Socrates description o the prisoners, it is the body that don nates: 'the their necks tied up', and what enters their is entirely determined by their physical condition of These inmates are prisoners not just of their chains and fetters but also of their flesh. One recent influential reading of the eave by the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray sees the Cave itself functioning as a metaphor for the body more specificall a metaphor for the female body. Irigaray identifies the Cave with the female womb and argues that Plato's entire theory of knowledge is predicated on a flight from the material towards the abstract, from the feminine body towards the masculine idea. As the passage continues, Socrates envisages a prisoner breaking free from his shackles and beginning the tortuous journey towards the outside world. On reaching the exit of the Cave, the convict is initially blinded by the light of the sun and can only look at its reflection in the water, but gradually his senses acclimatize and he begins to be able to look upon the things in themselves. Recognizing reality is characterized by Plato as a journey towards abstraction achieved by philosophy. For what one sees, when one sees 'the thing in itself', is the so-called form of the object abstracted from its individual instances in the world While the prisoners in a cave might be able to see particular examples of equality-for instance, the equal size of two pieces of wood this equality will never quite be a perfect one. The philosopher who escapes the Cave, on the other hand, is able to see the 'form' of equality which the pieces of wood attempt to approximate. The equality of the two pieces of wood is a like- ness' or an 'image', or indeed an 'analogy' of the form of equality. But while the pieces of wood are experienced through the eyes, the form of equality can only be contemplated through the mind. Plato's 'thing in itself shares a great deal with Parmenides' notion of what is': like Parmenides being Plato's forms are 'sin e' and 'unchanging', and cannot come into being'. And like Parmenides, Plato creates a radical dis Junction between the world of experience and the world of contemplation. To be a philosopher involves leaving behind th body in pursuit of the mind that h One of the most paradoxical features of Plato's forms is chooses a Greek word to describe them which actually com from the vocabulary of sight. The word eidos is a cognate of th verb hordo, 'to see', and literally means form' or 'shape'. In other words, it corresponds to the physical appearance of an object it is accessed through vision, the very kind of sensual perception that Socrates claimed to have turned his back on. Why does Plato use a visual metaphor to depict what is to him a non ble concept? In the word eidos, Plato conflates an idealist philosophy (a philosophy based around the reality of ideas) with empiricist erience-based) vocabulary. The trace of the body stubbornly seems to survive in Plato's disembodied forms The philosopher cannot escape the very world of perception that he strives to overcome. Plato even seems to suggest that it is imperative that he should not do so. In the second passage Socrates allies the pursuit of phi- losophy to a further moral dimension. The ascent to reason cannot be detached from a duty to the community "Staying there, Socrates argues, should not be an option available to the convict who manages to engineer his break-out to the upper world. The philosopher must return to the Cave. In Plato's ver- the ascent is only a prelude to a further descent: ultimately there is no escaping the Cave. But how does Socrates justify this compulsion? And how are we to understand the political turn of Socrates' argument at this point? In the opening book of the Republic Socrates had posed the questions which would set the entire dialogue in motion: what is justice and who is happier, the just or the unjust person? The Republic is launched as an investi- gation into the role of justice in the ethical life ofthe individual. But having failed to make any headway with his interlocutors on this question, Socrates decides to take a new tack. In order to understand justice in the individual we should try to understand justice in the city. Plato's text is constructed around a central