Allegory of the Cave

Plato's Republic clearly outlines his ideal of state eduction for the three classes in his state — the hoi polloi & merchants, the guardians, & the philosopher king(s). But who and what is the education ultimately for? IF it leads to the actual transcendence of the Philosopher King(s) (one or two) into the sunlike realization of the Good, then the entire Republic will benefit from this enlightened wise & compassionate rule. IF, however, the goal is only to maintain order & the continuation of the state via top-down power, then the Republic is a totalitarian state ruled by an elite.

There's no text, for I just winged it based on the PP, and beginning with an explanation of transcendent consciousness, based on Maslow's ancient Pyramid of Needs. In this case transcendence suggests ego-self transcendence, perhaps unity with God, like a saint is said to experience.

What does it mean, the king is naked? The earlier version of this essay, which discusses the political implications of the concept of truth by Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Alain Badiou with reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave and its interpretation by Heidegger, appeared in the European Messenger (Europski glasnik, 26/2021), published by the Croatian Writers Society (HDP). It is a bit stretched but I hope still feasible experiment of a political truth game attempting to play with Arendt and Foucault against Badiou. On the one side, we see the picture of a tiny voice of truth and, ultimately, the big rage of facts against the violence of ideology; on the other, we face a fervor of the revolutionary truth i.e. ideology against the offensive world of facts which are handled with Jacobin methods. The game is, needless to say, a liberal one, that is a bit reactionary from the vantage point of the revolutionary political thought. There is some Ancient Greek and some French in the essay, but most of it is, alas, in Croatian; the only parts in English appear at the very end: most of the bibliography, and the translations of the title and the abstract.

In Hamlet’s kingdom the main mechanism that acts as a catalyst to the plot is the Ghost, a shadow- like figure, something in-between truth and falsity, which delineates reality and the characters’ perception of it. Shakespeare in his play exploited the theme of appearance in juxtaposition to reality  in order to depict the multiple faces of reality through the eyes of the dramatic personae who are shaped by different ideologies and biased by personal desires and motives. This paper will explore Shakespeare’s profound creativity through the notion of veracity and fallaciousness in Hamlet by attempting to associate them with Plato’s philosophy, as it is unfolded in The Allegory of the Cave in The Republic; the philosophical interpretation of the play based on Plato’s allegory about ignorance and knowledge could illuminate the significance of the Ghost’s presence. Through this I will attempt to demonstrate that reality is a shifting concept and  the Ghost reveals the very instability of  “concrete truth”.

Plato’s educational scheme is indeed a “turning around” of the soul.  His intensive training program involves (1) the soul’s liberation from the shackles of ignorance, (2) the soul’s painful but rewarding realizations of new realities, (3) the soul’s upward journey towards the light of understanding, and (4) the soul’s longing to use new found realities to set others free. By contrast, I sense that most of today’s education lacks this element of “turning around” of the soul.  Schools today tend to merely dump knowledge and information, rather than train individuals to reflect and think critically.  Students are not trained to contemplate on “the good,” rather they are allowed to live their lives with untamed passions.  Instead of wise and virtuous individuals, most students today are lovers of wealth, pleasure, vanity, and convenience.

Worth noting, is that Wall-Romana relies heavily on biographical explanatory arguments for constructing his historiographical model and that this seems genuinely at odds with his over-zealous advocacy of post-structuralist methods such as hermeneutics, post-structuralist ontology such as corporeality, as well as, post-structuralist theories such as, queer theory and affect theory. From a traditional biographical argument, Wall-Romana presents Abel Gance as planting a seed in Epstein for the latter’s later flourishes of philosophical poetry in the cinematic milieux, however Wall-Romana also claims that Epstein’s queerness was rigourously individualized articulating Epstein’s oeuvre in profoundly unique ways. Gance is an author inscribing Epstein, yet Epstein is paradoxically erasing those inscriptions to produce his work from a state of tabula rasa. We can provide Wall-Romana will a modest amount of leeway given that the crux of his thesis regards Epstein’s gravitational flux at a crossroads in the discourse of cinematic epistemology. A real problem arises when Wall-Romana is unable to properly theorize whether the crossroads constitutes a bundle of things or the frayed ends of a single thing, in a phenomenological sense for the understanding of cinematic epistemology. I will elaborate on these ideas later in this paper.

