The Purpose of Plato's Analogy of the Cave
Religious Studies: OCR A Level, topic 1.1.4
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.
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.
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.
Intelligible & sensible related
- It shows that the intelligible world and the sensible world are related – the latter is a shadow of the former.
- Just as the fire in the cave represents the sun in our physical world, so the sun in the analogy represents the Good, that by which everything which is, is made visible.
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.
Test yourself on The Purpose of Plato's Analogy of the Cave
What aspect of a person's being needs to be turned towards the light, according to Plato's analogy of the cave?
In what way are the intelligible world and the sensible world related?