‘Plato’s Cave and The Matrix’ by John Partridge

“Philosophy involves seeing the absolute oddity of what is

familiar and trying to formulate really probing questions about

it.” –Iris Murdoch1

“They say about me that I am the strangest person, always

making people confused.” –Socrates2

Imagine a dark, subterranean prison in which humans are bound by

their necks to a single place from infancy. Elaborate steps are taken

by unseen forces to supply and manipulate the content of the

prisoner’s visual experience. This is so effective that the prisoners do

not recognize their imprisonment and are satisfied to live their lives in

this way. Moreover, the cumulative effects of this imprisonment are so

thorough that if freed, the prisoners would be virtually helpless. They

could not stand up on their own, their eyes would be overloaded

initially with sensory information, and even their minds would refuse

to accept what the senses eventually presented them. It is not

unreasonable to expect that some prisoners would wish to remain

imprisoned even after their minds grasped the horror of their

condition. But if a prisoner was dragged out and compelled to

understand the relationship between the prison and outside, matters

would be different. In time the prisoner would come to have genuine

knowledge superior to the succession of representations that made

up the whole of experience before. This freed prisoner would

understand those representations as imperfect—like pale copies of

the full reality now grasped in the mind. Yet if returned to the prison,

the freed prisoner would be the object of ridicule, disbelief, and

hostility.

I. Introduction

Viewers of The Matrix remember the moment in the film when Neo is

released from his prison and made to grasp the truth of his life and

the world. The account above roughly captures that turning point in

the 1999 film, and yet it is drawn from an image crafted almost

twenty-four hundred years ago by the Greek philosopher, Plato

(427-347 B.C.E.). Today the Republic is the most influential work by

Plato, and the allegory of the Cave the most famous part of the

Republic. If you know that Socrates was tried, convicted, and

sentenced to death by drinking hemlock, or that Socrates thought

that the unexamined life is not worth living, you may also know that

Socrates in the Republic likened the human condition to the state of

prisoners bound in a cave seeing only shadows projected on the wall

in front of them. Transcending this state is the aim of genuine

education, conceived as a release from imprisonment, a turning or

reorientation of one’s whole life, an upward journey from darkness

into light:

The release from the bonds, the turning around from shadows to

statues and the light of the fire and, then, the way up out of the

cave to the sunlight…: [education] has the power to awaken the

best part of the soul and lead it upward to the study of the best

among the things that are.3

The allegory of the Cave gives literary shape to Socrates’ most

fundamental concern, namely that our souls be in the best condition

possible (Plato, Apology 30a7-b4). Socrates also believed he was

commanded by the god Apollo to practice philosophy; it both

animated and cost him his life. Yet it is not obvious how philosophical

investigation improves the condition of the soul—still less how the

Socratic method in particular does so, consisting as it does in testing

the consistency of a person’s beliefs through a series of questions

Socrates asks.

I believe, and will show here, that the allegory of the Cave is part of

Plato’s effort to make philosophical sense of Socrates’ philosophical

life, to link Socrates’ persistent questioning to his unwavering aim at

what he called the “care of the soul.” On this theme of care of the

soul, there is a deep resonance between The Matrix and Plato’s

thought in the Republic. Like the allegory of the Cave, The Matrix

dramatically conveys the view that ordinary appearances do not

depict true reality and that gaining the truth changes one’s life. Neo’s

movements toward greater understanding nicely parallel the

movements of the prisoner in the cave whose bonds are loosened.

The surface similarities between the film and the allegory can run to a

long catalog. The first paragraph of this essay reveals some of these

connections. But there remains a deeper affinity between the two

that I shall draw out here, especially in Part IV, having to do with

Socrates’ notion of the care of the soul.

To see what I am calling a deeper connection between the film and

the allegory of the Cave, I begin in Part II by recounting the context in

which the Cave appears and the philosophical positions it figuratively

depicts.4 In Part III I compare and contrast the film and the allegory,

focusing attention on the difficulty in sorting out deceptive sensory

information. Finally, in Part IV I examine the warnings and

concessions Plato places in the dramatic spaces of Republic. The

allegory of the Cave is a strange image, as one of Socrates’ friends

says (515a4), while Socrates himself confesses that the Cave is not

exact (504b5; cf. 435c9-d2).5 Rereading the Cave after a recent

viewing of the film shows that these are not throwaway remarks.

