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Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Orson Welles
Orson Welles circa 1975.

Update: I had to link to another video on YouTube. The good news is that this one is captioned properly.

Philosopher Vince Evans today shared with me (and others on FB) this great video illustration of Plato’s allegory of the cave. It’s from 1973 and was narrated by Orson Welles, which is already very cool. It was illustrated with artwork by Dick Oden, according to the description posted on YouTube. If you’ve got 8 minutes, check it out.

This is perhaps the most influential allegory in the history of philosophy. You can read the original text of the allegory on the Internet Classics Archive. Book VII of the Republic opens with the allegory.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., waving to a crowd.My Philosophy of Leadership course at the University of Mississippi focuses extensively on Plato’s Republic for the first third of the class. Plato had a great deal to say about the virtues of the soul, of the city, and of the kinds of people that his Socrates believed we need if we are to have a just society. For those who think that Plato is not the right thinker to inspire leaders in a democratic society, I suggest you read the interview that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave, in which he said that, not counting Scripture, his “desert island book” would be the Republic.