*Everything uploaded to my Academia.edu in 2017 is considered a draft. I was required to do regular graduate course work for the first year of my doctoral studies and took the opportunity to play out some personal theories. It's all a prolegomenon for a bigger project down the road and these ideas will require a more rigourous distillation to be of real value to the scholarly community.

This paper discusses the lessons learnt from an analysis and interpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave in the context of modern society dominated by technological advances and more specifically by the wide spread use of the Internet and Web 2.0 applications. The Internet is portrayed herein as the liberator of the prisoner who untied from the time and space chains in the cave is allowed to face the real world. The paper also presents some lessons learnt from interpretations with regards to education, mass media, politics and social life, viewed from current perspectives. It finally argues that the "virtual world" created by computer-based simulated environments where on-line communities are formed and flourish with social networks, virtual and augmented reality applications such as Second Life, is really part or the real world and thus the terms "digital world" and "simulated world" are more appropriate to describe these new ways of real life (of consensus reality).

In this article I reinterpret Plato’s allegory of the cave as dramatizing democracy’s dependency on slave labor. Doing so, I argue that Plato allegorizes not the birth of the philosopher, as in the dominant readings of the allegory, but of the militant intellectual, one invested in the axiom of equality and the problem of emancipation. Equality, emancipation, intellectual militancy, and the meaning of Plato’s dramatic allegories are the main attributes of Alain Badiou’s and Jacques Rancière’s long investments in Plato’s Socratic plays, which explains why they are my main interlocutors in this article. However, in this article I argue that a decolonial interpretation of the allegory shows ways in which Rancière and Badiou’s interpretations of Plato ultimately undermine their own commitments to the axiom of equality by radicalizing the axiom in a different geopolitical location.

ABSTRACT: This work addresses the controversial issue of the utopian nature of Plato's Republic. The thesis is that it is legitimate to consider the Republic as the first utopia in the history of Western literature only if it is considered, simultaneously, as the first critique of utopia in the history of  Western literature. The core of the argument is that the twofold paradigm (psychological and political) present in the book is counteracted by a pessimistic philosophical position, and that this is the reason why the utopian nature of the Republic is problematic. The first chapter concentrates on the use of mockery and ridicule as strategies to refrain a set of naïve and optimistic positions suggested by Socrates about human motivation. These dramatic gestures constitute, even if implicit, are a good ground for pessimism. The second chapter focuses on how, in crucial moments of the dialogue – namely: the allegory of the Cave, the theory of the tripartite soul and the simile of the Divided Line - Socrates himself advances philosophical theories with an explicit pessimistic content. The third chapter concentrates on philosophical pessimism as such, trying to expound its roots and its connection with Plato´s Republic. The conclusion will be that, far from constituting a paradox or a contradiction, the concomitancy of utopia and pessimism in the Republic constitutes a valid philosophical argument or, better, a coherent philosophical exercise, which is in no way conclusive, but intentionally open towards further, and perhaps conciliating, interpretations: the main message lies rather in a methodological recommendation regarding the search for a better psychological and political state than in definitive prescriptions in relation to those subjects or an equally consolidated path for their realization. Plato embarks on the construction of the ideal, but invites the reader to perform a serious critique of that very ideal, a critique based on an exhaustive consideration of the limitations of human condition and experience.

