Plato, as one of the most important philosophers and learners in human history, placed a great emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge and its effects on our worldview. When exploring Plato’s philosophical stance on learning and education, it is important to understand his use of the ‘allegory of the cave.’ In it, he describes the philosopher as someone who is able to free themselves from seeing just the ‘shadows’ of reality, and can now see the true shapes of it. This ties back to his ideal of an aristocracy in society, wherein those same philosophers would go back to the cave in order to share the true Forms of reality and knowledge with those still in the cave (who do not understand that they only see shadows). Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” presents his ideal of the philosopher-king, which is the ideal Form of human beings that comes after a state of taking in disruptive new ideas.
Before one can understand Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and how it relates to education, it is important to be familiar with Plato’s Theory of Forms (of which the allegory is an example). According to Plato, Forms are necessary due to their ability to define reality through abstract ideas, and their ability to distinguish between objects in thought. A Form and a thought are different things; the idea of a horse is not the same as the Form of a specific horse. Objects can be separated into sensible and intelligible realms, both existing at once within each other. With a Form, there is a set of universal properties that are consistent throughout each object, and make it what it is. Plato believes that this brings order to objects and beings, and therefore makes them more real and beautiful.
The Allegory of the Cave dictates a situation wherein a number of people remain in a cave their whole lives, and have not experienced daylight. They are unable to look anywhere but right in front of them due to their bonds. They only see the shadows of figures in front of them made through fire flickering behind statues, leading them to believe these figures to be what ‘men’ and ‘women’ are. This results in a society of people who have specific ideas about the world that are misinformed, due to their limited experience and scope of knowledge. However, if a single prisoner managed to free himself and look behind him to see the fire, he would realize that what he thought he knew was folly.
Eventually, this single prisoner gets out of the cave and enters the outside world, which is bright and unlike anything he had seen before. Looking at real objects, he understands why the statues were not real, and just copies of real objects. Seeing the sun, he sees that the sun is the source of all things. Through this experience with the outside world (enlightenment and philosophy), the man is more informed than the rest of the men in the cave, who only have limited experience of the world, and have no idea of these other things that exist outside their perspective. As a result, they require leadership by the man who escaped the cave in order to get out of the cave and towards understanding. This is how philosophy makes leaders, according to Plato – they are the only ones capable of understanding Forms and reaching that level of cognition through their experiences escaping the cave.
According to Plato, the purpose of the allegory is to showcase "our nature in its education and want of education" (514a). The prisoner, in his breaking away from the rest of the pack to leave the cave, demonstrates a desire to change his worldview and the circumstances that surround him. All he knows is the cave, but he has the desire to learn something more. Upon seeing the realities of the cave, there is a dissonance of sorts between what he believes he knows and what he is being presented with – in order to learn, that dissonance must be reconciled by letting go of old ideas and embracing the uncomfortably new. This is the essence of the learned man, and plays into the idea of Plato’s Theory of Forms.
The Theory of Forms is particularly interesting and evocative when you consider Plato’s application of these principles to Man. The third man argument suggests that there must be three men at least to recognize the theory of Forms as it relates to mankind. The first is the Form of man, the template from which others can take their own shape; the second is the object of man, the imperfect, sensible being who exists as we understand it in the physical world; and the “third man” who witnesses this exchange and therefore recognizes and justifies it. This third man is tasked with explaining the relationship between man and its Form. The journey of man between these three archetypes is exemplified in the Allegory of the Cave – the philosopher is the third man, the prisoners are all ‘objects of man’ and the Form of Man is what all these figures are meant to aspire to.
Central to his philosophy is the idea of the philosopher-king, detailed in Book VI of The Republic. These would be the rulers of society who would preside over the ideal city-state of Kallipolis. A philosopher would love wisdom, and would seek true knowledge instead of merely educating themselves; of course, they would have to maintain the ship of state, comparing a nation to a ship where the philosopher king would be the captain. "A true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship" (The Republic, 6.488d). According to Plato, those who sail the ship and work under it (the citizens of the philosopher-king’s rule) have not really seen a true philosopher, and so will ignore what he calls their “idle stargazing.”
Plato idealized the notion of the philosopher-kings, and saw them as the primary way in which mankind could live in peace and harmony. The most industrious society, to him, would come under the leadership of the person who would truly be the smartest and wisest person among them. Like the allegory of the cave, this philosopher-king would be the one to lead them out of the darkness and into the light, because only he was capable of knowing what it looked like. "Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils, nor, I think, will the human race." (Republic 473c-d).
Plato places a great importance on philosophy and education, to the point where he believes it is the primary means by which a person can rule, instead of military power or political sway. Philosopher-kings, by arming themselves with knowledge and wisdom, are essentially the smartest people in a given society, and would know more about how best to live than anyone else, who has not ‘seen the sun,’ to cite the Allegory of the Cave. Corruption would be the least likely to occur with the philosopher-king, due to their sense of justice that would stop them from being corruptible. The polis (state) is the most important thing to a philosopher-king, and so they would not rule from a place of personal pleasure or gain, but in order to serve the city as well as possible. The role of philosophy in a city-state, in Plato’s mind, is to equip the leader with the knowledge to rule justly – this would be the leader’s greatest weapon.
Plato’s sense of idealism, as pertaining to man’s capability for knowledge, mostly revolves around our ability to know things; we must know and understand the difference between believing something and comprehending it. According to Plato’s estimation, it is possible for you to be wrong if you believe something, but not if you know it. In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato defines a philosopher as one man who leaves the others, trapped in a cave (the cave being all they see of the world) and witnessing the world outside of it. It is his job, then, to communicate to those still in the cave the wider world that lies outside their field of vision. He knows, while the others in the cave can be said to merely believe. The philosopher, then, has to reconcile the uncomfortable truth with the old realities he knows, and then has the unenviable task of getting others to do the same.
Works Cited
Plato, 2009. The Republic of Plato. Print.
