Given how visual the allegory is, many readers will find it helpful to draw themselves a diagram of it.Ģ Education, the Allegory’s topic, is not what most people think it is, says Plato: it is not ‘putting knowledge into souls that lack it’ (7.518b). Although an allegory is sometimes defined as a symbolic narrative that can be interpreted as having a hidden meaning, Plato is not cagey about the Cave Allegory’s meaning: it is about ‘the effect of education (παιδεία ) and the lack of it on our nature’ (7.514a). Although it is clearly related to the Sun and Divided Line analogies (indeed, Socrates explicitly connects the Cave and the Sun at 7.517bc), Plato marks its special status by opening Book VII with it, emphasizing its importance typographically, so to speak (he will do much the same thing in Book IX with the discussion of the tyrannical soul). Photograph by Crystallizedcarbon (2015), Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, wiki/File:Plato_Cave_Wikipedia.gif#/media/File:Plato_Cave_Wikipedia.gifġ The Allegory of the Cave is arguably the most famous part of the Republic. Markus Maurer, drawing of Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ with Wikipedia’s logo as the sun (2015).
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