There are two sorts of scholars in the world. There are the
scholars who write books with conclusions like, “And so we see that these four
potsherds found in section G27 of the dig are probably better placed in the LH
III period rather than the LH II Period.” And then there are the scholars who
write books with conclusions like, “And so we see that all of history is driven
by three factors that explain absolutely everything that has ever happened in
the world.”
Now the former sort of book is usually boring to read, but
far more accurate because the author has a much more modest goal in mind. The latter
sort of book is usually popular and accessible, but because the author is
starting with a broad and sweeping assumption, individual facts may get lost in
the attempt to make everything fit the big picture. The Cave and the Light by
Arthur Herman is the second sort of book.
The main thesis of The Cave and the Light is that all
of Western history has been shaped by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle,
and that we still have a lot to learn from these two philosophers today. I
agree wholeheartedly with this proposition. The problem is that Herman
overreaches himself many times in the book in an attempt to show that each
generation literally comes back to Plato and Aristotle and that these
two are the most influential men in all of Western history. I’m not so sure of
that.
I’ll start with the book’s strengths and move on to its weaknesses.
To begin with, this book was loads of fun to read. I enjoyed every minute of
the romp through cultural and philosophical history, and was sad every time I
had to put it down. Herman is a gifted writer with the ability to draw readers’
attention even to seemingly mundane philosophical issues. He has also read and
studied broadly as is evidenced by the massive, and massively helpful,
bibliography at the end of the book. Those who know me well know that I’ll keep
even a disappointing book on my shelf if it has a good bibliography. Finally,
Herman is a great debate partner. Even though there were many times I disagreed
with him, I didn’t feel put off. Rather I felt engaged to try to formulate what
about his argument I disliked and what I would have said differently. The
margins of my copy are full of blue ink now. Unlike some writers who come
across as pompous and overbearing, Herman’s prose feels open for conversation.
All that said, I don’t know that I would recommend this book
to just anyone. Herman is so intent on casting every philosopher in human
history as either a Platonist or an Aristotelian that several actual facts get
bulldozed along the way. To pull out just one example, he wants to show that
Thomas Aquinas was “aware of a larger world around him, and he was fascinated
by it. By joining the Dominicans, he would see how the other half lived, people
from a variety of lands and speaking a variety of languages...” He then quotes
Thomas Aquinas and comments, “…Aquinas wrote, ‘All I have written seems to me
so much straw compared to all I have seen and what has been revealed to me’
Aristotle became his compass for figuring out how to understand that larger
world.” I was dumbfounded when I read this. Most people who are familiar with
Aquinas will immediately recognize this quotation. When Thomas writes, “all I
have seen and what has been revealed to me,” he is referring not to the
physical world around him but to a mystical vision he had received that caused
him to evaluate all of his Aristotelian efforts as mere straw in comparison. So
Herman takes an Aquinas quotation of a, what Herman would call, “Platonic”
nature and uses it to support the “Aristotelian” nature of Aquinas. Likewise, he
gets a lot of things wrong about the Crusades and the Middle Ages in general.
Herman equally misunderstands the medieval Catholic doctrine of salvation (saying
that every man owes a debt and that that debt is paid down by baptism and
penances until the person gets to go to heaven) and Luther’s doctrine of the
bondage of the will (saying, in essence, that Luther denies the existence of
free will on a metaphysical level and casting Luther as something like a
fatalist. For the record Luther was not arguing about the idea of free
will, but rather the more concrete question of whether the will of a sinful man
can be free, being in bondage to sin.).
Moving toward the modern world and away from the world of
classical education in which one would expect Aristotle and Plato to have a big
influence, he becomes even more grasping, and sometimes it feels as if he has
to do mental gymnastics in order to show every conflict in modern history as a
reiteration of the debate between “Aristotelianism” and “Platonism”.
In the end, The Cave and the Light fails to be wholly compelling. The ground
on which it is based, a sharp dualistic divide between Plato and Aristotle, is
tenuous. Yes, Plato and Aristotle used different methods to pursue their
philosophical ends. However, they also agreed on many points and Aristotle did
not wholly rebel against his teacher to the extent that Herman seems to think
he must have. The heart of Christianity is not simply a refurbished
Neo-Platonism, all science and progress in the world cannot be attributed to
Aristotle. There is no way to say, as Herman does, that Booker T. Washington
was “Aristotelian” in nature and “Martin Luther King, Jr.” was Platonist. Or
for that matter that Martin Luther was somehow “Platonist” and that Erasmus was
somehow “Aristotelian”. This book was fun to read, contained many gems for
those willing to look for them, and offered an enjoyable opportunity for me to
flesh out my own thinking on many issues. However, the broad brush with which
Herman paints and the overly generalized pictures of historical conflicts
prevent this from being a book I would read again soon or regularly refer to.
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