The genius Martin van Creveld considers how Plato would react to modern times:
First, he would have been disappointed (but hardly surprised) by our continuing inability to provide firm answers to some of the most basic questions of all. Such as whether the gods (or God) “really” exist, whether they have a mind, and whether they care for us humans; the contradiction between nature and nurture (physis versus nomos, in his own terminology); the best system of education; the origins of evil and the best way to cope with it; as well as where we came from (what happened before the Great Bang? Do parallel universes exist?), where we may be going, what happens after death, and the meaning and purpose of it all, if any.
Second, he would have questioned our ability to translate our various scientific and technological achievements into greater human happiness; also, he would have wondered whether enabling so many incurably sick and/or handicapped people to stay alive, sometimes even against their will, is really the right thing to do.
Third, he would have observed that, the vast number of mental health experts notwithstanding, we today are no more able to understand human psychology and motivation better than he and his contemporaries did. As the French philosopher/anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once put it, there was (and still) an uninvited guest seated among us: the human mind.
Fourth, he would have noted that we moderns have not come up with works of art—poetry, literature, drama, rhetoric, sculpture, architecture—at all superior to those already available in his day. Not to Aeschylus. Not to Sophocles, not to Euripides, not to Aristophanes. Not to Demosthenes, not to Phidias and Polycleitus. Not to the Parthenon.
I’m not at all surprised that the great Israeli military historian inclines more toward Plato than Aristotle. But despite being an avowed Aristotelian myself, I would highly recommend reading the whole thing. After all, it is not often that we have access to the contemplations and meanderings of one of the greatest minds known to Man’s history.