The purpose of this work is to employ the meditations of Plato, son of Ariston, and the Hungarian polymath Michael Polanyi in an analysis of the essence of science and philosophy, and the causes and conditions of nihilism. As the means to that endeavour, we shall proceed by way of comparative exegeses of key writings by both men, Plato’s "Politeia", "Symposium", "Timaeus", and "Critias"; and Polanyi’s "Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy", "The Study of Man", "The Tacit Dimension", and "Knowing and Being". Through that process we shall be reflecting upon their philosophic anthropologies and their accounts of the existential character of the open soul versus that of l’homme revolté; on the grounds of scientific and philosophic knowledge of reality; and the nature of the free society as the open soul writ large.