Book VII Summary

Allegory of the Cave

• Begins with the allegory of the Cave, illustrating the effects of education on the soul.
• Connects with the Sun and Line analogies.
• Education aims to turn the soul around by changing desires.

Education of Philosopher-Kings

• Initial education: music, poetry, physical training, elementary mathematics.
• Followed by 2-3 years of compulsory physical training.
• Ten years of education in mathematical science for successful candidates.
• Five years of dialectic training for the most successful.
• Fifteen years of practical political training.
• Finally, those successful in politics are compelled to seek the good itself, equipping them to be philosopher-kings.

Mathematics in Education

• Mathematics is central to the philosopher's education.
• Dialectic is restricted to mature people who have mastered science.
• Practical political training is a large component of education.

Stages of Kallipolis

• The city with philosopher-kings and necessary educational institutions is the final stage in Plato’s construction of the kallipolis.

The Cave

• Prisoners in a cave are fettered, able to see only shadows on a wall.
• Light is provided by a fire behind them, with a path and low wall between the prisoners and the fire.
• Carriers walk along the wall, carrying artifacts that project above it, creating shadows.
• Prisoners believe that the shadows are reality.

Release from Bondage

• A prisoner is freed and compelled to stand, turn his head, walk, and look toward the light.
• The freed prisoner experiences pain and is unable to see the things whose shadows he had seen before.
• The prisoner would believe that the things he saw earlier were truer than the ones he is now being shown.

Adjustment to Light

• The freed prisoner needs time to adjust to seeing things in the world above.
• First, he sees shadows, then images in water, then the things themselves.
• Eventually, he can see the sun and understand that it governs everything in the visible world.

Return to the Cave

• The freed prisoner remembers his first dwelling place and pities the others.
• He would prefer to “work the earth as a serf” rather than share the opinions and live as the prisoners do.
• Returning to the cave, his eyes would be filled with darkness and he would be ridiculed for his ruined eyesight.
• The prisoners would kill anyone who tried to free them.

Interpretation

• The visible realm is likened to the prison dwelling, and the light of the fire to the power of the sun.
• The upward journey is the soul's journey to the intelligible realm.
• The form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful.

Education and the Soul

• Education is not putting knowledge into souls that lack it, but turning the soul around.
• The power to learn is present in everyone’s soul.
• Education redirects the soul to study that which is and the brightest thing that is, namely, the good.

Virtues of the Soul

• The virtue of reason is divine and can be either useful or harmful depending on how it is turned.
• Vicious but clever people have keen vision in their souls but use it for evil ends.

Governance

• The uneducated will never adequately govern a city, nor would those who have spent their lives being educated.
• The best natures must be compelled to reach the study of the good.
• They must return to the cave to share their labors and honors.

Justice and the City

• The law aims to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing citizens into harmony and making them share benefits.
• Philosophers are compelled to care for others, as they are better educated and able to share in both practical and theoretical life.
• The city should be governed by those who are awake rather than dreaming.

Guardians of the City

• Guardians must have the best understanding of good government and other honors than political ones.
• Leading people up to the light is not a matter of spinning a potsherd but of turning a soul from a day that is a kind of night to the true day.

Subjects of Study

• Subjects must have the power to draw the soul from becoming to what is and be useful to warlike men.
• Physical training is concerned with what comes into being and dies, so it is not the subject being looked for.
• Music and poetry educate through habits but lack the element that leads to understanding.

Number and Calculation

• Number and calculation are common to every craft, thought, and science, and are compulsory for everyone.
• They turn out to be subjects that naturally lead to understanding, but no one uses them correctly.

Sense Perception

• Some sense perceptions don’t summon understanding, while others encourage it to look into them.
• The ones that don’t summon understanding are those that don’t go off into opposite perceptions at the same time.

The One and the Many

• Sight of the one possesses the characteristic of being both one and an unlimited number at the same time.
• Calculation and arithmetic lead us toward truth and are compulsory for warriors and philosophers.

Geometry

• Geometry is appropriate for warriors and philosophers because it makes it easier to see the form of the good.
• Geometry compels the soul to study being rather than becoming.