The Matrix likewise privileges the work that strangeness and

calculated vagueness do; Morpheus, after all, cannot show Neo what

he most needs to see, but must get him to see for himself something

that is difficult to recognize. In this way, The Matrix and Plato’s Cave

are faithful to a central tenet in Socrates’ philosophical examinations:

that proper teaching only occurs when students are prepared to

make discoveries for themselves. Furthermore, the discovery that is

most crucial is the discovery of oneself. Readiness for self-examination

is, after all, what makes “care of the soul” possible.

II. Plato’s Cave

If Plato’s Republic has a single unifying theme, it is to show that the

life of the just person is intrinsically preferable to any other life. In

order to prove this, Socrates is made to investigate the concept of

“justice.” After an elaborate effort that spans three of the ten books

of the Republic, Socrates and his two interlocutors discover what

justice is. Justice is shown to be a property of a soul in which its three

parts do their proper work and refrain from doing the job of another

part. Specifically, reason must rule the other parts of the soul. Only

under the rule of reason is the soul’s harmonious arrangement

secured and preserved. Plato glosses this idea memorably by calling

such a soul healthy. Just persons have psychic health; their

personality is integrated in the proper way.

At the end of Book Four, there is one main gap in the argument: what

is the precise role of reason, the “best part of the soul” mentioned in

the passage above? There is little to go on at this stage. We know

only that the soul in which reason does its job well is called wise, and

wisdom is a special kind of knowledge: knowledge of the good. How

are we to arrive at this knowledge? What is it like to possess it? What

sort of thing is the good? The allegory of the Cave speaks to these

questions.6

In order to impress upon us the importance of these questions, Book

Seven of the Republic begins with a startling image of our ignorance.

It is the allegory of the Cave:

Imagine human beings living in an underground, cavelike

dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to

the light and as wide as the cave itself. They’ve been there since

childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs

fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bonds

prevent them from turning their heads around. Light is provided

by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also behind them,

but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them

and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been

built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they

show their puppets . . . Then also imagine that there are people

along the wall, carrying all kinds of artifacts that project above

it—statues of people and other animals, made out of stone,

wood, and every material. And, as you’d expect, some of the

carriers are talking, and some are silent. (514a1-515a3)

Many contemporary readers recoil at the awful politics of the Cave.

Who, after all, are the “puppeteers”? Why do they deceive their

fellow cave-dwellers? Plato has so little to say about them that

readers quickly imagine their own worst fears; a totalitarian

government or the mass media struck mid- and late-20th Century

readers as an obvious parallel to the prisoners who move freely

within the cave. But this gets the aim of the cave wrong, I believe,

since it deflects attention away from the prisoners bound to the

posts. “They are us,” Socrates says, and this is what is truly sinister:

an imprisonment that we do not recognize because we are our own

prison-keepers. Let us turn to examine these prisoners and their

imprisonment, specifically by examining the philosophical stakes of

their ignorance. Only then will we see exactly why ignorance is

likened to imprisonment and alienation.

In the cave, the prisoners can distinguish the different shadows and

sounds (516c8-9, cf. e8-9), apply names to the shadows depicting

things (cf. 515b4-5), and even discern the patterns in their

presentation (516c9-10). To this extent they have some true beliefs.

But insofar as they believe that this two-dimensional, monochromatic

play of images—and the echoes reverberating in the cave—is the

whole of reality (515c1-2), they are mistaken. Moreover, the opinions

they have do not explain why the shapes they see are as they are.

They do not know the source of the shadows, nor do they know that

the sounds are not produced by the shadows but rather by the

unseen people moving the statues (515b7-9).

The possession of a few, small-scale, true beliefs characterizes the

condition of all of us, Plato believes. We can distinguish different

things, but we lack a systematic, causal explanation of them. To put it

loosely, we have, at best, assorted true beliefs about the what of

things, but a mistaken hold (if any) on the why of things. Socrates’

search for the definition of justice here, like his search for definitions

in other Platonic dialogues, looks like an effort to get at these

explanations, to grasp why things are the way they are and, perhaps

further, what underlying relationship they have to one another. His

questions are part of a search for the essence of things, or what he

calls their “form.”7 For Plato, when we possess knowledge of the form

of a thing, we can give a comprehensive account of its essence.

