The Analogy of Divided Line

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The Analogy of Divided Line

Plato explains the analogy of the divided line in Republic through the character of Socrates, giving the idea of intelligible and visible world. Then he describes the cave allegory, in which characters reflect different parts of the divided line. Finally, in the description of the education of philosopher, we may also relate it with the two analogies mentioned above.

Firstly, when viewing the world as a line, we may make the following divisions, which refer to different level of knowledge of the world. The basic division is intelligible world and visible world. The lower form is the visible world including Images, imaginations and perceptible science. It’s the world that we could physically see, and thus more easy to understand. Correspondingly, the higher form is the intelligible world, where thoughts, science and other invisible intelligence and nature laws are included. Although the higher one cannot be visually seen, which makes it harder to achieve and understand, it is actually the basic one, which means that the existence and the appearance of the visible are based on the intelligible world. The lower world depends on the higher world, for the higher one reveals the true principle of the nature.

In the visible world, it is divided into two sections, the opinable world and the knowable world. The opinable world is the images and the imagination; it is the shadow and the appearance of the “real thing”, and thus it can be considered “lack of truth”. Imagination achievements like the poetry and art or images like shadow and appearance are all part of the opinable world. When viewing the image of a tree, it is “lack of truth” because you may produce the same shadow even if you replace the tree with a tree-shaped paper or something else. As for the knowable world, it is the perceptible science, the material objects that we can see. It is everything that grows and all the artifacts. Compare to the opinable world, the knowable one

stands for “truth”, for the existence of certain objects and cannot be substituted. Like the dependency of the visible world and intelligible one, although knowable world is higher and harder to pursue, it is the fundament of the opinable world. The opinable world depends on the knowable one, which reflects that every shadow and appearance needs the existence of a material object, and also, we can always found the source of all kinds of imaginations in the real world.

The intelligible world can be accordingly divided into two sections, the lower forms of science and the higher ones. The lower forms are science like geometry, which are on the basis of certain hypotheses about the general concept of the material objects, and they are actually thoughts, which is higher that opinion but lower than actual intelligence. As an instance, when considering the principles of a square, we would firstly make up hypotheses like consuming the square we draw a perfect one and then start our investigations. But the higher forms of science, like philosophy, are free from hypotheses and are contemplated by knowledge of dialectic, which would make them actual intelligence, the real idea of “beginning”.

In a word, the divided line divided the world into four parts: images and imagination, perceptible science, lower forms of nature science and higher forms of dialectic science. Respectively, they stand for four progressive level of knowledge: imagination, trust, thought and intellection.

Secondly, when viewing the case of the cave, each object or area in the allegory can pertain to certain part of the divided line. The underground cave-like dwelling is the domain revealed, which is the visible world. And the shallows of the artificial things (probably and the sound they heard) are all images, which belongs to the first form on the divided line. And the thought that

the sounds are produced by the shadows are especially part of the opinable world. As for the real artifacts that produce the image, they are the material objects, which belong to the knowable world. The human-beings carrying the artifacts, (although on class we consider them as philosophers who are aware of the intelligible world, I still believe that they) are part of the “artifacts”; they are just the carrier of the objects and help them to produce the moving shadow, and can be replaced by any other things that have the same effect. They do not have any emotional concerns to people either in or forcing out of the cave. When first reading the story, I considered the laws that cavemen produced for the moving shadows as part of the “thought”, which belongs to the lower form of the intelligible world, for they are conclusions resulted from investigations based on hypotheses. But as we now consider the four levels completely progressive, the laws can only be described as part of the opinable world for they even don’t match the standard of the knowable world. The fire in the cave stands for sun’s power, which also proves that the visible world actually depends on the intelligible one. And these are the meanings of the objects in the initial state of the cave.

In the following state, a man, who refers to philosophers like Plato and Socrates, was released and healed form bonds and was dragged upward. This progress is the soul’s journey up to the intelligible world. As the man gradually gets used to the shadows, phantoms, things, stars and eventually the sun, he realized the law of the knowable world, the lower and higher forms of science and finally the idea of good. The sun itself is the final point of the divided line, the so-called real “beginning” of the world.

As a conclusion of the cave theory, the representations of the four levels of the knowledge in the allegory are, respectively, the shadows, the artifacts, realizing the cause of the scenes in the

cave and the sun.

Finally, in Plato’s account of the education of the philosopher, there is relating to both the divided line and the cave allegory. Just like people have the power in eyes to see the reality on the ground, men have power in soul, which, when turned around, can lead to “the good”. The philosophers who are educated are just like people who are forced to come up to the ground, they suffered during the progress of seeing the sun, which means the course of searching the idea of the good in a real case. This progress which led to the final end of the divided line determines that these men are able to act prudently both in private and in public, and thus makes them the ideal ruler.

But as the eyes suffer in getting use to both lightness and the darkness, the souls suffer when turning from brighter life to darkness as much as when turning from greater lack of learning to greater brightness. So the philosophers choose to remain on the upper ground, refusing to go backwards from the fourth level of the divided line to the opinable world. Just like people going back to cave who fail on the shadow-guessing competition, the philosophers who get the real idea of good may be excluded and killed by the people down in the cave. And it is exactly what happened to great philosophers like Socrates and Plato themselves.

To conclude the analysis, the four parts of Socrates’line divided the knowledge into four progressive levels: images, objects, lower and higher form of science. The allegory of the cave reflects the progress of souls’ journey from the opinable world up to the intelligible place. And the education of philosopher shows the both the upward journey of achieving real idea of good and the problems of the downward journey of ruling the city.