走近西方文明

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《走近西方文明》：21世纪大学英语选修课系列教材。

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插图：If a prisoner says "That's a book" he thinks that the word book refers to the very thing he is looking at. But he would be wrong. He's onlylooking at a shadow. The real referent of the word "book" he cannot see.To see it, he would have to turn his head around.Plato's point: the general terms of our language are not names ofthe physical objects that we can see. They are actually names of things thatwe cannot see, things that we can only grasp with the mind.When the prisoners are released, they can turn their heads and seethe real objects. Then they realize their error. What can we do that isanalogous to turning our heads and seeing the causes of the shadows？ Wecan come to grasp the forms with our minds.Plato's aim in The Republic is to describe what is necessary for us toachieve this reflective understanding. But even without it, it remains truethat our very ability to think and to speak depends on the forms. For theterms of the language we use get their meaning by "naming" the Formsthat the objects we perceive participate in.The prisoners may learn what a book is by their experience withshadows of books. But they would be mistaken if they thought that theword "book" refers to something that any of them has ever seen. Likewise,we may acquire concepts by our perceptual experience of physical objects.But we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we graspwere on the same level as the things we perceive.