This is an excerpt from Plato’s Republic: A Ladybird Expert Book reproduced by kind permission of the author, Prof. Angie Hobbs, and her publisher, Penguin.
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Philosophers, sophists, and alternative facts
Why is Plato so committed to the existence of knowledge? Why is he not prepared to countenance the possibility that humans might have to withhold judgement?
The answer partly lies in his distrust and dislike of the sophists, the professional teachers of skills in public speaking and debate (such as Thrasymachus). Throughout his work, Plato is particularly opposed to those who teach their students how to make the weaker argument appear the stronger, peddling tricks in argumentation for argument’s sake rather than making an honest and collaborative effort to search for the truth. He is also alarmed by the claim of one of the most famous sophists, Protagoras, that there is no such thing as objective truth and that each human simply creates his own subjective version of what is and what is not – that each ‘human is the measure’ of all things. Questioning and examining purported ‘facts’ is fine and good and what a philosopher should do, but doing away with any possibility of agreed reality is, Plato believes, both wrong and dangerous.
In his view such sophists give philosophy a bad name, and philosophy and sophistry need to be clearly distinguished. Commitment to the objective – indeed absolute – truth of the Forms and to knowledge of the Forms is the way to do this. […]
The Simile of the Cave
The contrast between the mortal world of shifting phenomena and the intelligible and divine realm of perfect and unchanging Forms is illustrated by the powerful Simile of the Cave. We are bound by the legs and neck in a dark cave, facing a wall; behind us is a fire and between the fire and our backs runs a curtain-wall above which puppets are mysteriously moved.
Although at first we will be dazzled, we will in time adjust to the true objects there and eventually be able to gaze at the sun itself…
Angie Hobbs
All we can see on the wall in front of us are the shadows of puppets, which we mistake for real objects, both animate and inanimate. But if we are painfully released from our shackles and forced up a tunnel into the bright world above, although at first we will be dazzled, we will in time adjust to the true objects there and eventually be able to gaze at the sun itself, and realize that before we were prisoners in a world of deceptive shadows. And those few who do get to look upon the sun are compelled to return to the cave and use their knowledge to improve the lives of those who dwell there. […]
The implications of the simile for education are profound. The task of the teacher is to turn the mind’s eye of the pupil in the direction of the light; the acquisition of knowledge has to be an active and internal process which the pupil undertakes for her- or himself.
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