Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Simile of the Sun

Being partially blind myself with limits on my sight even though I have corrective lenses that are anti-glare as well as transition to block the rays from the sun’s light from doing damage to my eyes, I thoroughly enjoyed Plato’s The Simile of the Sun. With the pre-cursor of the metaphor about beliefs and the knowledge of goodness and its relations, I actually laughed in my head as Socrates says, “The best of them are blind. I mean, don’t people who have a correct belief, but no knowledge, strike you as exactly like blind people who happen to be taking the right road”[1]? His understanding of “belief as partial sight” troubles me throughout his explanation of the map of the forms of intelligence, knowledge, empirical world, and the images. However, maybe its just me and that he does not account for what the some blind people can know by extra-sensory functions to the other five senses, like the Daredevil comic character or other people in real life with such gifts and other supernatural talents. Even though I digress, the analogy of sun and light being the only reality of being able to see and believe what is known to be true and good makes sense after re-reading it in the context of its fulfilling its role as a form. I would like to believe that the true and only Good which they converse about, is God, taught to me since I was a young boy by my mother and grandmother and confirmed to me as a Catholic at age 30 some 5 years ago and in my daily walk with the Lord since baptized at 1 and personal relationship established in my teenage years.

Socrates cross-examens Glaucon as the interlocutar in Simile of the Sun as “the child of goodness” is interesting because without light we cannot see what is in front of us or make out that which is to be “beautiful” or “good”, linking light and its value with the sense of sight and its ability[2]. Socrates goes on to say, “The ability to be seen is not the only gift the sun gives to the things we see. It is also the source of the generation, growth, and nourishment…” [3]This illuminating statement sums up my faith beliefs, for as I see the sun gives me light to go on about my day in prayer, study, and work, I am reminded of the Son that died for me, is resurrected, and whom I will see again in glory one day as he continues to help me grow and be sanctified moment by moment until I am restored. Some other statements in the Simile drew my interest. In it, he discusses the “visible realm” and the “intelligible realm”, whereby “the first section in the visible realm consists of likenesses” and “the other section of the visible realm as consisting of the things whose likenesses are found in the first section: all flora and fauna there are in the world” exist[4]. Thus, there are copies of one in the visible and intelligible or invisible realm. He clarifies saying “the image stands to the originals as the realm of beliefs stands to the realm of knowledge”[5]. Immediately I thought of our many apologists in the Christian Catholic faith, like Bishop Robert Barron. That is because many people do not believe what they cannot see in the “intelligible realm” versus what they know in the “visible realm”.

Some scientists recognize what is true through gaining of knowledge and their responsibility for learning what is good or their belief values about such things comes through time, effort and/or their experiences individually normative or as a shared experience. In the Simile, Socrates says himself by Plato’s account:

Well, what I’m saying is that it’s goodness, which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have

knowledge. It is responsible for knowledge and truth….so in this

realm it is right to regard knowledge and truth as resembling

goodness, but not to identify either of them with goodness, which

should be rated even more highly. (Pojman 508e, 509a)

Thus, it is not to say that their knowledge is equivalent to goodness, as Socrates would explain about the capacity of the mind, but that it resembles goodness in its search for truth and hopefully belief.

In contrast to the forms of the visible realm and the likeness of the sun being good, Socrates compares a square and a diagonal about the subdivision of the intelligible realm and the visible realm. When examining what is to be a square and what is to be a diagonal, he talks about that which is being taken for granted in its geometry given to a relative subject. Initially, each has a starting point and end point, and as explores in the particular form what is clear and coherent is that reasoning of which they end at makes them to be as such in their actual models and diagrams and likenesses. Socrates says, “they’re actually trying to see squares and so on in themselves, which only thought can see” (510b). Therefore, in articulating the map of the intelligible world of forms in mathematical terms, Socrates places an understanding of order for that which can be thought of in the visible realm as well.

If order were to be mapped out alongside the likeness of what is the Good, than that would mean non-chaos is the Form of the Good. Here Socrates is getting to a point later on politically about the Good by first explaining that knowledge is good and onto beauty and truth and unveiling of the truth by light from the Metaphor of the Sun. He is also hinting that reality of intelligence and awareness of the truth is illuminated to us by the light (509d). What is fascinating most is Socrates attests to the “child of goodness” “counterpart to its father, goodness. As goodness stands in the intelligible realm to intelligence and the things we know, so in the visible realm the sun stands to sight and the things we see” (508c). Henceforth, all forms come from the Form of Good, that is God, which is the father of the likeness of the child of goodness and illuminates the images we see only of shadows on our walls, which may seem square.

Bibliography

Pojman, Louis P. and Vaughn, Lewis. Classics of Philosophyˆ. 3rdEditionˆ. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

[1] Louis Pojman and Lewis Vaughn. Classics of Philosophyˆ. 3rdEdition. Oxford University Press. New York. Oxford. 2011. Print. 506c

[2]Ibid. 507b, 507e, 508a

[3]Ibid. 509b

[4]Ibid. 509e, 510a).

[5]Ibid. 508c