Here is the briefest description I can provide for the
philosophies of both Plato and Aristotle: Plato is other-worldly, Aristotle is this-worldly.
Plato walks with head upturned desiring to describe the timeless, perfect realm
of Ideas. Aristotle crawls in the grass and mud eyeing all the unique details
and wanting to place everything in its proper category.
In describing the history of the human endeavour to make
sense of the world, of our desire to know what the world is and who we are and
how these two fit together, one could do much worse than submit the names of
Plato and Aristotle as perennial options. Arthur Herman in his book The Cave and The Light accomplishes
something I value—in fact it is something I look for in all good non-fiction—to
make the reader conscious of a perspective that is always present but remains
unarticulated or unilluminated the way shadows are all around us but never
attended to by our thoughts until we focus on them. Plato and Aristotle are the
permanent shadows of our thinking.
Herman’s argument is that the philosophies respectively
propounded by these two great fathers of the Western tradition are more than
just the creative musings of two talented thinkers grappling with our
ignorance. More fundamentally Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies represent
two facets of the way we can make sense of the world. That is to say, our
brains are unavoidably Platonic and Aristotelian in nature. If the brain were a
coin each philosopher would claim one side. This is deep DNA level stuff. That
Plato and Aristotle are influential goes without saying. Alfred North
Whitehead, a notable British philosopher, had famously claimed that all
philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Herman suggests that same claim
can be made of Aristotle’s writings. But to suggest that Plato and Aristotle
somehow represent fundamentally how we can
understand the world is an argument I have not heard before.
The book examines the intricate dance between these two
great ways of thinking about the world. Herman submits that any time one
philosophy should dominate over the other you’ve got problems. Too much Plato
brings with it rigid dogmatism and elitist arrogance. For example, the
Neo-Platonists, like Porphyry, thought they were the only ones in possession of
the true path to fleeing the tomb of the body. Too much Aristotle and you have
narrow-minded sterility and not seeing the forest for the trees; just read even
a smidgen of late medieval scholastic philosophy, which was heavily influenced
by Aristotle, and you’ll get the idea. To the Yin-Yang concept of the Eastern
world which its devotees say one must keep in balance to have a harmonious
existence, the West offers up the necessity of a proper equilibrium between
Plato and Aristotle. Interesting.
I have to admit I like the argument. I have studied a
little philosophy and the book presented a new opportunity for me to think back
to all those books, treatises and essays I have read. After some reflection I
believe Herman is correct. Where a philosophy seems to falter or demonstrate a
less than rigorous logical and experiential line of reasoning can be profitably
attributed to a failure to adequately deal with the tension between the Platonic
and Aristotelian strands within the philosophy. Take your pick: Descartes, Hegel,
Kant, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Hume, St. Augustine, Locke. All of them can be read
with an eye for this defect.
While reading the book I imagined myself a
Philosophy-Doctor treating philosophy-patients who showed signs of too much love for Plato with an antidote of Aristotle and vice versa. What’s the cure for a too high esteem of
Plato’s Republic, simple, read Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics. If you enjoy
philosophy this book is a must read. If you are interested in the history of
ideas and in western culture generally you will also enjoy this book.
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