when he asked me, “How can you, Hillman, be both a Platonist and a democrat?” Quispel had glimpsed the daimon of my destiny, and so the question has taken some years to answer. Of course, assumed by the question is a certain common view of Plato and Platonism—that is, that they are totalitarian, elitist, patriarchal, and have laid an authoritative

If you had gone to Epictetus and said, “I want to live a good life. What should I do?” he would have had an answer for you: “Live in accordance with nature.” He would then have told you, in great detail, how to do this. If, by way of contrast, you went to a twentieth-century analytic philosopher and asked the same question, he probably would have r

make a thorough study of the masters, come to understand their intellectual achievements, and make these achievements their own. Then, on the basis of the knowledge so acquired, identify the errors in the masters’ thinking, correct them, and in so doing improve our understanding of the world.