Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 25/2021:4-37 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2021.003

Plato's Simile of the Cave

Jiří Stránský
Teologická fakulta, Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích

The main aim of this paper is to thoroughly analyse Plato’s simile of the cave. Since it is closely tied to two previous smiles (namely the Sun and the Line), the first section of the paper is devoted to a brief recapitulation of the content of these similes and their relation to the Cave. Then, the simile of the cave itself is being scrutinized. It is argued that in order to understand the simile properly, one must distinguish between different contexts in which Plato applies it. It is claimed that although they are mutually non-transferable (and so, as many scholars think, a consistent interpretation of the whole simile cannot be given), they are, nonetheless, complementary, and only when taken together one can understand the complexity of human situation in this world. The last section of this paper is then devoted to the topic of philosophical education which plays a key role in the simile of the cave.

Received: October 8, 2021; Revised: October 15, 2021; Accepted: November 12, 2021; Prepublished online: February 10, 2022; Published: February 11, 2022  Show citation

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Stránský, J. (2021). Plato's Simile of the Cave. Aither, 13(25), 4-37. doi: 10.5507/aither.2021.003
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