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

by Arthur Herman

When we do a business deal in Rio de Janeiro or Calcutta, read a newspaper detailing market trends in Frankfurt or St. Petersburg, window-shop on Oxford Street or on the rue St.-Honoré, share a table with a stranger at a coffeehouse, or split a cab with a traveler on the way to the airport, we are steadily adding to our stock of experience of the world, which in turn gives us a better idea of how the world works and what our own priorities need to be. This forces us to be more practical and pragmatic. We grow more concerned with producing a beneficial result than standing on outdated or dogmatic principles. Far from creating a poltroon, the eighteenth century saw the world of commerce creating a person who might have stepped out from the pages of Aristotle’s Ethics. This was someone intellectually alert and morally centered, regardful of others by habit and therefore not inclined to extremes of behavior.