Did Plato’s most famous allegory get hijacked by the very class of rulers it was meant to expose?
Matthew Ehret argues that the Allegory of the Cave is one of the most systematically misread passages in Western philosophy. According to Ehret, self-styled Neoplatonists extracted the imagery of shadow-control and applied it as a blueprint for elite governance — while suppressing the passage they found most threatening: Plato’s insistence that the true philosopher must return to the cave. Ehret reads this return not as an act of power but as an act of conscience — one Socrates himself enacted, at the cost of his life in 399 BC.
The question this clip surfaces: Is the true philosopher defined by what they know — or by what they risk?
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📖 Curator’s Frame — sources, reading list, and reflection questions: https://www.notionsofprogress.com/blog/the-allegory-of-the-cave--a-misreading-2500-years-in-the-making--ehret-interview---part-2-of-3/
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Mentioned in this clip:
— Plato, Republic (Book VII — Allegory of the Cave)
— Plato, Gorgias
— Socrates (historical trial, 399 BC)
— John Ruskin (cited by Ehret as example of Neoplatonist self-identification)
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