1.1.4

The Purpose of Plato's Analogy of the Cave

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The Purpose of the Cave Analogy

For Socrates, Plato's teacher, education is not giving knowledge to those who lack it. That would be analogous to putting sight into blind eyes. It is turning the whole body and eye towards the light.

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Knowledge is remembering

  • The analogy illustrates important elements of Plato’s theory.
  • It shows that knowledge is remembering and that the effort needs to come from the individual to turn towards what is and away from what is not.
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Whole soul turned to light

  • It shows that the whole soul should be turned to the light – so education is not an intellectual exercise but a moral and spiritual conversion.
  • This can be seen in the fact that the sun in the analogy reveals what exists by its light – just as we only know truly by the Form of the Good. All knowledge then has a moral dimension.
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Rationalism > empiricism

  • Equally, we should take this as a prompt – our sun can only show us visible objects.
  • We realise from the analogy that if our knowledge only extends to what we can see, then we are stuck in the cave looking at the objects by the light of the fire.
  • This shows Plato’s insistence that rationalism is superior to empiricism.

Jump to other topics

1Philosophy of Religion

1.1Ancient Philosophical Influences: Plato

1.2Ancient Philosophical Influences: Aristotle

1.3Ancient Philosophical Influences: Soul, Mind, Body

1.4The Existence of God - Arguments from Observation

1.5The Existence of God - Arguments from Reason

1.6Religious Experience

1.7The Problem of Evil

1.8The Nature & Attributes of God

1.9Religious Language: Negative, Analogical, Symbolic

1.10Religious Language: 20th Century Perspective

2Religion & Ethics

3Developments in Christian Thought

3.1Saint Augustine's Teachings

3.2Death & the Afterlife

3.3Knowledge of God's Existence

3.4The Person of Jesus Christ

3.5Christian Moral Principles

3.6Christian Moral Action

3.7Development - Pluralism & Theology

3.8Development - Pluralism & Society

3.9Gender & Society

3.10Gender & Theology

3.11Challenges

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