The Platonic Soul It is fitting to give Plato the first word on the question, “What Is Man?” For Plato was the first thinker to isolate man out of his connection to clan and tribe, making the human individual -- man as he is in himself -- a proper subject of investigation. This shift of attention to the individual psyche marks a decisive, revolutionary break with the characteristic habits of thought of the ancient world, the cosmological consciousness, which conceived of man mainly in terms of his connections to units larger than the individual, and envisioned a cosmos filled with...