Question

According to Plato, how would the people in the cave react to an escapee who tried to explain the truth to them, or who came down and broke their chains to set them free?

Answer 1

Plato tells an allegorical story called the Cave Myth or Allegory of the Cave in his most complex work, The Republic. The dialogue between Socrates, the main character, and Glauco, his interlocutor, aims to present the reader with the Platonic theory about the knowledge of the truth and the need for the city ruler to have access to that knowledge.

The freed prisoner could do two things: return to the cave and free his companions or live his freedom. A possible consequence of the first possibility would be the attacks that he would suffer from his companions, who would judge him as crazy, but it could be a necessary attitude, because it is the fairest thing to do.

Plato is hierarchically disposing the degrees of knowledge with this metaphor and saying that there is a way of knowing, of knowing, which is the most adequate to think of a ruler capable of doing politics with wisdom and justice.