Publications List:
THE GROWING MIND |
Plato's Republic 7 & 8
Plato's Republic 7 & 8
Book Seven begins with the Allegory of the Cave, an exploration of the natural process of being educated. Socrates and Glaucon probe the meaning of this story both as it relates to the discussion of knowledge and reality developed earlier and to the concept of dialectic, the overall method of Plato's dialogues. Throughout Plato's Republic we confront ways in which the community and the individual mirror and create each other. In Book Eight, Socrates and Plato's brothers explore five different kinds of republic and five different kinds of individual, showing how aristocracy becomes thimocracy and how oligarchy spawns democracy, ending with the evolution of tyranny.
Audio Samples:
Quote:
"Glaucon, my friend, you may now connect this allegory with what we were saying before. What we normally see with our eyes can be compared with the prison where the people dwell, and the fire can be related to the power of the sun. Consider the journey out of the cave and seeing the things there to be the ascent of the soul to the realm of what is knowable."