The Republic: Symbols

Symbols are shown in red text whenever they appear in the Plot Summary and Summary and Analysis sections of this LitChart.

The City

The just city is a larger version of the just man, with the three social classes (producers, warriors and guardians) working together as the three parts of the soul work together in the just man. Two key concepts for the city are the emphasis on specialization, so that each person is trained for a particular occupation, and the emphasis on education, which encourages specialization and trains the guardians and the philosopher-king to properly rule. The ultimate failure of the city is tied to the failure of the education system, when someone whose aptitudes and nature are not suited to being a guardian, is selected in childhood and educated as a guardian.

The Cave

The allegory of the cave is about education, about leading the soul from darkness into light, by stages. The allegory begins with a prisoner chained in the cave, able only to see the shadows of people moving. He thinks that the shadows are reality. This is the stage of Imagination. When the prisoner is free and sees the people whose shadows he saw in the cave, he thinks they are real. He takes the objects of the physical world, like trees and chairs, as the ultimate reality, instead of poor copies of the ideal Forms of trees and chairs. This is the second stage, of Belief. When the prisoner sees the world outside the cave he enters the third state, that of Thought. He is aware of the world of Forms. He realizes that objects we perceive with our senses are but copies of the ideal abstract Forms. The fourth and final stage, the stage of the philosopher-king, is the recognition of the Form of Goodness, which, like the sun giving the prisoner light to see all things, leads to understanding all Forms. This is the stage of Understanding, the ultimate goal of Plato’s philosophy.

The Sun

The sun, which provides the light in the mouth of the cave in the allegory of the cave, is recognized by the escaped prisoner as the source of the light that allows him to see the objects around him. The sun is like the Form of the Good, which is the source of all other Forms. If you know and understand the Form of the Good, then you will understand all the other forms. The sun, which leads the prisoner out of darkness, is like education, which leads the individual out of ignorance to understanding.