The Cave

Abstract

Explains Plato’s famous image of the cave and the prisoners, who Plato claims are “like us.” Given the way the image of the cave is associated with the divided line, this has the effect of having the prisoners’ (and our own) initial educational condition being associated not just with opinion, but with the lowest subsegment of the divided line, associated with imaging. Scholars have found this association either implausible or unintended by Plato, but an argument is given here for how and why Plato would have accepted this association. Reviews the various stages the prisoners go through in this image of education. This chapter also provides a new explanation of what has been called “the happy philosopher problem”: the future rulers’ initial reluctance to return to the cave, in the terms of Plato’s epistemology argued in this book and also in the light of hints Plato provides in the cave image itself.