112 Ancient Ideals
But the thinker is often lonely for another reason, too. He dis-
covers that there is no one he can truly talk with. Everyone around
him is interested in the things of this world. They want to know how
to prosper and succeed. They want to live life, while the thinker
wants, fi rst, to understand it. So what he has to say to them some-
times makes little sense, and though he comprehends their ut-
terances well enough, what they say has no application to what
truly matters to him. From time to time the au then tic thinker will
fi nd someone who cares about what he does and who also lives to
fi nd the Truth. Then his life is bliss, if only for a while. Thoreau
found in Emerson a spiritual friend, just as Plato found one in
Socrates. More often, though, philosophic friendships are virtual.
Nietz sche only met Schopenhauer in his books, but during the
time when Nietz sche was doing his military ser vice he’d often fi nd
himself lonely, frustrated with the idiocies of military life, and at
wit’s end. “Schopenhauer,” he’d call out then. “Schopenhauer,
help me!”
Plato had no doubt that there were women more likely to become
true thinkers than the majority of men. Philosophical ability is not
tied to gender. But fewer women have gone down the contemplative
road than men. Hannah Arendt, who did, made it a point to be con-
nected to a man who did not want children and who believed that
all property was theft: he refused to own the furniture in their apart-
ment. The owning of furniture is for the bourgeoisie, and the
bourgeois is by defi nition not a thinker. He always speaks prose.
One has no doubt that as time unspools and women have more
opportunity to choose their paths, more and more will take their
places as lovers of wisdom and potential guides to their fellows. Will
their wisdom be substantially diff erent from the wisdom of male
thinkers? Will they cut new routes toward the center of the major
questions? Perhaps they will. But it is more likely that as they ap-
proach universal questions, issues of gender will matter less to them