本节的内容是关于柏拉图《理想国》中著名的“洞穴理论”，来自于苏格拉底和柏拉图哥哥格劳孔（Glaucon）的对话。通过今天的讲解，我们不但可以了解“洞穴理论”的基本内容，而且可以感受到苏格拉底娓娓道来的对话模式。“洞穴理论”是古典哲学最为重要的比喻之一，苏格拉底通过描绘洞穴以及洞穴里囚犯的状态，阐述的是人类的无知以及他们虽然无知但却自以为知的状态。除此之外，还解释了阻碍人类自由和获得真理的因素。更为重要的是，这个比喻也形象地说明了为什么即使面对真理，人类依然拒绝真理并固执地相信谬误的原因。
Imagine this: People live under the earth in a cavelike dwelling. Stretching a long way up toward the daylight is its entrance. The people have been in this dwelling since childhood, shackled by the legs and neck. Thus they stay in the same place so that there is only one thing for them to look that: whatever they encounter in front of their faces. But because they are shackled, they are unable to turn their heads around. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance. Between the fire and those who are shackled there runs a walkway at a certain height. Imagine that a low wall has been built the length of the walkway, like the low curtain that puppeteers put up, over which they show their puppets. So now imagine that all along this low wall people are carrying all sorts of things that reach up higher than the wall: statues and other carvings made of stone or wood and many other artifacts that people have made. As you would expect, some are talking to each other as they walk along and some are silent.
"You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners".
"Like ourselves."
From the beginning people like this have never managed, whether on their own or with the help by others, to see anything besides the shadows that are projected on the wall opposite them by the glow of the fire. Now if they were able to say something about what they saw and to talk it over, do you not think that they would regard that which they saw on the wall as beings? And now what if this prison also had an echo reverberating off the wall in front of them? Whenever one of the people walking behind those in chains (and carrying the things) would make a sound, do you think the prisoners would imagine that the speaker were anyone other than the shadow passing in front of them? To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
▍生词好句
cavelike: adj. 似穴的；似坑洞的
dwelling: n. 住处；寓所
stretch: vt. 伸展；张开
entrance: n. 入口（结合本文语境从里往外看即“出口”）
shackle: vt. 束缚；加枷锁
encounter: vt. 遇到
blaze: vi. 燃烧；冒(或发)火焰
curtain: n. 幕；窗帘
puppeteer: n. 操纵木偶的人
artifact: n. 人工制品；手工艺品
project: vt. 投影；投射
being: n. 存在；生命（这里指“真实的事物”）
reverberate: vi. 回响；反响
