[532b]
till he apprehends by
thought itself the nature of the good in itself, he arrives at the limit of the
intelligible, as the other in our parable, came to the goal of the
visible.” “By all means,” he said.
“What, then, will you not call this progress of thought
dialectic?” “Surely.” “And the release
from bonds,” I said, “and the conversion from the shadows to
the images1 that cast them and to the
light and the ascent2 from the subterranean cavern to the
world above,3 and
there the persisting inability4 to look directly at
animals and plants and the light of the sun,
1 εἴδωλα: cf. my Idea of Good in Plato's Republic, p. 238; also 516 A, Theaet. 150 C, Soph. 240 A, 241 E, 234 C, 266 B with 267 C, and Rep. 517 Dἀγαλμάτων.
2 ἐπάνοδος became almost technical in Neoplatonism. Cf. also 517 A, 529 A, and p. 124, note b.
3 Lit. “sun,” i.e. the world illumined by the sun, not by the fire in the cave.
4 See crit. note. The text of Iamblichus is the only reasonable one. The reading of the manuscripts is impossible. For the adverb modifying a noun cf. 558 Bοὐδ᾽ ὁπωστιοῦν σμικρολογία, Laws 638 Bσφόδρα γυναικῶν, with England's note, Theaet. 183 Eπάνυ πρεσβύτης, Laws 791 Cπαντελῶς παίδων, 698 Cσφόδρα φιλία, Rep. 564 Aἄγαν δουλείαν, with Stallbaum's note.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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