Going back down

The story does not end at the sun. The freed man is obliged to return — Plato is explicit that the philosopher must be made to go back into the cave and take a share of the labour, and that he will do it badly at first, blinking and stumbling, and be laughed at for it.

The half everyone forgets, and the half this app is built on. An ascent that does not come back down is not, in either tradition, finished: the Merkavah rider returns and teaches; hitbodedut ends and you go back to your household; the sparks are raised in the kitchen. Enlightenment that stays up the hill is, in Plato's own terms, a dereliction.