Plato, The Allegory Of The Cave

Plato, The Allegory of the Cave, excerpt from Book VI, The Republic
Susan E. Gallagher, Intro to Political Thought, Political Science Dept. UMass Lowell 1
 
Raphael, The School of Athens, fresco, 1509-1511 (Stanza della Segnatura, Papal Palace, Vatican).
Born into an aristocratic family in Athens, Plato (428-348 B.C.E.) was a student of Socrates (470 – 399 B.C.E.), who is widely recognized as the founder of Western political thought. When Socrates was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of the city, Plato decided to devote his life to writing and teaching philosophy. In 387 B.C.E., he opened the Academy, a
school designed to promote the Socratic method, his teacher’s technique of conveying and refining knowledge by asking and answering questions.
Reflecting this method, Plato wrote dialogues in which Socrates figured as the central speaker, posing questions and providing responses to lead students to greater understanding. Plato relied on this approach in the Allegory of the Cave to elaborate a symbolic description of the human condition. He presented a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, a student, in which the philosopher depicts the prevailing limits of perception by likening humans to prisoners chained to a wall in a cave who can only see shadows of puppets and remain oblivious to the real world above them. Somehow, one of the prisoners frees himself and ascends to the surface where he discovers the dazzling truth of reality. According to Socrates, this liberated soul is an enlightened philosopher who, it turns out, must descend back into the cave to spend his life educating the prisoners rather than remaining in the realm of sunlight (truth). In fulfilling this obligation, the enlightened individual makes possible the good society, that is, a social order governed by a wise Philosopher-King whose only motive is to promote the public welfare.
The Allegory of the Cave appears in Book VII of Plato’s most widely read work, The Republic, a multifaceted dialogue on the nature of justice.
 
 
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Socrates

http://www.iep.utm.edu/academy/
https://archive.org/details/republicofplat00plat
http://www.phschool.com/atschool/california/webcodes/history_interactive/mwp-5153/common_player.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436105

Plato