The Republic, Book XII, Chapter I

Plato’s example of the cave was probably the first inquiry ever into the possible effects of television, the illusion of reality, on the minds of man.

Plato among the Greeks was the first who conceived a method of knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from the substance of truth. He was the greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato.

Could there be a more clear sign of genius than the ability to create what has timeless value? To create timeless knowledge, a philosopher has to reach out to the absolute truth, for only truth does never change, and thus never looses it’s value. That’s what constitutes the main difference between a philosopher and a mere ideologist, the “truth” of the ideologist has constantly to be re-adjusted whenever it comes in contact with reality, the unchanging object of knowledge, or whenever time went by and changed the external appearances, the ever changing object of ignorant fools and the ideologist.