Dialogue on The Republic, Session 1: Allegory of the Cave, Simile of the Sun, Nature of Good, and the Divided Line

Members of the Toronto Philosophy and Calgary Philosophy Meetup groups convened on September 26, 2021 to launch season two of Plato’s Pod with a discussion on Plato’s Republic. Our focus was on the famous allegory of the cave, and the related simile of the sun, nature of the good, and divided line of reasoning (in passages 502(d)-521(b).

Is the prisoner in the cave, unable to see the source of the images projected on the wall in front of him that he mistakes for reality, like us, as Socrates states? During our dialogue, participants weighed in with some fascinating thoughts. The restricted perspective of the cave was compared to being in a small town and not knowing its surroundings, while another raised the idea of the human capacity of differentiation in distinguishing that which is from that which is not.

Our discussion included qu ...