Plato and Aristotle in the "School of Athens"

Editor's Note: Historian Arthur Herman is the bestselling author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and is most recently the author of The Cave and the Light, about the complementary philosophies of Aristotle and Plato that form the bedrock of the Western world. Ever wonder which great thinker you'd mesh with? For your enjoyment, Arthur Herman explains the differences between the two ancient philosophers, and whether you'd be better suited kicking it back with Aristotle or grabbing a drink with Plato.

Do you drive a Prius or an SUV? Do you own a dog or a cat? When autumn comes would you rather watch the run up to the World Series, or the start of football season?

Your answers to each question reveal a lot, not just about your personal tastes but your own link to the cultural legacy left by the two greatest thinkers in history: Plato and Aristotle. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said, "every person is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian." The truth is, the enduring tension between the world views of these two thinkers continues to shape our world.

So forget right brain versus left brain, Venus versus Mars, or whether there’s a God gene or a selfish gene. The most important split in history has always been between those who see the world the way Aristotle did, and those who prefer the path of Plato.

In his dialogues, Plato (427-347 BCE) used the character of his famous teacher Socrates to explore the relationship between God, the human soul, and eternal truths Plato dubbed Ideas or Forms. Plato’s ex-student Aristotle (384-322 BCE), on the other hand, chose to study the realm of nature, including human nature, and wrote treatises on biology, zoology, anatomy, astronomy, physics, and logic that have earned him the nickname "the father of science."

For more than 2,500 years Plato has been the spokesman for theologians (he had a huge influence on early and medieval Christianity), mystics, poets, and artists (his influence was almost as great on the Renaissance and the Romantics), and the spiritual things in life. Aristotle, by contrast, speaks to scientists, economists, and those who dwell in the realms of technology and the practical every day world.

Aristotelians tend to be tough-minded, logical, and skeptical -- but also gregarious and reliable friends (a large part of Aristotle’s Ethics is a tribute to the importance of friendship). Platonists are often loners, and are usually tender-hearted and also altruistic. But they are also committed to their causes, and to other people, heart and soul. An Aristotelian asks, "How does it work?" A Platonist asks, "What does it mean?" A Platonist asks, "What is your dream?" An Aristotelian replies, "Wake up and smell the coffee."

In history, Aristotle’s great disciples include the Roman thinker Cicero and the medieval logician Peter Abelard, Enlightenment figures like Adam Smith and the Founding Fathers, and even Ayn Rand and Niccolo Machiavelli. Plato’s include the great theologian Saint Augustine, the artist Michelangelo, the early environmentalist and inspirer of the Romantics Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Martin Luther King, as well as Galileo and Einstein.

The way you answer the 10 questions below will give you a better sense of which camp you can call home. Take the quiz and find out.

1. Do you own a dog or a cat ?

If your answer was a dog, you’re an Aristotelian. Aristotle believed human beings were naturally social animals; so are dogs. He also described friendship in his Ethics this way : "Those who desire the good of their friends for the friends’ sake are most truly friends." Certainly no animal meets that standard more than the dog, Man’s Best Friend.

If your answer was a cat, you score one as a Platonist. The relationship between cats and their owners, as we all know, is spiritual and intuitive. And while dog owners will argue that their relationship with Rex and Rover is spiritual, too, every cat owner knows that the Egyptians worshiped the cat five thousand years ago because its aloof personality embodies the enigma of the Divine -- something every Platonist is automatically drawn to.

2. Do you pay your bills online, or do you prefer to pay by check or even in person?

Aristotelians are comfortable with new technology, and are always looking for ways to make their lives more convenient and efficient. An online bill payer scores one as an Aristotelian.

Platonists, on the other hand, tend to be suspicious of change, especially new technologies. In general, the Platonist sees the old ways as best. He or she doesn't like to fix a clock unless it’s clearly broken. So where an Aristotelian sees paying bills or shopping online as saving time and trouble and even money, the Platonist sees an invitation to identity theft. Anyone who prefers to sit down and write out the monthly bills by hand, scores one as a Platonist.

3. Do you start the day by drawing up a list of things to do, or do you prefer to wing it?

As befits the followers of the father of logic, Aristotelians love orderly processes, and see a daily list as a way to clarify their priorities.

Platonists like their priorities, too, but they tend to believe that as long as they stay focused on the Big Picture, the details will fall into place -- and they also see the value of the unexpected and the spontaneous, as opposed to sticking to schedule.

So if you do a list, score one as an Aristotelian. If you don’t, score one as a Platonist.

4. What’s your favorite team sport, baseball or basketball or football?

Basketball and football are built around the clock, baseball isn’t (neither are tennis or golf). In his Physics Aristotle is the great philosopher of time as the most significant measure of motion and change, and as a result Aristotelians tend to be great watchers of the clock, especially in sports.

Platonists, on the other hand, see change differently, as a process of disruption and decay. The really important things in life are eternal; the clock adds nothing to what we already know. So Platonist doesn’t mind if a baseball game (or cricket match if they’re English) goes on all day; they also don’t tend to feel time pressure the way an Aristotelian does.

So if you said basketball or football, score one as an Aristotelian. If you said you really prefer NASCAR, then score two. Car racing is even more Aristotelian, with its its reliance on technology as well as its first-across-the-finish-line competitiveness.

If you said baseball, score one as a Platonist. Likewise if you prefer tennis or golf. And if you’re someone who actually enjoys watching golf on TV, with its long pauses, soft-voiced announcers, and green verdant backgrounds, score two as a Platonist.

