Knowledge is intrinsically valuable – Plato

Image from Brian Hafer's useful page on the cave allegory here.

Modern academic philosophy traces an intellectual history more than 2000 years back to the Greeks and sees Plato as its founding father. The Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia rather gushingly says:

“Plato (429–347 B.C.E.) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived — a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method — can be called his invention. Few other authors in the history of philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.”

We are going to look at a single key image that has had a lasting, if somewhat opaque, influence: the allegory of the case. In most of Plato’s writings there is a dialogue between Socrates (who wins!) and someone else, in this case Glaucon. (There was, by the way, a genuine Socrates so it is hard to know how much the views outlined are Plato’s or the real Soctrates.)

Essential reading: an extract from

Plato The Republic Book 7 ‘On Shadows and Realities in Education’

There is an online version here. Read from the start to the phrase “I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.” (I have extracted this here.)

Look also at his account from the previous section of the Republic of the divided line. This helps one to understand the gradations of knowledge Plato has in mind.

Plato The Republic Book 6 ‘The Philosophy of Government’. (I have extracted this here.)

A useful summary for kids(!) is:

Law, S. (2000) The Philosophy Files, London Orion chapter 4 ‘What is real?’ - I will put a copy of this on WebCT. It's good!

A nice animation of the allegory is here.

Preliminary questions:

• • What stands for what in the allegory? (See how much you can pin down.)

  • What is the moral of the allegory?

  • What should we think of the fate of the prisoner who escapes? And those who remain?

  • What is Plato’s view of the value of knowledge?

This session's slides are here.

Look here for a summary of the class discussion and conclusions.