Name: The Allegory of the Cave
ISBN: 9781699090039

The Allegory of the Cave

Plato · 2010

The Allegory of the Cave, was presented by Plato in Republic to compare "the effect of education (παιδεία) and the lack of it on our nature". It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, narrated by the latter. The allegory is presented after the analogy of the sun and the analogy of the divided line

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dtj1123Jun 2026

Plato gave a better response with his allegory of the cave:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

Any information an AI has access to has been extracted from text, which isn't all that different to shadows on a cave wall in the ways that matter.

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wunderlustMay 2020

I don't think any book has had an immediately noticeable effect, but looking back to books I read years ago I can to some degree tell which ones are still resonating.

The Demon Haunted World (Carl Sagan) — although I was already a skeptical thinker, this book opened me up to how critical thinking can enhance your spiritual side as well as your intellectual side.

Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter) — this book added color to a lot my intuitions about the deeper connections of patterns we see throughout reality.

Truth & Power (Michel Foucault) — I'm not a fan of most so-called continental philosophy, but Foucault's ideas about cultural structures has always stuck with me.

The Allegory of the Cave (Plato; section in The Republic) — classic; some might say the basic idea underpinning all philosophical and scientific inquiry.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ludwig Wittgenstein) — I'll admit I never quite understood this book from reading it, but it definitely changed how I thought about philosophy, consciousness and spirituality.

Charles Sanders Peirce essays — it's been a long time, so I don't remember the specific texts, but he did fascinating work in semiotics. One essay in particular was critical in how I think about communication and consciousness.

Fact, Fiction, Forecast (Nelson Goodman) — Goodman is brilliant and is great at relaying philosophical problems as puzzles. He's a great writer and turns the problem of induction on its head in this one.

Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco) — I don't read a lot of fiction, but this book is amazing. There's a lot of history, so you may need to keep an encyclopedia nearby, but this one will really get you thinking about how the autonomy of memes. Probably quite relevant at the moment.

Any number of books and essays by great analytic philosophers: Saul Kripke, W.V.O. Quine, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Carl Hempel, John Campbell, David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, Dan Dennett, David Lewis, etc.

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tareqakAug 2019

In times like this one, I think it is important to revisit the Allegory of the Cave [0][1]. Try to think about the cave as wherever you personally started your own education instead of broadening it to any given country. Once you have an idea of what that is and what that is not, imagine that that entire universe (cave, outside the cave, etc) itself being encompassed within yet another cave and world outside that cave. What if there is yet another cave and another world outside the cave wrapping this second one? And so on.

Update: I guess another thing to think about would be what if someone in at one depth of the cave tried to take someone out from within what seems to them a deeper level of the cave? And the opposite, what if someone from the cave tried to reach out of the cave and bring someone they think is in what appears to be a cave to them to their own cave.

Another update: The last link in the posted article is an interesting read in terms of the actions people take when they start thinking that they were inside a cave [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

[1] https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf

[2] https://supchina.com/2019/05/01/truth-hidden-in-the-dark-chi...

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dbg31415Jan 2017

There is no one right way to run a family. What works for one won't work for another.

I feel like, if you can somehow quantify success on a bell-curve, the values in this article aim to land kids in the middle two quadrants. You won't end up with kids in the bottom quadrant... but you also won't end up with individuals capable of soaring to great heights either. Just overall solid, middling, performers. There just would be no Apple, Microsoft, Dell, or any of the others... because people would have been conditioned not to take risks.

Anyway Plato wrote already wrote a response to this and it was in all the Philosophy 101 classes.

* Plato, "The Allegory of the Cave" || http://historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html

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ulvundJul 2010

I would not recommend any compilations of philosophy. The great thing about philosophy is reading the rationales and the results, not only the results.

"Ricard+Revel - The Monk and the Philosopher" http://www.amazon.com/Monk-Philosopher-Father-Discuss-Meanin...

"Socrates(/Plato) - The Allegory of the Cave" http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html

"Plato(/Socrates/others) - Symposium" http://www.amazon.com/Symposium-Plato/dp/0872200760

"Bertrand Russell - The Conquest of Happiness" http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Happiness-Bertrand-Russell/dp...

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nstentsOct 2026

It can help in getting a perspective on this message to investigate the Kogui tribe, its philosophies, and its structure, including how they raise their future leaders. There's a strong similarity, with important differences, between Plato's Allegory of the Cave (from the Republic) and how some children are brought up. These children later become important figures in the community.

Edit: an early BBC documentary on the Kogui https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJNpMxhO4Ic

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