El artículo sostiene que la caverna de Platón es fundamentalmente una alegoría política, no epistemológica, y que solo así podremos apreciar la relación que guarda con las imágenes del sol y de la línea. Sobre la base de evidencia textual, se ponen en duda las dos hipótesis principales sobre las que se funda el esfuerzo por encontrar un paralelo epistemológico entre la caverna y la línea: que los prisioneros representan a la humanidad en general, y que la caverna simboliza el (...) mundo visible de la experi-encia corriente, mientras el mundo fuera de esta representa el reino de las ideas. La suspensión de estos supuestos posibilita una lectura que resalta los temas culturales y políticos que están en juego en esta famosa alegoría. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper I claim that Plato’s Cave is fundamentally a political, not an epistemological image, and that only by treating it as such can we appreciate correctly its relation to the images of the Sun and the Line. On the basis of textual evidence, I question the two main assumptions that support (in my view, mistakenly) the effort to find an epistemological parallel between the Cave and the Line: first, that the prisoners represent humankind in general, and, second, (...) that the cave itself represents the visible world of ordinary experience while the world outside the cave represents the realm of the Forms. Disrupting these assumptions opens up a reading that highlights the cultural and political themes at play in this famous allegory and allows us to make better sense of it. -/- Keywords: Plato, Cave, Politics, Culture -/- Resumen: En este ensayo sostengo que la Caverna de Platón es fundamentalmente una alegoría política, no epistemológica, y que solo tratándola como tal, podremos apreciar correctamente la relación que guarda con las imágenes del Sol y de la Línea. Sobre la base de evidencia textual, pongo en duda las dos hipótesis principales sobres las que se funda (a mi parecer, equivocadamente) el esfuerzo por encontrar un paralelo epistemológico entre la Caverna y la Línea: la primera, que los prisioneros representan a la humanidad en general, y la segunda, que la propia caverna representa el mundo visible de la experiencia corriente, mientras que el mundo fuera de la caverna representa el reino de las Ideas. La suspensión de estos supuestos posibilita una lectura que pone de relieve los temas culturales y políticos que están en juego en esta famosa alegoría y nos permite así entenderla mejor. -/- Palabras Clave: Platón, Caverna, Política, Cultura . (shrink)

This paper takes a detailed look at the Republic’s Divided Line analogy and considers how we should respond to its most contentious implication: that pistis and dianoia have the same degree of ‘clarity’ (σαφήνεια). It argues that we must take this implication at face value and that doing so allows us to better understand both the analogy and the nature of dianoia.

In this paper, I argue against the claim that in Plato's Republic the most important distinguishing feature between the philosopher and non-philosopher is that the philosopher has knowledge while the non-philosopher has, at best, true opinion. This claim is, in fact, inconsistent with statements Plato makes in later books of the Republic. I submit that the important distinction Plato makes concerns the type of knowledge possessed by the philosopher-ruler. As a result, we need to amend widely held scholarly interpretations of (...) important passages in the Republic ; most notably the passages containing the Sun, Line, and Cave. I consider the views of a number of important scholars and suggest a proposal that avoids this inconsistency with the text. An important consequence of my argument is that Philosophers are indeed not the only ones with knowledge in the Kallipolis. (shrink)

ABSTRACT My aim in this paper is to challenge the neo-Aristotelian tradition, currently dominant in contemporary theories of virtue education, by proposing the Platonic pedagogical methodology for virtue cultivation as a worthy alternative to the Aristotelian theory of education. I highlight that, in contrast to Aristotle’s limited remarks concerning virtue education, Plato conceptualizes and develops a rigorous educational theory in the Republic that considers many different facets of education – i.e. moral character education, intellectual character education, exemplarism and educational corruption. (...) Given Plato’s immense contribution to virtue education theory, I conclude that his educational program merits more attention. It can serve as inspiration both for improving existing theories of character education and for developing new ones. (shrink)

This essay aims to shed new light on the stages of moral enlightenment in the Allegory of the Cave, of which there are three. I focus on the two stages within the cave, represented by eikasia and pistis, and provide a phenomenological description of these two mental states. The second part of the essay argues that there is a structural parallelism between the Allegory of the Cave and the ending of the Republic. The parallelism can be convincingly demonstrated by a (...) purely formal analysis, but additionally it complements and reinforces the original interpretation of the Cave, insofar as the ending of the Republic also mirrors, on the level of content, the previously adduced stages of moral enlightenment. (shrink)

This paper defends a reading of eikasia—the lowest kind of cognition in the Divided Line—as a kind of empirical cognition that Plato appeals to when explaining, among other things, the origin of ethical error. The paper has two central claims. First, eikasia with respect to, for example, goodness or justice is not different in kind to eikasia with respect to purely sensory images like shadows and reflections: the only difference is that in the first case the sensory images include representations (...) of value properties. Second, eikasia is not the bare awareness of images or simply a label for an error (mistaking image for original) but a kind of empirical, image-confined cognition, and one that has an important part to play in characterising the cognitive abilities of the non-rational parts of the soul. (shrink)