Plato's Philosophy: Athenian Turmoil, Cave Allegory, and the Academy

Plato: Philosophy Forged in Athenian Turmoil

Plato (428–347 BC) was born and lived during a period of great social and political turmoil resulting from the Peloponnesian Wars between the peoples of Attica (Athens) and the Peloponnese (Sparta). It was a time of political corruption, evident both during the period of the Thirty Tyrants, who staged a coup in 404 BC, and in the subsequent democratic period. Plato harshly criticized this democratic government, viewing it as an ignorant majority that brought mistaken beliefs to power.

Plato's Critique of Athenian Society

The injustices of oligarchy and the errors of democracy led Plato to seek a more rational and just form of governance. This critique of democracy and oligarchy is famously presented in Plato's Myth of the Cave, which appears in his seminal work, The Republic. In this allegory, he introduces us to deluded and chained prisoners living in a world of shadows and false opinions within a cave they have never left. This inner world of the cave and its prisoners symbolizes, among other things, the state of injustice and oppression within Athenian society, particularly the democratic and oligarchic systems of his time.

The Allegory of the Cave and Socrates' Legacy

The chains represent the intellectual and societal bonds. When a prisoner is released from these restraints and taken to the outside world, which represents the real world and sunlight (a symbol of the ideal world and the Idea of Good), they have a duty to return to the cave to save or liberate their comrades. However, these comrades, still enslaved by their bondage and imprisoned by their ignorance—their knowledge limited to shadows and false opinions—wish to kill the one who returns. This returning figure symbolizes Socrates, or more broadly, his teachings on the investigation of authentic science and philosophy.

The Founding of Plato's Academy

This political ideal led Plato to found the Academy. The Academy aimed to examine all sciences and knowledge necessary for the training of philosopher-rulers, as outlined in Book VI of The Republic. Key subjects included:

• Arithmetic
• Geometry
• Music
• Dialectics

Dialectics, in Plato's time, was akin to what we now understand as logic and metaphysics—the art of argumentation, language, and a thorough knowledge of authentic beings or realities, which are the Ideas. The Academy also became a focal point for Greek science and art of the period, attracting brilliant minds such as the great mathematician Theaetetus, to whom Plato dedicated one of his dialogues. Furthermore, the Academy nurtured another of the great figures of Greek philosophy and science: his pupil, Aristotle.