In spite of much admiration and the high regard Plato has always been held in, there is a break in the relationship of early modernity and modernity toward him. The resultant distancing from Plato is not incidental to modern thinking. It is virtually a dogma of all critical thinking that something like an independently existing essence of objects cannot exist and that, were it to exist, it certainly could not be recognized. This, however, is precisely what Plato stands for: he is the real exponent of a precritical dogmatic philosophy that could still be of the view that there exist transcendent substances, defining characteristics, ideas accessible to reason alone, knowledge of which would make possible an adequate explanation of the world without recourse to empiricism. This book deals with the emergence and the validity of this view of Plato, which can be consistently traced since late medieval times. The description, however, is not exclusively historical. This book does not present a history of the reception of Plato through the ages, something that could hardly be attempted in a single monograph. Rather, the discussion centers on a factual debate. What are the reasons that led to this — probably skewed — image of Plato, how valid are the arguments that brought about this break with Platonism, and what are the consequences of this break for the self-understanding through which the critical thinking of “modernity” distinguishes itself from Plato?