If we can measure the greatness of a thinker by the vast opposition that ·1· envelops his thinking, forcing it into a unity, then certainly Plato belongs to a clearly unique phenomenon in the history of spirit. All the problems with which Greek philosophy had up until then wrestled are organized by Plato into a completely new tension and seen with a very different intensity. If we compare Plato’s world with the image of the cosmos sketched out by Pre-Socratic philosophy, we sense that the …