Plato the preeminent individual is the thinker, and the best way
to spend one’s life is not in the quest for glory but in the quest for
Truth. Plato introduces the second of the great ideals into Western
culture: the ideal of contemplation.
There are no phi los o phers in Homer. Odysseus is a master strat-
egist; his thinking is pragmatic and tactical. Nestor has rich ex-
perience and a long memory, but like Odysseus his mind turns
n at u rally to results: W hat must we do to get what we want? To Plato,
thought is something else entirely. Plato is not concerned with what
we need to know to navigate practical diffi culties. He does not care
about short- term plans and military schemes. Plato seeks a Truth
that will be true for all time. He is not looking for truth that applies
exclusively to Greeks, or to men and women who live in city- states,
or to those who exist at the same point in time that he does. Plato
seeks Truth that will apply to all men and women at all times.
When Plato asks what beauty is, he is not asking what beauty
might be in a certain culture, under a certain po liti cal dispensation,
within a par tic u lar history and set of aesthetic assumptions. He
wants to know what beauty is, period. When Plato speaks in The
Republic about how the spirit is composed and how best to culti-
vate it to achieve happiness and to do as little harm as possi ble, he
is not talking about the spirit under capitalism, or under commu-
nism, or under Catholicism, or after the Protestant Reformation. He
is talking about the Spirit, and that is that. If Plato’s account cannot
illuminate the human condition in Ame rica in the year 2020 as well
as it did the human condition in Greece when he was teaching and
writing, Plato fails.
Others have followed Plato in his quest for the Truth—or rather
they have followed him and parted from him at the same time. To
quest for ultimate Truth after Plato is to believe that Plato, great as
he was, did not settle matters. Comprehensive thinkers like Aris-
totle and Schopenhauer, thinkers who touch almost every area of
The Triumph of Self 5