Plato’s Cave, Soul, and the Idea of Good: A Summary
The Myth of the Cave
To convey some of his most complex theories, Plato often resorted to metaphor and myth. The Myth of the Cave is an allegory of the Theory of Ideas, and also an anthropological account of the troubled human situation. Within the myth, we discover the building blocks of Plato’s way to access knowledge.
For Plato, knowledge is closer to the truth, overcoming ignorance and deception. But in opposition to the changing and confusing world around us, the truth is in the ideal or intelligible world. Knowledge is understood as a process of rapprochement and contemplation of the ideas. This way to knowledge, narrated in the myth, consists of steps or degrees that the prisoner takes running from its original location in ignorance until the contemplation of the sun.
The Myth of the Winged Chariot
To explain the nature of the soul, Plato tells us another myth. The myth compares the human soul to a winged chariot. The charioteer drives a chariot drawn by a pair of horses, one of which is white, beautiful, and good, the other black, ugly, and bad.
- The white horse symbolizes the positive trends of man, passions such as courage or bravery, anger, and hope. It is often called the irascible part of the soul and is located in the chest.
- The black horse symbolizes negative tendencies of man, desires, lowest instinct of conversation, sexuality. You can call it the concupiscible part of man and is located in the belly.
- The Charioteer symbolizes the intellect of man and can be called the rational part, located in the head.
Of these souls, Plato highlights especially the rational soul, which is authentically human, posing the task of controlling the other two. Only she is immortal, because it only belongs to the world of ideas, while the irascible soul and concupiscence, by contrast, being of the body, seem to be dependent on corporal death. The soul’s winged chariot symbolizes the lives and moves in the world of ideas.
The Idea of Good
Above justice and any other virtues, is situated the Good, whereby those virtues acquire meaning. Any action is fair when it leads to good and would lose all its value if it were not. But what is good? Plato disputes both views: the intelligence should be an object; if that object is good, then this is something different from their own intelligence. Regarding those who equate good and pleasure, they must recognize there are bad pleasures and, therefore, good and pleasure are not the same thing, as previously only what is good we can decide if a pleasure is good or bad. We are therefore without knowing what is good.
Attaining the knowledge of good is not an easy task, although it is something pursued by every soul, though not everyone can get to get it. Socrates therefore must resort to in order to illustrate the good.
Characteristics of Platonic Ideas
The characterization of Platonic ideas is influenced by Parmenides:
- The ideas are objective. They are therefore not thought contents of thought, but entities whose existence would be impossible to know scientifically. They are authentic ideal realities. Plato affirms the real existence of the ideal flower, perfect, immutable…
- They are universal, while sensible things are individual, concrete, and multiple. So I can collect a large plurality of flowers, but the concept “flower” is unique, does not mean this particular flower or that one but something more universal.
- Ideas are known by reason, and one of them can obtain true knowledge, while sensible world things are known through the senses.
- The ideas are immutable, unlike the sensitive world things are constantly changing and are divisible.
- They are eternal, transcending time and space are not, unlike sensible things begin to exist.
- They are hierarchized and there is an idea so that has a high ranking in that hierarchy, that covers all.