Plato Divided Line

In Plato’s play write, The Republic, his theory of the Divided Line is introduced. In the divided line, there is no such thing as total ignorance. Everyone has knowledge, but some have more than others. The line is divided into two different sections: the world of intellect and the world of the visible. The division between these two worlds is knowledge and opinion. Opinion is known as an individual’s opinion of truth. Knowledge is known as an individual’s clarity of truth. Within these sections are two sub-sections. Under opinion is credulity and conviction. Credulity is a tendency to be ready to believe that something is true. These people don’t have an opinion; they just believe what is said and heard. The second sub-section is conviction;

Hypothetical reasoning is having curiosity. You consider different ways of the truth and are curious of what the truth actually is. Understanding is when you comprehend and know a form. Throughout Plato’s play write, he used different characters to represent the different stages throughout the Divided Line. The Divided Line displays human understanding by organizing stages into four broad categories, making it easier for the basic human to understand. Plato illustrates the stages of the Divided Line with characters from the first two books of The Republic. Plato presents Polemarchus as credulity, agreeing with someone else’s opinion; not thinking for themselves. Polemarchus comes in after his father. Once his father leaves the scene, Polemarchus proclaims to Socrates “Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed”(2).

Young children would be considered in the credulity stage, they are not fully capable to create their own opinion. They believe what others say simply because they are not old enough to create their own opinion. A perfect example of this is younger children believing in Santa. Their parents tell them all about Santa and how he lives at the North Pole. They tell them how once a year he delivers presents over the night to everyone throughout the entire world. And, these children believe them because they haven’t created their own opinion yet; they believe what they are told without questioning it or giving what they are told a second thought. Young adults would be considered in the conviction stage. They are not old enough to develop their own perception of truth; however, they are incredibly close-minded and always believe their opinion is correct even if they are wrong. Adults would be in the hypothetical reasoning stage due to their ability to consider possibilities, but understand they could be wrong. Lastly, elderly adults are similar to where Plato put Socrates, they have more experience and learning from those experiences and knowledge about the world gives them more clarity about abstract