The School of Athens -- The first philosopher -- The soul of reason -- The mind of God -- The doctor's son -- Good citizen or philosopher ruler? -- The inheritors : philosophy in the Hellenistic age -- Knowledge is power -- Hole in the soul : Plato and Aristotle in Rome -- Dancing in the light : the birth of Neoplatonism -- Christ is come : Platonism and Christianity -- Toward the heavenly city -- Inquiring minds : Aristotle strikes back -- Celestial harmonies : Plato in the Middle Ages -- At the summit : Arabs, Aristotle, and Saint Thomas Aquinas -- The razor's edge -- Aristotle, Machiavelli, and the paradoxes of liberty -- The creative ascent : Plato in the high Renaissance -- Twilight of the scholastics : the Reformation and the doom of Aristotle -- Secrets of the heavens : Plato, Galileo, and the new science -- God, kings, and philosophers in the Age of Genius -- Aristotle in a periwig : the culture of the Enlightenment -- Starting over : Plato, Rousseau, and revolution -- "Feeling is all" : the triumph of the Romantics -- Victorian crossroads : Hegel, Marx, and Mill -- The scale of nature : Darwin, evolution, and Aristotle's God -- Unseen worlds : physics, relativity, and the new world picture -- Triumph of the will : Nietzsche and the death of reason -- Common sense nation : Plato, Aristotle, and American exceptionalism -- Worlds at war : Plato and Aristotle in the violent century -- From the cave to the light.