Platon³⁸ was conveying one of the main messages that antiquity was sending to us, specifically that of the moral beauty of man. We do not intend to deal in depth with this message, but it is obvious that the results of careful observations made upon men and cities by the ancient Chinese, Sumerien, Indian, Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek thinkers allowed Platon to generate a philosophical work that is one of the pylons of humanity.
Platon was a militant for raising the essence of man. He observed the man and the city and did not attempt to take man out of the social context. He studied man and city together. But the every day life of man and of the city does not generate by itself the moral stand and beauty of man. These can be obtained, religion apart, through meditation, through science and philosophy, through study and reflection. Those that are convinced of their necessity can, after reaching them through this difficult path, apply them consciously to every day life. Platon recommend that certain mature people (50 years old, according to him) enter periods of study and reflection, and then become either educators of the younger generations in applying the moral principles, or leaders of the city. He does not envisage secluded wise men, but men useful to the city, wise educators and wise leaders.

However Platon does repel the idea of a wise man retreated in a simple occupation to earn his living, if the city is not prepared to use him, or if the system of the city does not agree with the values he represents, even putting his soul, mind and life in danger.
Platon stresses the necessity of man's spiritual life as good in itself for the man. Spiritual life is necessary to society for its existence and progress, for science, humanism and wisdom it brings.

What is the spiritual life of a people ? Weask today, considering science's latest discoveries, how could we understand better the social consciousness and the spiritual life of a people and of mankind as a whole. The classical image of social consciousness could be now understood rather as a social software, subsisting with a certain degree of independence from its physical support represented by the elements of the society, just as the psychic software has a certain degree of independence from the nervous structures of the brain. The spiritual life is a component of the human civilization that we have to add to the quality of human relations, to their interconnected well being. Most people direct their attention towards systems theory, towards using mathematical methods, computers, towards organization theory and methods of quantitative management. And much progress will be made in this direction considering the human and material forces that society provides to this purpose, as well as the attraction that new methods have on the young generation and on the novelty enthusiasts. But what worries us for the future are the fundamental aspects of civilization in society and their corollary, the spiritual life. The confusion between system and civilization leaves the system in an intrinsic evolution instead of it being the delicate, fine support of civilization. We do not believe that the system should regulate the spiritual life the way it regulates the economy. The relative independence of the spiritual life is necessary for the very dialectics of system-civilization pair. What is important is that the system creates the conditions for the spiritual life to take place in a varied mode, with different ways of approach. It is only in this way that society as a whole can be defended against stagnation and spiritual vacuum.
Francis Bacon drew our attention towards the experiment, the observation of Nature, and the cultivation of positive sciences, their application in improving man's life. And we cannot but agree with Platon that a superior spiritual life is closely connected with the human and social well-being. The essence of Platon's message will continue to call humanity towards the heights.

Today we witness on one hand the deepening of natural sciences, into the material world, finding some strange singularities in Science in connection with the existing philosophical and scientifical thinking; and on the other hand we witness some irrational philosophical currents, expressions of an impotence in understanding the world. From an other point of view we could say that the structuralism puts the world to the level of a pre-programed automaton. It seems that something must be moved from standstill. The world is as it appears to us, but not only that.

Platon imagined, but did not prove, an existence of his ideas; he put the question of a deeper existence, and we cannot ignore this. Platon appreciated man's capacity for deeper thinking, recognized its beauty, and full of admiration considered that the ideas that man gives birth to have a reality in themselves, that they are part of a world apart, a world of themselves, and that the rest of the world is just a combination of imperfect copies of that world. Platon sensed the existence of the Depth and fixed in it the support of the world. Platon's Depth, as sketched in his works, interests us as it reflects perhaps some aspects of the deep reality. Science is for Platon the search for the "unmovable essence" of the world since, as he said "no other science can be recognized to carry our view towards the hights but that which studies the existence and the invisible". This invisible is the very support and spring of the world. For Platon, the sky and the stars belong to the visible world, but they are inferior to the invisible world, which can be penetrated by our intelligence. Platon mixes intelligence with his religious believes in the everlasting soul.
The world of ideas was for Platon the essence of the world, thus confering to the Depth the mental properties abstracted from our Universe and raised the level of the divine. We recognize the Depth as a source of the material world, but not necessarily conscious in itself; the essence of the world, so much looked for by the philosophers, is rather in our consciousness and awareness, in our power of construction, of mastering the matter, and in creation. The essence of the world is in the ring of the existence, as well as in our knowledge and creation; we can derive no moral principle directly from the depth of the existence.

We believe that morality can spring philosophically only from our attitude towards the existence in its whole; it is a product of history and society, and hence it should not be theorized it deriving from principles coming from outside. The philosophical component of morality can only derive from a social attitude towards the ring of the existence, from understanding the ephemerality of our life, and also its greatness. But as much we could have an attitude without morality with respect to the ring of the existence. This is what I think Nietzche observed when he raised his voice loudly against the philosophical derivation of morality by Platon and the religious derivation of morality by Christianity. But since Nietzche did not understand the role of the social factor, he ended up by negating the morality in general. However, Nietzche's anti-morality does not appear entirely illogical. But if our awareness and the social consciousness are considered as parts of the essence of the existence, as we see it, and if it also contains the depth of the material world, then the social and philosophical components of morality can only but join together. Nietzche's break from the social factor is further away than Platon's jump over it. To Platon the Depth of the World is ruled by Harmony, i.e. Beauty, and knowing the truth about harmony and beauty represents the Goodness. The Goodness is this very knowledge, hence it is the supreme science. The supreme science means participation of man and society to the primitive depth that Platon call "pure existence", man and society having a common landmark, that of aspiring to rise towards harmony, beauty and goodness.

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