The "Cave.ExE" (eng)

Глава 1We imagine that we live in a world of light. We are certain that the sun we see is the sun. That the bitter taste of wormwood we feel is bitterness. That the love that inspires us and the pain that rends our hearts are authentic and ultimate realities. But what if everything we know, this entire bright, noisy, multicolored cacophony of life, is merely a reflection? A pale shadow on the rough, uneven wall of a certain giant, universal cave? And we, who consider ourselves the kings of nature and the crown of creation, are merely prisoners, chained by the chains of ignorance to our own false perception.This disturbing, almost nightmarish conjecture, voiced two and a half thousand years ago by the Athenian thinker Plato in the seventh book of The Republic, does not age in the least. Like a faithful scalpel, it dissects our self-assurance with the same ease with which a modern surgeon…