"The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers, that is, in principle, of all men to the extent they desire to know.  But in fact this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good.   Their common concern for the good linked them; their disagreement about it proved they needed one another to understand it.  They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem.  This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good.  It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found.  The other kinds of relatedness are only imperfect reflections of this one trying to be self-subsisting, gaining their only justification from their ultimate relation to this one."

~ Allan Bloom ~