The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization

by Arthur Herman

At this moment, two-thirds into Book V of the Republic, an important impulse for Western culture is born—and a clever Greek pun. It is the utopian impulse, after the Greek word utopia, which can mean either the best place to live (eutopia) or nowhere (u-topia), since experience (and Aristotle) will teach us that they are one and the same. Still, in various guises over the centuries, in settings large and small, men and women will try to bring their version of Plato’s Republic to fruition. Some, like Sir Thomas More (who first coined the term utopia) and Sir Francis Bacon, will confine their efforts to paper. Others will take up the task more literally with varying and sometimes hilarious, and sometimes horrifying, results. From New Harmony, Indiana, to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, they are all efforts to create a brand-new society according to Plato’s basic premise, that through laws based on the highest and most certain knowledge, we can create if not the perfect society, at least a pretty fair copy.†