The shadow metaphor suggests Book VII of Plato’s Republic. In Plato’s beautiful parable, the captives in the cave are chained down at their thighs and necks. They can only look straight ahead; their heads have been shackled in a fixed position since birth. All they have ever seen of themselves and of one another are the shadows cast on the opposite wall of the cave by the fire burning behind them. They believe the shadows to be real objects. The same is true of the shadows cast by the objects carried along above the wall behind their heads. Might we be like the captives, in that objects from
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