The Possibility of Relation between Plato’s Cave Prisoners and Jaspers’ Concept of the Mass Man

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors
Maryam Afshar 1
Mohammad Raayat Jahromi 2
1 PhD student in philosophy, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran
2 associate professor in philosophy Imam Khomeini International University
10.48308/kj.2026.243476.1410
Abstract
The main issue of this research is to investigate the possibility of whether the allegory of the cave, in the horizon of Jaspers is reinterpreted as an image of the existential captivity of mass human beings in the modern world. The central question is whether there is a meaningful structure between the Platonic cave dweller and the human being described by Jaspers at the level of Dasein and at the heart of impersonal structures? Referring to the concept of mass man and the role of apparatus, Jaspers believes that the crisis of modern man is not the lack of knowledge, but the blocking of the possibility of existential self-awareness and escaping existential responsibility. In the allegory of the cave, by focusing on philosophical education (paideia), turning of the soul and dialectical ascent, at the same time, different ways of human's being are introduced. In fact, the Platonic cave dweller and Jaspers' mass man are both in a state of inauthenticity, habituation and living in the horizon of untested improvisations, and their captivity is existential in nature, not merely epistemological. Liberation and ultimately freedom in both intellectual systems require a fundamental transformation of the way of human's being: for Plato through philosophy and the realization of the form of the good, and for Jaspers through confrontation with situations-limits, existential leap and existential communication. From this point of view, we can consider Jaspers' mass man as the modern and historical form of Platonic cave dweller.
Keywords
Allegory of the Cave
Mass Man
Paideia
Existenz
Subjects
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  • Receive Date 08 February 2026
  • Revise Date 13 June 2026
  • Accept Date 17 July 2026