Plato’s Cave Allegory and Social Media: A Comparison
Plato and Social Networks
It is easy to draw an analogy between the reality Plato presents in the myth of the cave and social networks. Today, social networks are presented as innovative internet tools that allow you to communicate with acquaintances, share information (videos, photos, etc.), and even meet new people. These platforms are based on creating an online profile where we input personal data and make it public to the rest of the network. But who ensures that all the information is real, and not fictitious or invented? Many people enter false data into social networks, manipulating information to find new “friends” or for more sinister motives. Other users create a perfect and compatible avatar to attract friends. However, we are talking about mere appearances. It’s impossible to truly know someone through a screen.
Comparing this with Plato’s concept of the world of appearances, we find more similarities than we might think. Plato described the body as the prison of the soul—a deadly, accidental attachment that housed the soul, and to which Plato ascribed a derogatory view. We can understand the success of these modern social networks, just as Platonism has endured for centuries. Plato’s central idea is this: we live in a world of illusions and false appearances, and the truth lies in the intelligible world, an ideal world that is not our own. The famous allegory of the cave (in Book VII of The Republic) offers a clear image of this concept: Plato describes prisoners chained at the bottom of a cavern, their eyes fixed on a wall where shadows are cast by a bonfire outside. For these prisoners, their only reality was the shadows. Fortunately, we are not chained and can explore new forms of communication and decide whether they are useful.
Influences on Plato’s Theory
Plato’s theory shows many influences from earlier philosophers. His ontology, his dualistic conception of reality, represents a synthesis of the thought of Heraclitus and Parmenides.
- Parmenides: His influence is seen in Plato’s theory of Ideas and the reality of being. Being is still, eternal, perfect, and comprehensible only to reason. For Parmenides, being is one; for Plato, the Ideas are many.
- Heraclitus: His doctrine influences Plato’s concept of the sensible world, where everything is constantly changing, and there are no stable objects or true reality. This world is grasped by the senses.
- Socrates: Plato inherited the quest to find absolute truths, the essence of things, and universal concepts. Both believe that knowledge leads to the practice of virtue (moral intellectualism), and this alone leads to happiness (wisdom = virtue = happiness). The difference is that, for Plato, these concepts (Ideas) exist in another world, whereas for Socrates, they are derived from the essences of things themselves.
- Sophists: Plato is totally opposed to the Sophists, who believed that truth and moral laws are relative.
- Pythagoreans: Plato inherits the importance of mathematics, particularly geometry, to the point of placing the inscription “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter” at the entrance to the Academy. He also inherits anthropological dualism and the idea of the “Transmigration of Souls” (Orphism).
- Aristotle: Aristotle separated from his master. He considered the duplication of the two worlds unnecessary and unable to explain movement or reality. For Aristotle, essences or forms *do* exist.