breaking out of the cave by encountering the other
a call for decolonial education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2025.87344Keywords:
allegory of the cave, philosophy of liberation, decolonial education.Abstract
Plato’s allegory of the cave is a seminal image that can be interpreted in creative ways. Its assumption that the slaves in the cave can free themselves from the oppression, control, and deception of the cave by going out into the reality of the outside world opens the question of how to achieve such self-liberation in the educational setting. The allegory is intended to point out that human beings live mentally immature until they reach perfection in the contemplation of eternal and true ideas. Emphasizing this kind of perfection, however, may leave out an essential component of human liberation: coexisting face-to-face with other human beings. Inspired by the philosophy of liberation we approach the allegory of the cave in this paper as a textual stimulus, recognizing that colonial education, like the allegory’s cave, has been a space of ideologization: it prevents any encounter with the Other and with one’s true situation in the world. The act of liberating oneself and one’s community from colonial education will then consist in meeting the rejected, the oppressed, in short, the dehumanized. The invitation is then to think of colonial education that is still practiced as a cave that prevents the encounter, coexistence, and charity with the last, the rejected, the excluded of our society. In the end, reinterpreting Plato’s allegory of the cave in the light of the philosophy of liberation will allow us to imagine a “decolonial education,” where the priority is not only an intellectual liberation but an encounter with the marginalized of the world. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s ideas, this reflection envisions a four-stage process of empowerment: engaging the oppressed in critical reflection on their reality, fostering dialogue between the oppressed and their allies to build a shared understanding of oppression, encouraging praxis that integrates reflection and action to challenge the systemic limitations of education, and creating educational initiatives that enable the oppressed to take ownership of their education and their path to liberation.
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