5. When you were a teenager, did you want to be a rock star or a movie star?

Aristotelians are very visual. Aristotle’s Poetics is the great explanation of the importance of theater and drama, and for Aristotle all the greats arts are illusion and spectator-driven. Plato, by contrast, saw the central importance of music to human beings, as an expression of the eternal rhythms of life. In the Republic he even assigns different kinds of music to the different classes of society.

So if your answer was rock star, score one as a Platonist. If it was movie star, score one as an Aristotelian.

If it was neither -- if you spent high school doing your daily work and didn’t worry about some silly impractical fantasies -- then you’re a perfect Aristotelian. Score two in that category.

If on the other hand, instead of dreaming of making it big in Hollywood or appearing on American Idol, you daydreamed about becoming a) a symphonic conductor or b) a religious missionary or c) finding a cure for world hunger, then score two on the Platonist meter.

6. When you get a new electronic gadget, do you read the directions first or do you try to figure it out yourself ?

Again, Aristotelians like orderly logical processes, with as few surprises as possible. So if you read directions ahead of time, score one as an Aristotelian. If you like to figure it out and find someone else’s directions unnecessary or even confining, score one as a Platonist.

7. If you own a Prius, an electric car, or a hybrid, score one as a Platonist. Environmentalism is the great cause for today’s Platonist personalities, and so driving a car that’s supposed to be good for the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and/or our dependence on fossil fuels, lets you score one as a Platonist.

On the other hand, if you own an SVU or pickup, that sends a very different message. It says, I’m less interested in the environment than making sure I have a car that serves my personal needs, including that of my job and family. My obligations run toward my relationships with other people, it says, not to some abstract concept like The Planet. That’s Aristotle straight out of the Ethics, so score one as an Aristotelian.

Score one as an Aristotelian, also, if you own any other kind of car. And if you don’t own a car at all, your Platonist score just jumped by two.

8. Does your car have a Jesus fish on it? Score two points as a Platonist, since Christianity is the traditional home of Platonist spirituality and ethical doctrines.

Likewise, if you have a Darwin fish, score two points as an Aristotelian. Darwin’s theory of evolution is the culmination of Aristotle’s view of biology and the life sciences, which expressed a strong materialist bias and issued the same challenge to Plato’s idea of man as a copy of spiritual perfection, as today’s Darwin fish.

Also, if you have any bumper stickers that say, "Think Globally, Act Locally," (a classic Platonist formulation) or "Coexist," or any bumper stick with a picture of Mahatma Gandhi and/or Albert Einstein, score one Platonist point.

On the other hand, an "I HEART something" bumper sticker, or one of those white oval stickers with black letters or numbers, gets you one point as an Aristotelian. You don’t feel the need to identify yourself with any big cause or spiritual message. You see your car as a place to express your own individual preferences and to define your own identity.

Likewise, score one for Aristotle if you have vanity plates; that is, unless they spell out either Jesus or God or Gaia -- in which case it’s one point for Plato.

9. Do you regularly vote in elections, or do you think it’s largely a waste of time?

Voting is crucial to the Aristotelian vision of politics and self-government, which is based on the principle of "ruling and being ruled in turns." Plato, on the other hand, was deeply suspicious of “normal” democratic politics, especially in his home city of Athens. He believed politicians were largely interested in feathering their own nests, and spent their time distracting voters from what was really important, namely the cultivation of virtue.

So if you believe voting is a civic duty, regardless of who’s running, and believe despite all the propaganda otherwise every vote counts, you are a true blue Aristotelian -- and a true believer in the value of normal democratic process. Give yourself one point.

If you ever ran for office yourself, even school board, give yourself two as Aristotelian.

On the other hand, if you see most political candidates as crooks and the tools of special interests; existing political parties as just “a distinction without a difference”; and think your vote won’t change “the system” anyway, then you are a modern Platonist, and give yourself one point as such.

10. Finally. When you eat a piece of pie or pizza, do you eat the crust first or the tip first?

If the crust, then you are an Aristotelian, since you've learned the science of deferred gratification, and appreciate the value of process.

If the tip, then you are a Platonist. Platonists know it’s important to be spontaneous and enjoy the simple pleasures in life when you can, because no one knows what the future brings. Plato was no hedonist; but he is also the only thinker to set a philosophical discussion at a wine bar, in his Symposium.

If your Aristotle score was 12 or higher, then congratulations: you are the kind of organized, practical person Aristotle saw as the essential building-block of a strong society and culture: and if you didn’t get a college degree in engineering, accounting, or computer science, you may have missed your calling. If your Plato score was 12 or higher, then you are quickly approaching the kind of inner enlightenment and serene sense of purpose Plato wanted for all his disciples. Your success as a teacher, minister, jazz musician, forest ranger, or Buddhist monk is all but certain.

If either your Aristotle or Plato score is between 8 and 11, then you have achieved a happy balance between your practical, reasonable side and your more spiritual, visionary side. You are organized but not obsessive; sympathetic without being a push over. You are what the world used to call a well-rounded person, and someone who probably gets along with hardcore Aristotelians and full blown Platonists, with equal aplomb. With your people skills, you should consider becoming a doctor, or opening a retail business or restaurant if your score was on the Aristotelian side. On the Platonic side, make that a health food store or solar panel plant.

Any score below 8 means you still have room to grow; your inner Plato or inner Aristotle haven’t taken full shape yet -- or may be in hopeless conflict. But don’t feel bad. It was Aristotle who said, "To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world."

But then of course, he didn't have this quiz.