The Cave and the Light

Earlier this year Professor Locke recommended Arthur Herman’s The Cave and the Light: Plato versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for Western Civilization. I recently finished it and found the book to very good. In particular the author’s conviction that ideas matter makes the book very illuminating as he keys on major ideas that have had lasting impact. For example, Herman gives a thoroughly fascinating description of the Platonism and Neoplatonism in Christianity as well as a clear understanding of the totalitarian consequences of Hegel. 

In Professor’s Locke’s post he states as a negative that there is no mention of Kant. I am not sure why he wrote that because Herman addresses Kant numerous times in the book. 

Some key quotes:

“Over Kant’s reading of Rousseau flutters the flag of the United Nations, but also the first pages of Georg Friedrich Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Auguste Comte’s Positive Philosophy, not to mention Marx’s Das Kapital. With the fusion of Kant and Rousseau, the European mind was on the brink of a new way of visualizing the direction and purpose of civil society: toward the abolition of the self-interested individual, instead of his ultimate triumph.”

Herman does give a very favorable treatment to the pragmatism of C.S. Peirce and William James, however that does not detract too much from the overall value of the book which, I took, as an exploration of the themes discussed in the epilogue of Dr. Peikoff’s OPAR.

Ayn Rand is mentioned favorably several times in the book.