In this essay I test and contest Lerner’s grandiose and pessimistic generalizations in his _The Hatred of Poetry_ (2016) via Emily Dickinson, who figures prominently in his text.  I then turn to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “The Poet,” a defense of poetry that greatly inspired Whitman and Dickinson yet is nowhere mentioned by Lerner.  What if we socratically argue against _Hatred_ by deploying Emerson’s arguments, Dickinson’s practice, and other theorists' conceptions of the ends and means of literature (including poetry)?  I also will appeal to Cynthia Ozick, for whom literature, at its best, offers neither socialization nor escapism, though it skeptically anatomizes both.  Rather, she argues it opens access to an experience of “radical freedom” that has profound social consequences.  I end by swerving back to Plato, particularly his famous parable of the cave, and Emerson’s own love-hate argument with Plato’s understanding of poetry.

The promulgation of the S.B. 2366 of the 14th Congress ofthe Philippines; which entails to
that: “No Filipino Child must be Left Behind” became the basic foundation for education to be
accessible and to uplift them. It is the primary basis where many thinks ofit, as a step in educating
the people and dragging them away from ignorance and towards the light. In this notion, it would
be the start where individuals would step out from the dark and into the light. I quote from the bill:
“May the torch this bill seeks to the light and empower leads us to the path of our nation’s dream;
that no Filipino child is left behind”. The intention for its enactment is good in itself. The torch
symbolizes the light that would direct individuals to the path that conveys enlightenment. This
idea of torch that symbolizes education is very much Platonic. With this sort of education gives
rise to the famous images of the sun, the divided line, and the cave.

The article focuses on the topic of Greek and Roman influences on His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. The author presents the ancient origins of several motifs of the trilogy, for example compares the daemon from His Dark Materials to the ancient daimon, Lyra’s dream in a cave to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the Pullman’s vision of the Underworld to Greek Hades, and the Subtle Knife to the golden bough. She also tries to understand the function of the Greek and Roman elements in the trilogy. Finally, the author ponders if the vision of ancient culture in His Dark Materials can influence its reception in the future.

This is a draft of my dissertation, defended on August 17, 2016 at The Catholic University of America, School of Philosophy in Washington, DC.
A hard copy can be ordered through Pro Quest.
The published version can be seen here: http://www.etdadmin.com/cgi-bin/student/etd?submissionId=462696;siteId=213

Plato tells the 'Allegory of the Cave' to Glaucon and here how it goes-once there was a cave and in that cave some people were chained from their birth. They could not move their legs, nor even their necks. In such a position all they could see are shadows in front of them on the wall they sat facing towards. Behind them there was a fire, and a little farther behind the fire there was a raised platform from where some people, much like puppeteers, carried different shapes of animals and objects that casted shadows on the wall the prisoners were looking at from the beginning of their life. At the back of the cave there was the opening, but none of the prisoners had ever seen it. Now the shadows were realities for the shackled prisoners and they were pretty good at playing the game of which shadow comes after what. Their belief in the illusion was so strong that they never imagined that there can be anything outside these shadows.

Plato’s story, as it appears in the Republic speaks of both the human desire for liberation, and our inherent need for transcendence. The fact that such a description of human existence still rings true for us almost 2500 years on is a testament to the enduring power and artistry of Plato’s philosophical method. It is however an ominous picture of the state of the human condition and one that immediately raises important questions for us as individuals. Where is my position in the cave? If I am a prisoner, how do I escape? What is the truth of what I see? Then there are the ‘others’ in the story. Who are the puppeteers? The analogy, as a method, succeeds in encouraging such questions and of course many more. However it does comparatively much less in supplying us with solutions to the philosophical problems it serves to highlight. To encourage the kind of critical self-analysis that catalyses transcendence is of course its central purpose, yet after almost two and a half thousand years of questioning and arguing are we, as a species, still in the cave?

My paper aims at thematizing the notion of “arche-screen,” meant as the ensemble of the conditions of possibility of “monstration [showing],” which in the history of our culture have gradually been opened by the rupestrian wall, the veil, the curtain, the templum, the window, as well as pre-cinema, cinema, and post-cinema screens. This list, however, does not mean to be exhaustive.
Therefore, in order to explore at least some of the conditions of possibility of “monstration [showing]” that are implicit in the notion of “arche-screen,” we shall go back through history. Nevertheless, once we got so far as the Chauvet Cave, in France, we would have to turn to the mythical Cave that Plato conceived in The Republic, Book VII.

