“The allegory of the cave” was meant to describe a philosophers place in society, which is not view things as blatantly as they are but to look deeper into them. This myth described a group of people chained together, with their head fixed to a blank wall. This forced them to only be able to see shadows of real objects cast by a fire behind them. Now if the bound cavemen were to see the actual item of the shadows they’ve seen for their whole life, they wouldn’t take that as real nor would they recognize those items either. Furthermore if one of those cave men broke free and was forced out of the cave to discover things they’ve never seen the caveman would take that experience as torture and unreal.
After the cave man sees all of the things that he has never seen: the items that cast the shadows, the green grass outside the cave, the sun, he has the choice to go back to the cave to share his knowledge with the rest of the cavemen. If he did the response in turn would be that he is crazy and all those things were unreal. So what the myth really means is when one (philosopher) strives toward the sun (“ultimate knowledge”) then tries to liberate the others (the bound cavemen) who refuse to believe him or her, it shows how naive the cavemen are for only taking the shadows(which are fake) as real and everything else is falsely.
Getting blinded by the sun is the way to get ultimate knowledge.
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