Abstract
This symposium reflects on Plato's Caves: The Liberating Sting of Cultural Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2020) by Rebecca LeMoine. In this wonderful book, LeMoine pushes back against the popular and scholarly narrative the Plato was hostile to foreigners. Far from exhibiting hostility to foreigners, LeMoine argues that Plato was a friend of cultural diversity. Through her examination of the Republic, the Menexenus, the Laws, and the Phaedrus, LeMoine shows that Plato believed foreigners play a role similar to that of Socrates: the role of gadfly. Foreigners can be gadflies because every citizen lives in a polity that shares the same basic features of the cave, Plato's famous allegory in the Republic. This means that when we interact with someone raised in a different "cave," we are faced with the possibility of another way of life and hence with the occasion to reflect on our own conception of truth, beauty, and goodness.