Abstract:  In this paper I claim that Plato’s Cave is fundamentally a political, not an epistemological image, and that only by treating it as such can we appreciate correctly its relation to the images of the Sun and the Line. On the basis of textual evidence, I question the two main assumptions that support (in my view, mistakenly) the effort to find an epistemological parallel between the Cave and the Line: first, that the prisoners represent humankind in general, and, second, that the cave itself represents the visible world of ordinary experience while the world outside the cave represents the realm of the Forms. Disrupting these assumptions opens up a reading that highlights the cultural and political themes at play in this famous allegory and allows us to make better sense of it.

Keywords: Plato, Cave, Politics, Culture

Resumen: En este ensayo sostengo que la Caverna de Platón es fundamentalmente una alegoría política, no epistemológica, y que solo tratándola como tal, podremos apreciar correctamente la relación que guarda con las imágenes del Sol y de la Línea. Sobre la base de evidencia textual, pongo en duda las dos hipótesis principales sobres las que se funda (a mi parecer, equivocadamente) el esfuerzo por encontrar un paralelo epistemológico entre la Caverna y la Línea: la primera, que los prisioneros representan a la humanidad en general, y la segunda, que la propia caverna representa el mundo visible de la experiencia corriente, mientras que el mundo fuera de la caverna representa el reino de las Ideas. La suspensión de estos supuestos posibilita una lectura que pone de relieve los temas culturales y políticos que están en juego en esta famosa alegoría y nos permite así entenderla mejor.

Palabras Clave: Platón, Caverna, Política, Cultura

I present first the challenge for epistemology when it faces the dilemma between rationalism and empiricism, followed by a presentation of the ideas introduced by Ruyer in order to ask if they can be articulated to the "third way" in epistemology. I explore the consequences of Ruyer's inversion of our understanding of space which can be looked upon as psychic. I consider Ruyer's refusal to locate in pure immanence the scheme of eupraxic resolution of successful aggregates–as living forms–in our experience. We then highlight the major principles of Gaston Bachelard's and Michel Serres's respective epistemologies, and in a lesser measure those of Bergon and Deleuze as well, in order to underscore Ruyer's refusal to limit philosophy to what science allows one to say, but also in order to finally situate the verticalism of his position.

„Der Beitrag von Meinolf Schumacher zeigt zunächst am Beispiel des Gefängnis-Topos, daß die Bildhaftigkeit des Textes nicht in jedem Fall eine Umsetzung ins graphische Medium evoziert. Gerade die Gefängnismetaphorik, für die eine feste Bildtradition existiert, bleibt im Illustrationszyklus des ‚Welschen Gastes‘ ausgespart. Hier ist es das ‚Sprachbild‘ allein, das Thomasins Didaxe auf andere Wissensbereiche hin transparent werden läßt, auf Vorstellungen wie das Höhlengleichnis der ‚Politeia‘ oder die ‚Consolatio‘ des Boethius. Zum anderen wird der Bildaufbau des Gefängnis-Topos geprüft und dessen Wandel von den Anfängen bis hin zur neueren europäischen Literatur nachvollzogen, um die vormoderne Einheit von Didaxe und Theodizee, die menschliches Leiden nicht ‚ernst nimmt‘, von der modernen Sorge um das gequälte Subjekt abzusetzen und den Bruch in der Geschichte dieses Modells nachzuzeichnen.“ (Horst Wenzel, Einleitung, S. 5)

Porphyry's position in the ancient hermeneutic tradition should be considered separately from his place in the Platonic tradition. He shows considerable respect for allego-rizing interpreters with links to Pythagoreanism, particularly Numenius and Cronius, prominent sources in On the Cave of the Nymphs. The language of Homer's Cave passage is demonstrably distinctive, resembling the Shield passage in the Iliad, and such as to suggest an ecphrasis to early imperial readers. Ecphrasis in turn suggested deeper significance for the story. While largely content to follow Numenian trends in interpreting Homer's cave symbolically and in relation to multiple belief-systems, Porphyry shows occasionally signs of wanting to adhere more closely to Homeric evidence, resorting to symbolic interpretation mainly when no more straightforward truth is on offer.

