Episode 289: Shadows on the Wall (Plato's Cave Pt. 1)

Very Bad Wizards

Over the years we’ve referred repeatedly to Plato’s cave, Platonic forms, and phrases like “copies of copies” without ever really explaining what we mean by these things. So as part of a new mini-series we’re going dive deeper into Plato’s famous images of the cave, the sun, and the divided line from Republic Books 6 and 7. What are Plato’s forms and how do they fit into the overall structure of his most famous dialogue? How does the form of the good relate to the other forms? What are the mystical elements of the cave metaphor? (Note: this is part one of a two-part discussion).

Plus, if we could go back in time and give one piece of professional advice to a younger version of ourselves, what would that be?

Plato's allegory of the cave (this has a couple of useful illustrations) [wikipedia.org]

Republic (Hackett Classics) translated by G.M.A. Grube [amazon.com affiliate link]

(you can get full text PDF files of Plato's Republic for free all over the internet, but this is the version we're using)

Let us know where we should hold our 300th episode listener meet-up [surveymonkey.com]