I believe that the ship Plato is talking about resembles a city, the people on it resemble the people in the city, and the ship captain resembles the king or leader of the city. The ship owner is ‘stronger’ than everyone else, but has little things wrong, like being hard of hearing but he is the one with the knowledge of how to steer the ship. Everyone else on the ship is always arguing, believing that they should be the ‘captain’ even though they have no knowledge of how to steer the ship. It is not possible to train them in this, and they are always begging the ship owner to hand the lead over to them. When one of them does succeed in persuasion, everyone else throws them off. Yet, those who do succeed are said to be one who knows the ship, and writes everyone else off as useless. The people on the ship don’t understand what the captain really does, and they don’t believe there is something that helps them to determine how to really steer the ship.
The ship resembles the cities attitude towards the ship captain, which would be the ‘philosopher king’. There is no use for the ruler to go to the people to ask for help, it is supposed to be the people going to the ruler for help. The simile describes steering the ship as a ‘craft’, which I think represents being a politician, or political power. The people on the ship are too busy fighting over the right way to steer the ship to listen to the ruler. The whole ship simile represents Plato’s democracy, pure rule of the majority.I believe that the ship Plato is talking about resembles a city, the people on it resemble the people in the city, and the ship captain resembles the king or leader of the city. The ship owner is ‘stronger’ than everyone else, but has little th ...