Although many commentators on Rousseau’s philosophy have noted its affinities with Platonism and acknowledged the debt that Rousseau himself expressed to Plato on numerous occasions, David Williams is the first to offer a thoroughgoing, systematic examination of this linkage. His contributions to the scholarship on Rousseau in this book are threefold: he enters the debate over whether Rousseau is a Hobbesian (in rejecting transcendent norms) or a Platonist (in accepting them) with a decisive argument supporting the latter position; he tackles from a new angle the ever-challenging question of unity in Rousseau’s thought; and he explores the dynamic metaphor of the chain throughout Rousseau’s writings as a key to understanding them as inspired by Platonism.

The book is organized into three main parts. The first sketches the background of Platonism and materialist positivism in modern European metaphysics and political philosophy that provided the context for Rousseau’s intellectual development. The second examines Rousseau’s choice of Platonism over positivism and its consequences for his philosophy generally. The third addresses the legacy of Rousseau’s thought and its appropriation by Kant, Marx, and Foucault, suggesting that in an age where materialism and relativism are rife, Rousseau may have much to teach us about how we view our own society and can engage in constructive critique of it.

Im vorliegenden Beitrag soll der philologisch basierte Versuch unternommen werden, ein besseres Verständnis dessen zu erreichen, was Platon mit dem Wort φύσις in seinem Höhlengleichnis der Politeia gemeint haben könnte. Während sich die meisten Studien zu diesem Gleichnis (εἰκών, Rep. 515a4; vgl. ebd. 514a1), bei dem es sich definitiv um eine Allegorie handelt, fast ausschließlich auf die zentrale Rolle der παιδεία, auf die elementare Relevanz der Dialektik sowie auf den (von Platon selbst nahegelegten) Abgleich der (Un-)Kenntnisstufen mit Liniengleichnis und Sonnengleichnis sowie implizite politische Aspekte konzentrieren, sei hier das Augenmerk auf die kaum kommentierte Semantik von φύσις in diesem Kontext gelenkt, deren Untersuchung einige neue Aspekte zur Interpretation beisteuern kann.

