The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World, 2002) boils Western philosophy and culture down to two competing notions: the idealism of Plato and the empiricism of Aristotle. Plato, says Herman, asks, “How do you want your world to be?”; Aristotle, on the other hand, asks, “How do you fit into the world that already exists?” Walking through two and a half millennia of Western thought, Herman emphasizes that the two philosophies—the material and the spiritual aspects of existence—have repeated themselves through Western history, waxing and waning and remaining in tension with each other to the present day. Romanticism? Poetry? Totalitarian dogmatism? That’s Plato. The U.S. Constitution? The Manhattan Project? Modern consumer culture? That’s Aristotle. If it sounds like a sweeping polemic, that’s because it is; Herman seems to revel in overbroad claims, particularly when he’s talking about modern phenomena. Beneath all the broad assertions and polemic showiness, however, lies a serious argument for the primacy of Plato and Aristotle and the essential dynamism of a culture that embraces both philosophies.