The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization [Kindle Edition] Author: Arthur Herman | Language: English | ISBN:
B003EY7JG2 | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization Epub Free
Free download The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization Epub Free for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link Arthur Herman has now written the definitive sequel to his New York Times bestseller, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and extends the themes of the book—which sold half a million copies worldwide—back to the ancient Greeks and forward to the age of the Internet. The Cave and the Light is a magisterial 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.
Accessible, riveting, and eloquently written, The Cave and the Light provides a stunning new perspective on the Western world, certain to open eyes and stir debate.
Praise for The Cave and the Light
“A sweeping intellectual history viewed through two ancient Greek lenses . . . breezy and enthusiastic but resting on a sturdy rock of research.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Examining mathematics, politics, theology, and architecture, the book demonstrates the continuing relevance of the ancient world.”—Publishers Weekly
“A fabulous way to understand over two millennia of history, all in one book.”—Library Journal
“Entertaining and often illuminating.”—The Wall Street Journal
From the Hardcover edition. Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization [Kindle Edition] Epub Free
- File Size: 10329 KB
- Print Length: 704 pages
- Publisher: Random House (October 22, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003EY7JG2
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,953 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > History & Surveys - #6
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Greek & Roman - #21
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In this comprehensive view of the last 2,500 years, Arthur Herman sets out to prove his contention that the history of Western civilisation has been influenced and affected through the centuries by the tension between the worldviews of the two greatest of the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. And for this reader at least, his argument is a convincing one.
The book covers so much in terms of both philosophy and history that a full review would run to thousands of words. Happily that's not going to happen here, dear reader. I will simply say that, from knowing virtually nothing about philosophy, I now feel as well informed as if I had done an undergraduate level course in the subject.
Herman starts way back at Socrates and brings us right up to the philosophers of the late twentieth century. He begins by giving a fairly in-depth analysis of the chief insights of both Plato and his former pupil Aristotle, using Plato's metaphor of the cave and the light to show how their views diverged. He shows Plato as the mystic and idealist, believer in the divinity of Pythagorean geometry, advocate of the philosopher king, believing that the route to the light of wisdom is available only to some through contemplation and speculation and that these few should set rules for the rest to follow. Aristotle is shown as the man of science and common sense, believing that there is much to be learned from an examination of life in the cave itself and advocating that all men (sorry, women, you'll have to wait a couple of millennia) should be involved in government with the family at the heart of society.
I regret having to provide a negative review for a book that takes the Ancients seriously, but I do feel some responsibility to put forward a more critical opinion in order to counterbalance the general praise Herman's book has received so far, both in this review section and in the media at large.
Herman proceeds from a delicious but ultimately fraught grand thesis: Plato the idealist and Aristotle the realist have determined the structure of Western Civilization through their diametrically opposed philosophical inquiries. In staking this position, Herman has adopted a rather standard interpretation of the relationship between the two great Greeks in their metaphysical and epistemological studies. Plato, so the story goes, believed in mysterious entities called Forms (Eidos) available only to the intellect and whose presence provides the foundation for all material beings. Aristotle, so the story continues, eschewed the Forms for an empiricism that begins with particular material beings as the most real beings and then proceeds toward generalizations, not unlike the inductive method scientists employ today and whose methodological validity can be traced all the way back to Aristotle himself.
From reading Herman, you would not gather that this strict demarcation between the two philosophers is at best a contentious claim and at worst an outright deception. The last paragraph of Roger Kimball's review in the Wall Street Journal points toward this problem with "The Cave and the Light," but fails to stress just how large a problem it really is. Kimball quotes Book VII of The Republic, a worthy selection, and comments that "Plato isn't the thoroughgoing Platonist he is sometimes taken to be." Right.
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