Without grasp of the form, we can have at best only true beliefs.

A simple example should show what difference it makes to have

knowledge of forms.8 Suppose someone in the cave carries a chair in

front of the fire. The bound prisoners see the chair’s shadow on the

cave wall, and some of them remark, “There is a chair.” They are

partially correct. If they broke their bonds, they could turn to see the

actual chair. In this case their cognitive grip on the chair would be

more complete. They would be able to recognize that the shadow

was less real than the chair and that the chair is the cause of the

shadow.

Ultimately, the physically-real chair is explained in terms of its

representation of the form of chair. After all, to have genuine

knowledge of a thing it is necessary for our intellects to grasp its

form. One might think of the difference this way. A shadow is better

grasped when the object casting it is seen. Plato would wish us to

see that, in a sense, ordinary objects are like mere shadows of forms.

Thus, to grasp objects as fully as possible, one must attain a grasp of

its form.

There is a curious complication on the horizon that I shall point out

here. It turns out that knowing the form of a thing is not sufficient for

gaining a final understanding of that thing. Even to know fully the

form of chair, Plato holds, one must know the form of the good.

This does not make sense at first. Recall, the form of the good is what

reason ought, ideally, to know, for in knowing it you become wise.

Furthermore, knowing the form of the good contributes to your being

a just person, since one part of you, reason, is doing its job (and this

is what it means for you to be just). Now Plato suggests that

grasping the form of the good or the good-itself (the terms are

interchangeable; see note 7) is necessary for attaining the best

intellectual grasp of anything that our intellects can know. The

distinctive importance of the form of the good is indicated by two

images that immediately precede the Cave: the Sun and the Line, and

I will consider them now.

The Sun analogy (507a ff.) reveals the special epistemological role

played by the good-itself. Just as the natural world depends upon the

sun (for warmth and light), so too the intelligible world depends on

the good-itself (508b13-c2).9 This is the force of the light metaphor.

The sun, as Plato puts it, gives the power to see to seers, while the

form of the good gives the power to know to knowers (508e1-3).

In our example of the chair, it is only in virtue of the light produced by

the fire above and behind the prisoners that the chair and its shadow

are visible. The fire, then, is a condition for our acquiring a more

complete true belief about the shadow. But the fire is nothing more

than a “source of light that is itself a shadow in relation to the sun”

(532c2-3). Out of the cave the sun represents the good-itself. The

good-itself illuminates the true, intelligible world of ultimate reality,

and in this way, the form of chair relies on the form of the good for its

intelligibility. The good-itself is the most preeminent item in the

universe. It is both an object of knowledge and the condition of fully

knowing other objects of knowledge.

Plato is not finished with his specification of the role played by the

form of the good. He goes on to suggest that the good-itself

nourishes the being of intelligible things in a way analogous to the

sun nourishing organic life. For this unusual idea we have some help

from the Line image (509d ff), the most obscure of the three images.

Imagine a vertical line dividing two realms—physical reality and

intelligible reality—into unequal spaces. Each realm is then subdivided

in the same uneven proportion as that which separates the physical

and intelligible world. To take only the smaller, bottom portion of the

line, we find the physical realm divided between actual,

physically-existing items and their ephemeral copies (e.g., reflections

in water, shadows, and artistic depictions). In the Cave, this is the

distinction made between the chair and its shadow. And so too the

Line presses us to think that the physically real objects perceived by

our senses are, in effect, shadows—pale, diminished or distorted

copies of something more real.

The Line offers a ranked order of Plato’s ontology according to which

the degrees of reality and being of a particular class of things

increases as you go up the line. The higher up the scale, the more

real the items become; and since the form of the good is the most

real item in all of reality, it is located at the very top of the Line, just

above the forms. Things lower on the line are derivative and owe

whatever reality or being that they have to the things above them.

Physical objects are, metaphorically, nourished by their corresponding

forms. They depend for their very reality, not just their knowability, on

the perfect, eternal Forms existing in the intelligible realm.

