the Republic only a few pages before the allegory begins (514a). At 492 a—b Socrates asks Glaucon: "... are you too one of the multitude who believe that there are young men who are corrupted by the Sophists and that there are Sophists in private life who corrupt to any extent worth mentioning and that it is not rather the very men who talk in this strain who