Plato's The Republic
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Plato's The Republic
In Plato’s The Republic he uses three different metaphors to describe his metaphysical theories of how the philosopher is involved in politics. In the Sun metaphor (Book VI, 508a-509c) Plato states that the sun is the cause of everything and represents the Form of the Good. In the Divided line metaphor (Book VI, 509d-511e) Plato shows the four different stages that humans can take to move into the intelligible world. And in the Cave metaphor (Book VII, 515c-517a) Plato shows us the task of a philosopher moving out of the cave, through the different stages, and gaining the knowledge of the intelligible world. In each of these metaphors, the position and status of Good plays an important role in understanding how the philosopher moves into the intelligible world.
The Cave is a metaphorical society and represents a group of people who have never seen the outside world and only see what is straight in front of them. They only know the shadows on the wall that are cast from a fire, which in a sense is the “sun” of inside the cave. The people inside the cave only believe the shadows and imagine that they are real because they do not know anything else. Plato then frees one of these “prisoners of the cave” from only being able to see the shadows on the wall. Once this person can move his neck he goes through the painful shift of actually seeing the objects and starts to trust and believe in the things he is seeing. This prisoner is then dragged out of the cave into the outside world. At first he again goes through the painful shift and is blinded by the outside world and can only see the shadows of real things. He then begins to actually see the real things and thinks and trusts the new outside world. He begins to develop the thoughts that the statues and shadows that were in the cave were only copies of these real things. Finally once his eyes adjust to the light, he sees how the sun is the cause of everything and he sees how it represents the “Form of the Good”....
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