One clear implication of the Line is the metaphor of ascent. The Cave

exploits it as well: the upward escape from the cave represents the

difficulty of gaining ever more abstract knowledge while not relying on

information gathered by the senses. By connecting the three images

together we discover that the human condition is abject: we see only

the most downgraded forms of reality (image, shadows) and are as

far from the sun (the good-itself) as we can be. This is what it is to be

ignorant of the truth.

But to see why our alienation from what is genuinely good makes a

difference in our lives, there is one more feature of the good-itself

that deserves attention. Whatever exactly the form of the good is, it

serves as a paradigm or model, and it has a remarkable effect on

those who grasp it. As Socrates says of fully-educated philosophers

near the end of Book Seven, “once they’ve seen the good-itself, they

must each in turn put the city, its citizens, and themselves in order,

using it as their model (paradeigmati)” (540a8-b1). This was

anticipated in a longer passage in which the philosopher, by means of

studying the “things that are” (500b9), acts as a craftsman (cf.

500d6), or a “painter using a divine model (paradeigmati)” (500e3-4).

Not only do physical things take on the qualities they have through a

process of copying, reflecting or imitating the forms, so too we can

take on goodness through intellectual contact with the good-itself.10

By coming to understand the good-itself, we become like it. In short,

we become good.

We can see now why being just depends on knowing the form of the

good. Reason’s rule affords the soul the opportunity to study and

therein to become like the good-itself, that is, properly proportioned,

well ordered, healthy. Finally, once this knowledge is acquired, and

the self is transformed, one becomes productive.11 Those who gain

knowledge of the good-itself are capable of crafting virtues in their

souls and in the souls of others, and they can paint divine

constitutions for cities. This is what enables Plato to put words into

Socrates’ mouth that, were he on Aristophanes’ stage, would have

returned thunderous laughter:

Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called

kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize,

that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide . . .

cities will have no rest from evils, Glaucon, nor, I think, will the

human race. (473c11-d6)

III. Plato’s Cave and The Matrix

There are no forms in The Matrix, and thus our epistemic and

metaphysical circumstances in Plato’s Republic look very different

from those in the film. The world inside the cave is a diminished one, a

shadow or reflection of the real, but broadly continuous with the true

world. Even though there is a marked difference between the

sensible and intelligible realms viz. method, epistemic certainty, and

metaphysical reality, on Plato’s view the sensible is somehow derived

from the intelligible. Thus, for Plato, our speaking and thinking in the

cave is not meaningless, and some of our opinions are true, in spite of

our ignorance of the deeper causes of things.

In The Matrix, by contrast, the two worlds are far less continuous

with one another. The real world is profoundly dystopian, and the

substance of lives inside the Matrix is supplied in mental states almost

entirely cut off from this reality. (Ironically, the real world in The

Matrix is very like the world inside the cave.) In spite of its realism,

the world inside the Matrix is not a copy of the real world but is a

simulation. Nevertheless, there is at least one continuity between the

real world and the computer-simulated world: your body. Owing to an

unexplained principle, called “residual body memory,” your body looks

the same to you and to others in both worlds. And you are able to

retain your memories of one world when you are in the other and

when you return back to the first. (This means that Cypher will have

to have his memories of the time spent outside the Matrix removed if

he is to return to the illusion of reality inside the Matrix.)

Since the real world and the simulated world are worlds in which the

senses receive information, the practical problem is not that they are

discontinuous, but that they are indiscernible. This is part of the initial

difficulty for Neo since he cannot determine which sensory information

is genuine and which false. Although he (and the viewer) settles this

question soon enough, a skeptical worry remains in the wake: how

can he ever be sure his sensory information is truthful if there is no

certificate of authenticity on his experiences?

Suppose Agent Smith creates a program that launches right when

Neo picks up a phone within the Matrix. Instead of being whisked

back aboard the ship, Neo’s consciousness is supplied with a

computer-generated experience of the interior of the

Nebuchadnezzar, and of course he believes he has successfully exited

the Matrix. Such a trick might enable Agent Smith to obtain

compromising information about the Nebuchadnezzar and its crew or,

worse, the passwords for Zion.

