In order to illustrate and justify his views of reality, Plato provides the Allegory of the Cave - as well as the Sun and the Divided Line in the Republic - whereby the prisoners (who have lived in an underground cave since their childhood) live in ‘ignorance’ as they are content to view the shadows as real objects, when they are in fact artificial replicas: they have an experience of reality that is as far removed as possible from the everyday world, and are therefore (in Plato’s eyes) comparable to people whose lives and minds are empty of philosophy, and who accept everything they see or hear (empirical evidence) without question – they do not think about or challenge the accepted ideas and morals of their society. However, within this parable, Plato provides an illustration of one of the prisoner’s being set free, and argues that this individual is the only person among all the former prisoners who has a genuine and correct understanding of reality.
It is also important to declare that Plato’s understanding of the relationship between the soul and the body is closely related to his other ideas of duality: he believed the body, like everything else physical, is in a constant state of change, and as such, cannot be the source of real knowledge, whereas the soul, in contrast, is immortal and unchanging, and therefore can both know and be known. According to Plato, the body is the physical component of each person which enables people to see and hear (presents an appearance), and it is through this element that we receive our sense experiences, so that our minds are able to form our opinions (by in turn accessing the Realm of the Forms). However, Plato believed that the mind and the body are often in direct opposition, due to the fact that the mind strives to gain real knowledge and understand ideas, whereas the body is interested in sense pleasures and consequently obstructs our intellectual pursuits: “The body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to distress which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us all power of thinking at all”.
In contrast, Plato considered the soul as immortal because it exists before and after entering the body: it is unchanging. This concept is directly connected with Plato’s view that all real knowledge is recollection, and therefore we have ideas such as the meaning of a ‘perfect circle’, or ‘absolute equality’, not because we have ever seen any examples of them but because these ideas are already within us, from a previous existence. As a result, Plato perceived the soul as the directing force of the body by acting as a ‘charioteer’ to the mind and the body: the soul tries to guide the two together, rather than allowing them to contradict and be pulled in the opposite direction. Plato argues that many people never achieve this direction, and are therefore comparable to the prisoners in the cave, who do not want to be released and who value shadows and the skill of ‘guesswork’, whereas the philosophers, try to maximise their pursuit for intellectual knowledge.
It is important to recognize that in Plato’s earlier dialogues, he gives a fairly simple account of the duality between the body and the soul. However, as his thought develops, and he follows his own recommendation to challenge his previously held beliefs, it becomes more complex and he becomes less certain about which aspects of the soul (reason, emotion and desire) are immortal, even though he maintains his justification by means of the ‘cyclical, affinitive, recollection and opposites’ arguments.
In conclusion, it is clearly evident that although Plato’s dualistic theory is intricate, and many of his thoughts have been challenged by Aristotle and many others who have come after him, he has undoubtedly had a profound influence in shaping Christian philosophy. However, this does not subtract from the criticisms that have been made including the fact that the existence of the Forms (Plato describes) is not necessarily the obvious conclusion of logical reasoning and that his concept of the immortality of the soul are dependent on our acceptance of his other ideas about recollection from a previous existence.