A particular thing may cease to be, but not the universal property that the particular thing embodied.

self-critical reflection.

objective universal concepts of justice and goodness seemed imperative for a genuine ethics.

the Greeks, let us begin by examining one of its most striking characteristics—a sustained, highly diversified tendency to interpret the world in terms of archetypal principles.

Something is “beautiful” to the exact extent that the archetype of Beauty is present in it. When one falls in love, it is Beauty (or Aphrodite) that one recognizes and surrenders to, the beloved object being Beauty’s instrument or vessel.

According to Sophists such as Protagoras, man was the measure of all things, and his own individual judgments concerning everyday human life should form the basis of his personal beliefs and conduct—not naive conformity to traditional religion nor indulgence in far-flung abstract speculation. Truth was relative, not absolute, and differed from cult

the events of human existence were perceived as intimately related to and informed by the eternal realm of gods and goddesses.

the more man became freely and consciously self-determining, the less sure was his footing.

Thus the Sophists mediated the transition from an age of myth to an age of practical reason. Man and society were to be studied, methodically and empirically, without theological preconceptions.