It is hard to imagine how Neo might see past Agent Smith’s ruse,

especially if he only had a few moments to figure things out. Would

Plato’s freed prisoner fair better? Recall, Plato urges us to regard the

sensible world as unreliable, no matter the source of our information

about it.12 We must adopt a different method for apprehending the

truth of things. This is, of course, not nearly as simple as it sounds,

nor is it obviously helpful; after all, what we are to grasp is the

intelligible world from which our ordinary, sensible world is copied, not

the sensible world itself. The reward is that once you grasp the forms

in the intelligible world, you would be an expert in discriminating items

in the sensible world (cf. 520c1-6). This doesn’t mean you’d never be

mistaken, however; rather, you would simply be the best sensible

world discriminator there could be. Therefore, in the case where

Agent Smith launches his deceptive program, the only advantage the

freed prisoner might have is slight: a general unease about all

sensory information. Since the ordinary world is too murky and

ever-changing to permit genuine knowledge of it, our awareness of

this mutability should assist us in determining which of our beliefs

were relatively more reliable.

It seems that the metaphysical differences between Plato and The

Matrix do not prevent them from telling a roughly similar story about

the epistemological unreliability of the senses and the need to

abstract from the senses in order to gain genuine knowledge. In fact,

we find Neo at the end of the film doing more than simply bending the

laws of physics with the Matrix. He has, it seems, stepped almost

entirely out of that very world itself. He does not, however, appear in

two places at once, but his destruction of one of the Agents, and his

ability to fly, suggest that the laws of physics are more than merely

bent.

Where Plato’s dialogue and The Matrix agree most is in drawing out

the enormous psychological difficulty in calling the world into question

and the ethical dimensions of failing to do so. Neo and Plato’s freed

prisoner must accept truths about themselves (namely, that their lives

have been unreal) before they can acquire deeper knowledge about

fundamental truths. To achieve this, both Neo and the freed prisoner

need the shocking demonstration that the senses are inadequate

and that they can be systematically deceived. Both then undertake an

introspective turn to discover the truth, and must take steps to

disregard knowledge derived from the senses.

This is the point to ask, finally, what knowledge Neo attains that

operates in him like the knowledge of the Platonic form of the good.

What does Neo know only after great difficulty but whose truth is

fundamental? What object is grasped by Neo’s intellect that he

understands to be the condition of his knowing anything else? What

knowledge enables him to be productive, to be a savior of himself and

others? It is nothing more than proper self-understanding. In both

The Matrix and in the Cave, there is a single item the knowledge of

which makes the knower more integrated and more powerful, and for

Neo it is self-knowledge.

Ought we to see Neo as adhering to the letter of Socratic

self-examination and care of the soul? Only at high-altitude will a

perfect connection be visible. For Neo’s enlightenment is ultimately

about his own specific path and role. Socratic care of the soul involves

self-knowledge, but the parts of yourself that are peculiar to you, that

make up your individuality, are not relevant.13 Since the prisoners in

the cave have only dim self-awareness (they see only the shadows of

themselves [515a5-8]), it might seem that release involves getting

the right beliefs about oneself. But the very abstractness of the

knowledge that Plato prizes, which is very unlike the specificity of the

knowledge that Neo eventually gets (namely, that he is the One),

suggests that the self-knowledge the prisoners need is neither the

end of their search nor even the proper beginning.

In other dialogues Socrates was made to endorse the idea that

knowledge was in you, that a kind of introspection aided by proper

questioning could elicit true beliefs. But these are not truths that are

about you, rather they are truths that are in you. Neo’s case is

different. The truths he must grasp are both in him and about him.

The film reveals furthermore how he must demonstrate and

experience his capabilities before he is able to believe entirely that he

possesses them. And when he believes in himself at last, his

capabilities are further enhanced. This result is produced neither by

the method nor the aim of Socratic care of the soul.

Most fundamentally, the film and the allegory share a pedagogical

conceit. Both hold that in teaching the most basic truths, there is an

important role for a strategic strangeness and the confusion it

produces. The allegory of the Cave puzzles Socrates’ audience, yet as

it hooks them, the Cave provides only the outline for solving the

puzzle. Might Morpheus be doing the same? Might Morpheus, like the

allegory, act as a kind of Socratic teacher, urging Neo toward

self-understanding and care for his soul?