The primary aim of my research project is to analyse and evaluate the symbols and images found in the treatise, On the Cave of Nymphs, in the Odyssey by the Neoplatonic philosopher, Porphyry of Tyre (234-c305 C.E.) and to offer an exegesis of Porphyry's allegorical interpretation against the backdrop of his wider oeuvre. The treatise is a significant landmark in both the history of allegorical interpretation and in the history of Neoplatonic philosophy, and can be deemed to be indicative of the Neoplatonic movement in the direction of mystery religions. As developed by Porphyry, Iamblichus and their contemporaries, Neoplatonism came to share more and more features with philosophically inspired mystery cults such as mysteries of Mithras, Orpheus or Eleusis. According to Plato, the higher level of reality, the world of immutable forms, is incomprehensible to our senses. Later Platonists sought to connect the material world and the world of higher truths through allegory. Allegory, a mode of symbolic interpretation and thinking, had been employed since the sixth century B.C.E., but was systematised, especially by the Stoics in the Hellenistic period, and became increasingly prominent during the Roman Empire. Instead of opposing mythological figures and stories of traditional Greek literature, such as the Homeric epics, to the principles of a philosophical system, Neoplatonic allegorical interpretation seeks to expound how literary texts present philosophical ideas in an enigmatic and coded form, offering to those who can decipher them an alternative way to the same higher truths. The approach that is needed to gain access to this symbolic meaning was not developed by the Neoplatonists themselves, but was derived from earlier thinkers, first of all their master Plato; even Plotinus does not consider himself an innovator, only an interpreter of Plato's thoughts (Enneads 5.1.8). Regardless of their genre, Neoplatonic allegorical interpretation treats texts, including religious or poetic texts, as objects worthy of philosophical reflection in their own right, being potentially no less enlightening v than the dialogues of Plato. Literary criticism, thus, becomes an important ally to dialectic in the Neoplatonic mission to save the human soul. In this thesis, I intend to show that On the Cave of the Nymphs, although ostensibly a literary-critical, rather than a conventional philosophical text, in fact, provides valuable insights into Porphyry's philosophical thought. On the Cave of the Nymphs is an elaborate allegorical reading of Odyssey 13.102-112, Homer's description of the cave near the harbour of Phorcys in Ithaca, where Odysseus is dropped by the Phaeacians and in which, under the guidance of the goddess Athena, he stores the Phaeacians' valuable gifts. Porphyry analyses these lines and provides a setting for an allegorical interpretation of the Odyssey as a narrative of the cyclical journey of the human soul. This soul becomes embodied in the material world where all kinds of pleasures try to beguile it and keep it from attaining the intelligible realm, and, after its dissociation from the body, the soul returns to its point of departure, the intelligible realm. Porphyry's interpretation is, in essence, a legitimation of the doctrines of Plato and Plotinus. His treatise is a unique example of how the Neoplatonists use canonical literary texts for their own philosophical and theological speculations. These texts, they claim, include symbols which point to philosophical truth but which are only comprehensible to a small group of people, that is, philosophers. Homer's text, as interpreted by Porphyry, enables those enlightened readers to attain the philosophical, metaphysical and theological truth in a similar way as the initiates of mystery cults do. Porphyry's ultimate goal is to illustrate that virtue attained through philosophy is the ideal path to salvation for the human soul; it is a universal path which shares important features with religious rituals and other approaches but is, in the end, a superior path. vi Acknowledgements It is customary in this page to thank all the persons who, in various ways, contributed to the development of this thesis from my early classical lecturer to my supervisor, Dr. Martine Cuypers. I would like to thank my family, who supported me throughout my long journey: my mother, Gülten Akçay and my brother, Fikret Akçay, I am never able to repay you for your kindness, generosity, support and encouragement. I would like to thank all my friends who always support and help, especially Kristin Demirci, Angela Tinney and Joan Merriman. I would like to express my deepest gratitude and special thanks to my mentor, Prof. John M. Dillon, for his unending support, help, encouragement, kindness and generosity. Without his supervision and constant help, this dissertation would not have been possible. Teşekkürler, Prof. John M. Dillon, size hayatım boyunca müteşşekkir kalacağım. Finally, this work honours all the virtuous and wise people who dedicated their lives to opening a path to future generations towards knowledge of and necessity for pursuing an ethical way of life. I hope that I have heard the echo of their voices and dedicated my time to following in their footsteps.

Plato's famous allegory was employed while analyzing a number of famous literary pieces like Gulliver's Travels, Wings, The Man Who Lived Underground, and The Bluest Eye. Though Henry James's masterpiece The Portrait of a Lady is not mentioned among these novels written by different writers in different periods, I will try to show that the allegory is an apt tool when analyzing Isabel Archer's character, the protagonist of the novel. Just as the prisoners are able to see only the shadows reflected on the wall, so does Isabel see the shadows of real life. She faces up the realities of life step by step. She is like Plato's prisoners who are suddenly released from their bondage and " pained and dazzled and unable to see the things whose shadows they'd seen before. " It is not surprising that each step takes her to suffering and frustration, and it is only through experience that she becomes aware of the truth. However, because of her strong sense of duty and dignity, she does not get rid of her chains completely.

