Platonic Philosophy and Its Liberating Power

There may be only a handful of people who have influenced the history of human thought as powerfully as Plato. And if, from the entire history of philosophy, we were to choose a single passage as the best-known philosophical text, it might well be the famous Allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic. In this approximately one-hour presentation, by returning to Plato I have asked what it means to live Platonically, and how Plato's philosophy can still transform our view of life and the world.

Every philosophy has a fundamental, central idea, and in Plato's philosophy that foundational idea is the “Theory of Forms, or Ideas.”

In Platonic thought, the philosopher is not a scholar of theological and philosophical sciences. The philosopher is the person who leaves Plato's cave—the symbol of the sensible world—and apprehends the world of Forms and ideals; and when returning to liberate others, possesses a deeper understanding of freedom, justice, humanity and the ideal of every idea. The aim of the philosopher in Plato's thought is not merely to explain the world and the human being, but to transform the inner world of each human being, to guide that person towards light and out of the cave, and ultimately to elevate the world towards its final Form and perfection.

At the heart of Platonic philosophy lies the refusal to forget truth and the light of the world—the Logos—because to remain in the cave is to forget the world of ideals. Plato's philosophy is the remembrance of this purpose: that there is a sun outside the dark cave of our lives, and our task is to leave this cave and find the light that gives illumination and purpose to the whole world.

Platonic philosophy is an awakening: awakening in knowledge, consciousness and light. In the cave of our world we are alone, bound within bodies separated from one another, and we take the shadows we see on the cave wall for truth. Our lives are filled with fear, darkness and solitude. Platonic philosophy asks each of us to free ourselves from the chains of this cave and to leave it; and on returning to the cave, through liberating others, to realise the world of possibility in its fullest light and radiance. For the very darkness in which we live is evidence of a world filled with beauty and light that could be realised, but has remained unrealised because we have forgotten the Ideas and ideals of life, freedom from chains, and the return to light.

At some point in life, each of us must answer the question of how Platonic we are. We are compelled to choose between transcendence and reductionism; between living within myth and demythologising; between being overcome by truth and attempting to overcome the world.

Aydin Areta