IV. Socratic Education in the Cave and The Matrix

To see to what extent this is so, I want now to return to a remark by

Socrates’ friend, Glaucon, that the cave and its prisoners are

“strange” (atopon . . . atopous, [515a4]). The remark is important

because it indicates that the image is operating on its audience in a

particular way, one that Plato elsewhere gives us reason to believe is

significant. Prompting someone to recognize strangeness, something

being out of place (atopia), is how the Socratic method achieves one

of its aims. This can occur when Socrates asks one of his deceptively

simple questions. But it can also occur when he professes ignorance,

or when he is silent. Similarly, Plato’s allegory of the Cave describes

what our ignorance is like in stark images and what it would be like to

become educated; it says nothing about what starts the process of

becoming educated.14 Of course, the imprisonment is metaphorical,

as is the release. Pressing for specific details is to demand too much

of the image. By refusing to say precisely how this prisoner is freed,

Plato retains the openness of his allegory.15

What are we to say about The Matrix? On the surface, it appears the

The Matrix departs from the allegory. First of all, it gives answers to

the question above, for it is Morpheus who frees Neo, and Morpheus

chooses to free him because there is something particular about Neo

that recommends his release. Yet, on closer inspection, Neo’s early

encounters with Morpheus produce the same kind of confusion that

Socrates produces in his interlocutors. Neo receives strange

communications via computer (“wake up, Neo,”16) to follow the white

rabbit he soon sees on a tattooed shoulder. These odd messages

disrupt Neo’s expectations of the world, especially his need for control

over his life and his facility with computers. Another disruption comes

when Neo swallows the red pill. This drug quickly begins to alter his

perception of the stability of the world inside the Matrix.17 Taken

together, the computer messages uncannily anticipate what is about

to happen, while the pill calls into question his grasp of what is now

happening. This surely prepares Neo to accept the truth that

everything that has already happened is an illusion.

If we suppose that Morpheus asks the right questions, and supplies

the right drugs, it is still the case that Neo has to recognize the

questions and accept the drugs. Neo proves to be a particularly apt

pupil. Indeed, there are features of Neo’s life that might explain how

he begins to see the falsity of the world inside the Matrix. Neo is an

accomplished hacker who would have the best chance of anyone to

discover that the whole of his experience is itself nothing more than

highly-sophisticated computer code. He is also living a double life. He

works as a software engineer perhaps to maintain a steady income,

perhaps as cover for his underground activities. Maybe playing the

role of an office worker affords him a sense of the absurd that makes

it easier to believe that his life is hollow. Insomnia might work for this

purpose as well. Besides, who hasn’t had the gut feeling Neo has

that “there is something wrong with the world”?

Of course, one of the themes of the film is Neo’s struggle to accept his

role as the One, the savior of humanity. He is the subject of a number

of prophecies made by the Oracle.18 In fact, he is the only person

whose prophecy does not refer to someone other than himself. He

only accepts his true nature well after the series of strange clues

Morpheus presents to him and the confusion this produces in him.

Ultimately, he must experience first-hand his fitness for the special

role that the others urge him to perform.

In this way, Morpheus can be seen as a Socratic gadfly, stinging Neo

to take the first steps he needs in order to discover the truth on his

own. Similarly, Plato’s sketch of the role played by the form of the

good only points the way to the complete answer that Plato would

have us seek out. In this way, Plato draws the reader to think for him

or herself in the same way that Socrates wished his interlocutors to

feel the sting of the realization of their ignorance as a motivation to

join him in inquiry and care of the soul.

The allegory of the Cave issues a pointed challenge: in what way are

we living lives of diminished prospect, resting content with our

knowledge, failing even to ask the right questions? These are

precisely the questions Morpheus puts to Neo. And like Morpheus,

Plato’s pessimism about the human condition gives way to an

optimistic view of the power of education to liberate anyone:

Education isn’t what some people declare it to be, namely,

putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into

blind eyes . . . Education takes for granted that sight is there but

that it isn’t turned the right way or where it ought to look, and it

tries to redirect it appropriately. (518b7-c2, d5-7)

John Partridge

Endnotes

1. “Literature and Philosophy: A Conversation with Bryan Magee” in Existentialists

and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Penguin, 1998), 8.

