the old Platonic questions about the nature of the good and the form of beauty
Metaphysical questions.
Metaphysical answers haven't disappeared: the new agers are full of them, and so are the old religionists.
Cosmological questions haven't disappeared: but scientists press them as real questions about the very physical universe.
But the old Platonic questions about the nature of the good and the form of beauty — they went away when we weren't looking. They won't be back.
JAMES J. O'DONNELL, Professor of Classical Studies and Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace.
