Education and Plato's Parable of the Cave

Abstract

Plato's image of the cave in Republic Book VII is offered as “an analogy for the human condition—for our education or lack of it.” He tells us explicitly how to unpack some of its details: the cave is the region accessible to sight or perception; the world outside and above the cave is the intelligible region accessible not to perception but to reasoning; the upward journey out of the cave into daylight is the soul's ascent to the intelligible realm. The educator's task is a matter of turning souls around rather than introducing “knowledge into a soul which doesn't have it.” Such reorienting of souls has affective or desiderative dimensions as well as cognitive ones. Early education in mousikê and gymnastikê rechannels desire, wakes up the spirited part of the child's nature and enables it to work together with reason, imbuing the soul with that order and grace necessary for later cognitive development. Book VII outlines a curriculum to free the soul of the things that turn its sight downward and to reorient it towards the truth. Its outlines are Pythagorean, but it is Plato who most compellingly established the curriculum that still forms the basis for much liberal arts education.