Originally published in Magee, Men of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

2. Plato, Theaetetus 149a8-9.

3. Plato, Republic 532b6-8, c3-6. What I have dubbed “education” in the brackets is

specifically the study of mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and harmony. When

properly pursued, each discipline involves abstraction from the senses, and is “really

fitted in every way to draw one towards being” (523a2-3). These disciplines prepare

our minds for the most important discipline, dialectic, Plato’s term for the right kind of

philosophical examination.

Hereafter I include citations to the “Stephanus pages” of the Republic in the text.

Stephanus pages may be found along the vertical margins of most translations of the

Republic. For example, “527d6-e3” refers to a passage beginning on Stephanus page

527, section d, on line 6 of the Oxford Classical Text. The translation I cite here is by

Grube/Reeve (1992), which is also found in Cooper (1997).

4. I shall refer to the philosophical positions advocated by the character Socrates as

Plato’s, though this scholarly convention is under attack in some quarters. Plato never

appears in the Republic or any other dialogue (save for the Apology, and he does not

speak there). Thus some scholars find it presumptuous to fob off the character

Socrates’ views onto Plato; would we automatically assume that Ian Fleming took his

martini shaken, not stirred, in the manner of his fictional agent? Of course, more is at

stake in the first case than getting a drink order wrong, but this is true largely

because other assumptions normally accompany the identification of Socrates’

utterances with Plato’s considered philosophical views. One worry is that this

identification narrows the range of answers we might give to the question why Plato

wrote dialogues. Another worry is that it may distort our understanding of what Plato

took an adequate philosophical theory to be.

5. Contemporary readers generally agree with Socrates. Some refer to “the

treacherous analogies and parables” (Cooper [1977], 143) as “over-ambitious” and

“overloaded” (Annas [1981], 265; 252, 256). Much ink has been spilled in the effort to

provide a consistent, plausible philosophical interpretation of the images in the

Republic.

6. I say “speaks to” because the Cave is only part of a generally sketchy account of

the nature of the good. Socrates disclaims precision, warning us that his talk about

the good is schematic (504d6-8) and fuzzy (cf. 504d8-e3); a shortcut to the truth of

things (cf. 504b1-4; 435d2). Given his lack of knowledge about the good (505a4-6,

506c2-3, d6-8), the most Socrates can do is provide stories, not reasoned accounts.

This, at least, is the stated rationale for why he gives “the child and offspring of the

good” (507a3-4) rather than a fully articulated, rationally defensible account.

Socrates’ disavowal of knowledge does not mean that he is completely ignorant. Most

obviously, he knows enough to know that he does not know. He also knows that

knowledge of the good is important to have (505a6-b4), and what method must be

used to get it: dialectic (532a1-d1). Moreover, he provides a formal account of the

good, saying it is the chief or ultimate end to all our actions (cf.: “Every soul pursues

the good and does whatever it does for its sake” 505d11-e1). And with this premise,

he rules out rival attempts to spell out the formal account, arguing against pleasure

and knowledge as candidates for a substantive account of goodness itself (505b5-d1).

Finally, he seems capable of saying more than he says here, though we cannot be

sure that he takes himself to be able to give something more secure than images and

other “offspring” (cf. 506e1-3).

7. See 507b5-7. The essence of good things is called, variously, the good-itself

(506d8-e1, 507b5) or form of the good (505a2, 508e2-3). This item is really what

reason is attempting to grasp; not what is good for me, nor what is ‘a good x’, but

something that is good in and of itself.

8. It is notoriously difficult to count the population of forms, and we cannot be certain

that Plato thought there was a form of chair. Reeve’s comment (on whether there is a

form in the intelligible world for every group of things in the sensible world to which a

single name applies) is useful for the general question of how many or what sort of

forms there are. “Assumptions are one thing; truths are another. Thus forms are

assumed with ontological abandon, but the only ones there really are are those

needed by dialectical-thought for its explanatory and reconstructive purposes.

Ordinary language is the first word here, but it is not by any means the last word”

(1988, 294). Will there be a last word? According to one commentator writing at the

beginning of the last century, even what Plato meant by the forms “is a question

which has been, and in my opinion will always be, much debated” (Adam [1902],

169).

9. The intelligible world is Plato’s way of referring to the class of things that can be

known by the mind alone and that are imperceptible to the senses. A list would

include mathematical or logical truths and geometrical items, as well as the vaunted

forms. (The types of study that yield knowledge of items in or aspects of the

intelligible world are mentioned in note 3 above.)