Astronomy

• Astronomy compels the soul to look upward and leads it from things here to things there.
• Astronomy must be learned in a different way, focusing on problems and leaving the things in the sky alone.

Harmonics

• Harmonics and astronomy are closely akin.
• People labor in vain measuring audible consonances and sounds against one another.
• Inquiry into all subjects should bring out their association and relationship with one another.

Dialectic

• Dialectic sings the song that is intelligible and imitated by the power of sight.
• It involves finding the being itself of each thing and grasping the good itself with understanding itself.

The Journey of Dialectic

• The release from bonds, turning around, and way up out of the cave represent the journey of dialectic.
• The crafts awaken the best part of the soul and lead it upward to the study of the best among the things that are.

Power of Dialectic

• The power of dialectic can reveal the truth only to someone experienced in the subjects described.
• It systematically attempts to grasp the being of each thing, unlike other crafts that deal with opinions, desires, growing, or construction.

The Road to Knowledge

• Dialectic is the only inquiry that travels the road, doing away with hypotheses and proceeding to the first principle itself.
• It helps turn the soul around, using the crafts described to help and cooperate with it.

Sections of Knowledge

• The first section is knowledge, the second thought, the third belief, and the fourth imaging.
• Opinion is concerned with becoming, intellect with being.
• Someone who can give an account of the being of each thing is dialectical.

Philosopher-Kings

• Children reared and educated in theory should rule the city and be responsible for the most important things.
• They must give attention to the education that will enable them to ask and answer questions most knowledgeably.

Choosing Rulers

• Choose the most stable, courageous, and graceful people.
• They must be keen on the subjects and learn them easily, with a good memory and a love of hard work.

Dangers of Philosophy

• The present error is that philosophy is taken up by people who are unworthy of her.
• No student should be lame in his love of hard work, loving one half of it and hating the other half.

Avoiding Illegitimate Students

• Distinguish the illegitimate from the legitimate in moderation, courage, high-mindedness, and all other parts of virtue.
• Bring people who are sound of limb and mind to the subject, and educate them in it.

Education in Childhood

• Preliminary education required for dialectic must be offered to future rulers in childhood, not in the shape of compulsory learning.
• Use play instead of force to train the children in these subjects.

Testing and Selection

• Children should be led into war on horseback as observers.
• The ones who always show the greatest aptitude in labors, studies, and fears are to be inscribed on a list.

Further Education

• From the age of twenty, those chosen will receive more honors and bring together the subjects they learned as children.
• This forms a unified vision of their kinship, and with the nature of that which is.

Dialectical Ability

• Anyone who can achieve a unified vision is dialectical, and anyone who can’t isn’t.
• After they have reached their thirtieth year, select them from among those chosen earlier and assign them yet greater honors.

Practicing Dialectic

• Don’t you realize what a great evil comes from dialectic as it is currently practiced?
• Those who practice it are filled with lawlessness.

Preventing Lawlessness

• Hold from childhood certain convictions about just and fine things.
• A questioner comes along and asks, “What is the fine?” and by refuting him often and in many places shakes him from his convictions.

Dangers of Arguments

• Be extremely careful about how you introduce them to arguments.
• Don’t let them taste arguments while they’re young, when they misuse it by treating it as a game of contradiction.

Engaging in Discussion

• An older person will want to take part in discussions in order to look for the truth.
• Those allowed to take part in arguments should be orderly and steady by nature.

The Final Test

• After five years of dialectic, make them go down into the cave again and compel them to take command.
• Test them to see whether they’ll remain steadfast when they’re pulled this way and that.

The Good Itself

• At the age of fifty, those who’ve survived the tests must be led to the goal and compelled to lift up the radiant light of their souls to what itself provides light for everything.
• Once they’ve seen the good itself, they must put the city, its citizens, and themselves in order, using it as their model.

The Isles of the Blessed

• Those who've been successful in practical matters and in the sciences will spend most of his time with philosophy, but he must labor in politics.
• After educating others, he will depart for the Isles of the Blessed.

The Constitution

• It is the lawmaker's goal to set everyone in the city who is over ten years old into the country.
• This is so that the city and constitution we’ve discussed to be established, become happy, and bring most benefit to the people among whom it’s established.