Plato as Allegorist and Anti-Allegorist

Abstract

This chapter addresses a problem in the interpretation of Plato’s views on allegory. On the one hand, Plato delivers harsh criticisms of poets that promiscuously use literary representations, including allegorical ones, and is acutely sceptical of the idea that poets have access to the higher order meanings that the allegorically minded members of their audiences were accustomed to finding in their poetry. On the other, Plato makes his own consequential use of highly evocative figurative images—including the so-called Allegory of the Cave in the Republic, among many others—which richly repay the sort of energetic interpretive attention the allegorists were accustomed to applying to poetry, and further these images are linked with some of his most substantive philosophical positions in the dialogues. This chapter argues for a compatibilist view and seeks to resolve at least some of the tension between these two positions.