10. “Instead, as he looks at and studies things that are organized and always the

same, that neither do injustice to one another nor suffer it, being all in rational order,

he imitates them and tries to become as like them as he can. Or do you think that

someone can consort with things he admires without imitating them? . . . Then the

philosopher, by consorting with what is ordered and divine . . . himself becomes as

divine and ordered as a human being can” (500c2-7, c9-d2).

On some ears, this kind of talk encourages mysticism, or the view that the good-itself

has occult qualities. But we do well to remind ourselves that dialectic is the only route

to grasping the good-itself, and that dialectic is studied only after ten years of

mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and the like (537b-c). Indeed, Cooper has

argued that we think of the good-itself “somehow or other as a perfect example of

rational order, conceived in explicitly mathematical terms” ([1977], 144; see also

Kraut [1992]). Again, it is intellectual grasp—not oneness with or absorption into the

good—that we are striving to attain.

11. Plato’s Symposium famously stresses the fertility of the philosopher who has

grasped the forms (212a-b).

12. For this reason, Plato might appreciate the irony of Morpheus stressing, again and

again, that Neo must see for himself in order to understand. Plato would regard Neo’s

transformed conception of reality partial at best since Neo is not called upon to regard

all sense impressions as false or diminished, only those that have the wrong source.

13. Annas (1981), 257-59, makes this point when she compares Plato’s allegory to

Bertolucci’s 1970 film, The Conformist.

14. In the allegory, the prisoner’s chains are removed but Socrates is silent on who or

what removes them. Here are his words: “Consider, then, what being released from

their bonds and cured of their ignorance would naturally be like. When one of them

was freed and suddenly compelled to stand up, turn his head, walk, and look up

toward the light, he’d be pain and dazzled and unable to see the things whose

shadows he’d seen before” (515c4-d1). The Cave depicts an astonishingly thorough

imprisonment. Throughout, Plato remarks on the difficulties that the freed prisoner

meets with on the way out of the cave. Given this detail, it is not unreasonable to

expect an account of precisely what sort of prisoner it is who begins to question

whether the cave contains the whole of reality, or precisely what circumstance

prompts his inquiry. Does the prisoner find the play of shadows internally

inconsistent? Or does one or more of the unbound prisoners decide to remove the

bonds? We are not told.

15. Moreover, the freed prisoner is referred to generically by the indefinite pronoun

“someone” (tis); if we wish for specifics, we miss the generality that Plato intends,

for his point surely is that anyone could escape the bonds of ignorance.

16. The film surely intends us to read the figurative sense of this expression alongside

the literal one, and it may be Morpheus’ hope that Neo reflects on the figurative

meaning as well. After all, one of the other messages that appears on his

screen—“knock, knock, Neo”—is consciously riddling. It invites the question, “who’s

there?”

17. Although the aim of the pill is to assist in locating Neo’s body, the suggestion of a

psychoactive effect on him is unmistakable.

18. The Oracle eventually tells Neo “what he needed to hear,” namely that he is not

the One. This inverts the account of Socrates’ oracle as Plato portrays it in the

Apology. First, Socrates does not hear the oracle directly but relies on Chaerephon’s

report that “no one is wiser than Socrates.” Second, Neo’s reluctance to believe that

he is not in control of his actions requires that the Oracle tell him something false.

This Neo is happy to hear, and thus he has no motive for questioning it; it is

eminently believable that he is not their long-awaited savior. By contrast, Socrates’

oracle tells him something true but whose unlikely implications must be carefully

interpreted through testing and questioning.

Works Cited / Suggestions for Further Reading

Adam, James. The Republic of Plato. 1902. 2nd Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1963.

Annas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1981.

Cooper, John M. “The Psychology of Justice in Plato.” American Philosophical

Quarterly 14 (1977): 151-57.

Cooper, John M, ed. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett

Publishing Co., 1997.

Grube, G.M.E, trans. Plato: Republic. 2nd Ed. Rev. C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis,

Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1992.

Kraut, Richard. “The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic.” In The Cambridge

Companion to Plato, edited by Richard Kraut. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1992, 311-37.

Kraut, Richard, ed. Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &

Littlefield, 1997.

Reeve, C.D.C. Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato’s Republic. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1988.