Key Words: The Allegory of Plato, The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer

Weil’s allusions for Ex. 3,14, “I am who I am”, in the Marseille’s writings are the basis of this contribution, which is aimed at exploring some aspects of the encounter between Platonism and Christianity in the author’s thought. Weil derives from the Republic the identity of the principle as the good, assigning it a relational status and interpreting it in a Pythagorean key. The synthesis with Christian theology and the Incarnation then leads Weil to interpret the divine “I am”, not so much as an affirmation of Being, but as the relational and kenotic dynamic of the Good. Thus the author rediscovers the common inspiration of Platonism and Christianity, which she believes resides in the search for bridges between human and transcendence and in the care of otherness.

Readership All interested in the Platonic tradition, particularly Neoplatonism, tradition of the ancient allegorical interpretation, ancient literary criticism, Homer and his reception. For more information see brill.com Order information: Order online at brill.com

Grounded in the idea that God is a moral ideal that invites our continual reflection and growth, and drawing on the biblical narrative of the golden calf and the Platonic allegory of the cave, this essay considers how the words of the Kaddish may help Jews encounter God through the activity of study.

Platons Höhlengleichnis und Nietzsches Dialog vom Wanderer und seinem Schatten beleuchten den Zusammenhang von Wahrheit - und Klugheit. Jenseits des Wahrheitsbegriffs, der bloß auf die Adäquatio von Begriff und Gegenstand geht, umfasst diese Wahrheit auch eine Kenntnis der Ursprünge und der Hinsicht, als was etwas erscheint - also die Kenntnis des Echten und Unechten. Hier liegt auch die Gefahr für denjenigen, der selbst in Wahrheit leben will: Er muss selbst täuschen können, sonst riskiert er Leib und Leben.

This edited volume brings together contributions from prominent scholars to discuss new approaches to Plato’s philosophy, especially in the burgeoning fields of Platonic ontology and psychology. Topics such as the relationship between mind, soul and emotions, as well as the connection between ontology and ethics are discussed through the analyses of dialogues from Plato’s middle and late periods, such as the Republic, Symposium, Theaetetus, Timaeus and Laws. These works are being increasingly studied both as precursors for Aristotelian philosophy and in their own right, and the analyses included in this volume reveal some new interpretations of topics such as Plato’s attitude towards artistic imagination and the possibility of speaking of a teleology in Plato.

Focusing on hot topics in the area, Psychology and Ontology in Plato provides a good sense of what is happening in Platonic scholarship worldwide and will be of interest to academic researchers and teachers interested in ancient philosophy, ontology and philosophical psychology.

Cinema always seeking and exploring new and various sources to adapt and creation of films as its final product.  On the other hand, philosophy is more applied as a framework for expression, critic, description, and explanation or value-judgment of cinematic movies. A field on the upstream of cinema allows the researchers to think and philosophizing by a medium or interface named film. Reversely, this paper’s main purpose is to illustrate a path in which cinematographers and particularly scriptwriters used one of the most famous and history-making allegories and anecdotes of philosophy as a theme or motif to plot-creation. The discussion is not related to the prediction of the future by Plato and depicting the cinema in past millenniums. The main issue and question are how philosophy can provide the raw material for cinematic creation? The aim is to show that it is not necessary to make a philosophical film based on the biography of a philosopher or accumulating the dialogs and narrations of the film with philosophical debates and concepts. This paper applies an analytic-comparative method by studying script’s texts through the intermediation of tips and allusions which exist in dialogs and plot to illuminate the manner or quality of adaptation from one of the most famous philosophical allegories. The essay investigates instances from the different cinematic streams, a spectrum from Hollywood mainstream and directors like Peter Weir toward European independent cinema and author film-makers like Bernardo Bertolucci by content interpretation of scripts and introducing this method as a way of adaptation in Iranian experimentalist and independent cinema.

Originally written as a speech, this thesis was exposed in the class of Political Philosophy at the University of Milan in March 2018. This paper pays a brief tribute to Professor Stephen Hawking analyzing some interesting insights regarding his work and the subject of philosophy.