Plato: “Allegory of the Cave” (380 BCE) Commentary by Patrick G. Lake, The Hill School

About the Author

Plato (ca. 424–347 bce) is part of a distinguished philosophical lineage that began with Socrates (ca. 469–399 bce), his teacher, and proceeded to Aristotle (ca. 384–322 bce), Plato's own student. Together these men formed much of the basis of scientific and philosophic thought in the West. Very little is known for certain about Plato. Most of his biographical sources from antiquity either disagree at crucial points, such as regarding his birth date, or are otherwise highly unreliable, written as they were several hundred years after Plato's death without contemporary critical assessment of their source material. Modern historians do, however, have one important primary document pertaining to Plato's journeys to Sicily (ca. 388–361 bce), The Seventh Letter, which most scholars accept as factual though perhaps not written by Plato himself.

Plato was born in about 424 bce in Athens or on the island of Aegina. He was part of an old aristocratic family. According...