Plato: “Allegory of the Cave”

Impact

It is difficult to overestimate the impact Plato's thought has had on the shape of the world throughout history. From developing nearly all branches of philosophy—ethics, aesthetics, ontology, epistemology—to influencing the shape of early Christian thought, Plato's ideas have left an indelible mark on humanity. As a literary, political, and philosophical work, The Republic is one of the foremost classics of the Western canon.

Plato's influence has been so vast perhaps because of the form in which he chose to present his ideas: the philosophical dialogue. Rather than spelling out a rigid set of doctrines, Plato instead presented his philosophy in the form of conversation, one dominated by questions. Thus, by its very design Plato's writing has promoted further dialogue—dialogue that has spanned more than two millennia and has involved many of the greatest minds in human history in analyzing, interpreting, and sometimes misunderstanding his ideas.

The field of political science is given its very foundations in Plato's Republic and the “Allegory of the Cave.” America's Founding Fathers, for example, were deeply influenced by Plato's allegory in their creation of America's form of representative democracy, which gives a pronounced voice, wide suffrage, and liberal freedoms to its citizens but which puts political decisions largely in the hands of those presumed to have expert knowledge and an interest in pursuing the public good before their own interests. Modern writers and historians have criticized some of Plato's political views. In the twentieth century, I. F. Stone attacked Plato's antidemocratic sentiments, while Karl Popper argued that Plato's political views contributed to the rise of totalitarianism. Other writers, however, have vehemently defended Plato's politics, such as R. B. Levinson in his Defense of Plato.

All thinkers since Plato who have considered the nature of reality or the possibility of certain knowledge—even outspoken critics of Plato's thought like Martin Heidegger—have been influenced by the “Allegory of the Cave.” Such thinkers have included those of the ancient philosophical schools of Skepticism and Stoicism as well as more modern philosophers such as René Descartes, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the field of education, such modern theorists as John Dewey and Friedrich Froebel, like Plato, have viewed education from the perspective of its effects on both the individual and greater society.

Perhaps the greatest long-term impact of the “Allegory of the Cave” has been on religion, specifically the rise of Christianity. The allegory was a crucial document in the emergence of Neoplatonism, a recasting of Plato in the third century CE by Plotinus, who infused Plato's metaphysics with oriental mysticism. According to Neoplatonic thought, at the summit of existence stands the One—a version of Plato's Good—as the source of all things. The One is the source of reason, serves as the infinite storehouse of all ideas (Forms), and is inserted into every facet of reality. Early Christian thinkers, among them Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, and Anicius Boethius, identified the One with God and the Forms with God's ideas. The human soul, then, longing to be released from its corporeal prison—not unlike the prisoner who longs to escape from Plato's cave—seeks to commune with God in an elevated, ecstatic state. The soul is like an eye that can see only when it is illuminated by the light of God, just as the mind's eye in Plato gains true vision when illuminated by the Good. In Christianity, of course, God is a vastly more personal force than is Plato's Good, yet it is clear why many early Christian thinkers would have adopted some aspects of Neoplatonic philosophy and would have seen in Plato a sort of kindred Christian spirit. And so the basic Platonic idea that behind the world of the body and the senses lies an underlying spiritual reality, deriving its being from the Good—identifiable with God—becomes crucial in later Christian orthodoxy.

For over two millennia Plato has served as an intellectual gadfly in the world of human ideas much as his mentor Socrates was the gadfly of Athens. The intellectual tradition in the West—even when it has differed from Plato's—remains profoundly indebted to his foundational concepts. There is no telling whether humankind's dialogue with Plato will ever come to an end.