Hamilton-Wenham Public Library

The cave and the light, Plato versus Aristotle and the struggle for the soul of Western civilization, Arthur Herman

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 623-642) and index

contains biographical information

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The cave and the light

bibliography

436030180

Arthur Herman

Plato versus Aristotle and the struggle for the soul of Western civilization

A history of the influential rivalry between Plato and Aristotle traces the Western world's ongoing battle of ideas to their competing philosophies, demonstrating how their contrasting views on everything became the twin fountainheads of Western culture. It is the seqel to the author's book: How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and extends the themes of the book back to the ancient Greeks and forward to the age of the Internet. His new book is an account of how the two greatest thinkers of the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle, laid the foundations of Western culture, and how their rivalry shaped the essential features of our culture down to the present day. Plato came from a wealthy, connected Athenian family and lived a comfortable upper-class lifestyle until he met an odd little man named Socrates, who showed him a new world of ideas and ideals. Socrates taught Plato that a man must use reason to attain wisdom, and that the life of a lover of wisdom, a philosopher, was the pinnacle of achievement. Plato dedicated himself to living that ideal and went on to create a school, his famed Academy, to teach others the path to enlightenment through contemplation. However, the same Academy that spread Plato's teachings also fostered his greatest rival. Born to a family of Greek physicians, Aristotle had learned early on the value of observation and hands-on experience. Rather than rely on pure contemplation, he insisted that the truest path to knowledge is through empirical discovery and exploration of the world around us. Aristotle, Plato's most brilliant pupil, thus settled on a philosophy very different from his instructor's and launched a rivalry with profound effects on Western culture. The two men disagreed on the fundamental purpose of the philosophy. For Plato, the image of the cave summed up man's destined path, emerging from the darkness of material existence to the light of a higher and more spiritual truth. Aristotle thought otherwise. Instead of rising above mundane reality, he insisted, the philosopher's job is to explain how the real world works, and how we can find our place in it. Aristotle set up a school in Athens to rival Plato's Academy: the Lyceum. The competition that ensued between the two schools, and between Plato and Aristotle, set the world on an intellectual adventure that lasted through the Middle Ages and Renaissance and that still continues today. From Martin Luther (who named Aristotle the third great enemy of true religion, after the devil and the Pope) to Karl Marx (whose utopian views rival Plato's), heroes and villains of history have been inspired and incensed by these two master philosophers, but never outside their influence. -- From book jacket

The School of Athens -- The first philosopher -- The soul of reason -- The mind of God -- The doctor's son -- Good citizen or philosopher ruler? -- The inheritors: philosophy in the Hellenistic age -- Knowledge is power -- Hole in the soul: Plato and Aristotle in Rome -- Dancing in the light: the birth of Neoplatonism -- Christ is come: Plato and Christianity -- Toward the heavenly city -- Inquiring minds: Aristotle strikes back -- Celestial harmonies: Plato in the Middle Ages -- At the summit: Arabs, Aristotle, and Saint Thomas Aquinas -- The razor's edge -- Aristotle, Machiavelli, and the paradoxes of liberty -- The creative ascent: Plato and the high Renaissance -- Twilight of the scholastics: the Reformation and the doom of Aristotle -- Secrets of the heavens: Plato, Galileo, and the new science -- God, kings, and philosophers in the Age of Genius -- Aristotle in a periwig: the culture of the Enlightenment -- Starting over: Plato, Rousseau, and revolution -- "Feeling is all" : the triumph of the Romantics -- Victorian crossroads: Hegel, Marx, and Mill -- The scale of nature: Darwin, evolution, and Aristotle's God -- Unseen worlds: physics, relativity, and the new world picture -- Triumph of the will: Nietzsche and the death of reason -- Common sense nation: Plato, Aristotle, and American exceptionalism -- Worlds at war: Plato and Aristotle in the violent century -- From the cave to the light