Quotes from Arthur Herman

All the same, Aquinas had achieved what no one had before or since: a fusion of Platonized Christianity with Aristotle's science of man. It is one of the great achievements of Western civilization. But it didn't last. Even before Aquinas's death, the old opposition would reassert itself. He would be forced to leave the University of Paris and die in his former home of Naples while the intellectual battle raged around him.

It was Aristotle who first made private property the basis of the good life and the independent householder the basis of the free polis.18 The world of the Enlightenment took him firmly at his word.

Then one day he returned from school to learn he was going to be married. He was thirteen—certainly not too young for the prearranged marital match that was considered essential to a Hindu household. His bride Kasturbai Makanji, also thirteen, was the daughter of a merchant who lived only a few doors down from the Gandhis' old house in Porbandar.

Why use two (or more) when one (or fewer) will do, is the principle that William of Ockham introduced into the medieval thought process. It grew out of his refinement of Aristotle's logic and set off a revolution not only in philosophy, but in politics and religion. Before he died, Ockham's razor would undercut the foundations of the medieval Church.

with the new economic order, a new moral perspective was taking shape. The Enlightenment term for it was "politeness.

They are "guilty," "not guilty," and "not proven," which jurors invoke when they decide the prosecution has failed to make a compelling case even when the prisoner is obviously guilty.

The Enlightenment, however, saw in middle-class man an up-to-date reflection of Aristotle's political animal: a being designed by nature to work peaceably and constructively with others on the basis of free will—and to make a little money while he did it.

Middle-class man scores low on Plato's thymos meter. Some would say low on the testosterone meter as well. He is no Martin Luther. Still, he is probably a more congenial neighbor, and he was to be the essential building block for what the eighteenth century treasured most after two centuries of religious war and upheaval: a little peace and quiet.

Mexicans and the Japanese had delivered steadfast denials.)

Another task was emptying the house's chamber pots, a constant chore in a large house with a wife and three children, including his nephew, twelve servants and staff, and only one indoor toilet.

man's function is not just to think—which Aristotle admits to be the highest of all human activities—but also to do.

Isaac Newton had demonstrated to Voltaire's satisfaction that human reason alone can discover the true inner workings of nature and the universe. Indeed, the human mind could achieve almost any goal it set for itself, as long as it remained grounded in experience and truth.

The job of ethics, Aristotle asserts, "is not that we may know what virtue is, but that we may become virtuous," especially in our daily dealings with others.

Galileo died in 1642. He was buried in Florence in the Church of Santa Croce, directly opposite the tomb of Michelangelo. This is only right, since together they had remade the Renaissance world in a distinctly Platonist frame.

Churchill half expected to see German paratroopers landing on the outskirts of London. On July 12 there was a serious discussion in the War Cabinet about whether the government should encourage the populace to attack German invaders with scythes and stones.

The metaphor of the cave explains how this works. It occurs in Book VII of Plato's Republic, where Socrates describes the world around us as a darkened cavern, across the back of which a puppet show is flashed with the figures of men, animals, and objects cast as shadows. For a modern audience, the description has an eerily familiar ring. It's the world of television and the media at its most flimsy and superficial.

Men are guided instead by custom, and the personal authority

for Aristotle ethics is not a science. We aren't looking for moral perfection. "In fact, such a life is not possible for man," Aristotle states. "If it were, he would be a God."23 Instead, we look for advantage and improvement. From that point of view, Aristotle assures us, learning to be virtuous is not that hard. It's all a matter of practice and learning the habits that go with it.

love of independence and property, the most steady and industrious of all human appetites." Commercial society supplies that "love of independence" in abundance.

As much as London or Paris, and certainly more than Berlin or Madrid, Edinburgh was the epicenter of Aristotle's Enlightenment. Small wonder, then, that it dubbed itself the Athens of the North.

History, people like to say, is written by the winners. The truth is, some of the most profound works on the past were written by those who considered themselves history's losers.

love of independence and property, the most steady and industrious of all human appetites." Commercial society supplies that "love of independence" in abundance. It encourages men to overturn custom and tradition, and establish a new kind of law, based on a free circulation of goods and services.

And all the while, hanging over them was the shadow of the Scottish Highlands. For the purple-gray mountains that rose up to the north of Edinburgh were inhabited by fearsome men in kilts: beings who seemed more like beasts than men.

Common sense tells us that we can understand and navigate our way through that reality, and common sense tells us that the more we know about that outside world, the better we can act on it, both as individuals and as members of a community.