One must wonder: what effects did these self-styling thinkers have on thought ultimately? They possessed the leisure necessary to cultivate their individual modes of life. They point the rest of mankind to an alternate, perhaps higher form of living. Hence they depart from convention in a way that forever reminds us of that archetype, Socrates. And in that way they can claim to have cultivated an "art of living". Perhaps, this is the undying Socratic lesson that we return to constantly. And this is the type of philosophy that legitimately overlaps with literature - as a way of seeing things differently, together with the poets who sought by imagination to perceive the full spectrum of life; paintbrush on canvas, the coloring of life...

But man is not an isolated creature. Such a meditative beauty cannot sustain those who cannot first feed themselves, who live in strife through periods of political breakdown, and who are oppressed and suppressed by the pathos of humanity. This is where the formidable tools of analysis uncovered by Plato and Aristotle must be brought to bear - where theory draws its essential strength, as a way to comprehend society and proscribe injustices...

...These must be the central tenets that drive philosophy. Ethics and politics and beauty must rise above the questions of epistemology and metaphysical speculation. From Plato, we understand the relationship between these fields - the metaphysical after the ethical, Forms after the starting point of piety. Only after pondering the ethical and political, do we attempt a metaphysical justification, or an epistemological demarcation. We must live before we can ponder; we must understand what is essential to human life...