![]() The first half involves the character of Socrates painting a mental picture for his conversational sparring partner, Glaucon, and involves the most famous imagery from the passage. This brings us to the nature of the allegory, which can be roughly divided into two halves. The allegory of the cave purports to reveal hidden truths about the real world, and has proved to be one of the most evocative and enduring allegories of all time. Whilst Plato's allegory of the cave is nowhere near as long as Animal Farm, it is still considerably more complex than a simple analogy between one thing and another. In Animal Farm, the farmers represent the Russian royal family (which was overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917), whilst the pigs represent the communist bureaucracy under Joseph Stalin various fictional scenes on the farm were inspired by historic events from the early days of the Russian revolutionary regime. ![]() On the other hand, George Orwell's novella, Animal Farm, is an allegory, because it tells the history of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the form of a fictional story in which animals seize control of a farm by overthrowing the farmers. ![]() To illustrate the difference, William Paley's watchmaker argument is an analogy, because it involves a simple comparison between the relationship a watchmaker has with a watch and the relationship God has with life on Earth. Typically, allegories take the form of stories, poems, or images. In brief, an analogy involves a simple comparison between one thing and another for explanatory purposes an allegory works in a similar way, but involves a much more complex comparison in which numerous elements are involved. Plato's cave is an allegory, which is fundamentally different from an analogy because it's extended. Even better, I hope it convinces you to dip into An Introduction to Plato's Republic if you haven't already, because Julia Annas's insights are a great support to any critical reading of the text. I can't confess to doing the entire topic justice here, although I've tried my best within the confines of a 10 minute treatment nevertheless, I hope it points students in the right direction and encourages them to read Plato's allegory of the cave for themselves. Obviously, it's an incredibly popular topic with a whole host of readily available resources however, reading the text in Robin Waterfield's wonderfully readable translation, and following along using Julia Annas's excellent introduction to the Republic (as suggested by the syllabus), revealed just how much nuance often gets glossed over. I decided to take on this fascinating topic thanks to a request from Claire Glover, who teaches the OCR A Level specification at a thriving sixth form college. Since Plato believed that all other forms are the derivation of the Form of Good, how do we know what goodness is? The highest task of the philosopher is to gain knowledge of the Form of Good.
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