Corbin held in high regard a figure nearly forgotten in Western philosophy except among specialists. The Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus, born in Constantinople in 412 C.E., had an enormous influence on Platonist thought both East and West. Nicolas of Cusa and Hegel may be counted among his admirers. In his Commentary on Plato's Parmenides he discusses the symbolic meaning of the dramatic setting of that dialogue. Corbin condenses this as follows:"On the one hand there are the philosophers of the school of Ionia; [they] have studied every aspect of Nature, but they have scarcely given thought to spiritual matters... And there are, on the other hand, philosophers of the Italian school, represented above all by Parmenides and Zeno. These are exclusively concerned with things of the intelligible order. Between the two is the Attic school, which holds a middle position, because, under the stimulus of Socrates and Plato, a synthesis has been made between the findings of the other two schools... [T]he middle ground is symbolized by Athens, by whose mediation awakened souls ascend from the world of Nature to that of nous, intellect...
"These [Ionians] are types of those souls who have descended into this world who are really in need of the aid of the daimons... This is why they abandon their house, the body: they emigrate to Athens..., they set out on the way from ignorance to knowledge, from agnosis to gnosis... They come for the Goddess, whose sacred peplum is carried in the theoria, or procession of the Panatheneia in celebration of victory over the Titans who unloose chaos. The aim of the Parmenides is precisely to unite everything to the One, and to demonstrate how all things proceed from the One. To come [to Athens] is, for them, to know that it is within the soul that the battle of the giants takes place, in which [Athene] is victorious. Athens is an Emblematic City."
The quotation from Corbin is from "Emblematic Cities: A Response to the Images of Henri Steirlin," trans. Kathleen Raine, in Temenos Journal 10: 11-2. Originally in Steirlin, Henri, Ispahan: Image du Paradis, Geneva: Editions SIGMA, 1976. The sculpture is from the east frieze of the Parthenon (East V, 31-35): The presentation of the peplos of Athena. British Museum. Image from Institut für Klassische Archäologie. (Adapted from The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism by the author.)