In Plato’s allegory of the cave, chained cave dwellers mistake the shadows of the cut-out shapes of objects moved in front of a large fire and cast on the wall in front of them as reality. Socrates tells this story to emphasize how far removed we are from the fundamental nature of things, how critically important it is to investigate what we think of as “real,” what we believe. And the cave dwellers don’t mistake the cut-outs—those false, two dimensional representations of reality; rather, they mistake the shadows of those false things for reality, and are thus doubly removed from the true world of forms, locked firmly within their shackles.
Truly insightful. Pure pleasure to read, and I leave it, wiser. Thank you.