In short, materialism implies moral relativism. Since a material description of reality cannot provide us with any moral warrant, these must be selected for ourselves. In Plato's dialogues, this view was defended by Protagoras who famously declared that “man is the measure of all things."
According to Lloyd Gerson, Platonism rejects this moral relativism. Platonism is antirelativist. According to Platonism, "goodness is a property of being."
In many ways, your view of being determines your degree of enchantment versus disenchantment. Materialists deny that goodness is a property of being. You can't locate goodness in the Periodic Table.
Platonists, by contrast, affirm that goodness is a property of being. Christianity, of course, agrees with the Platonism in this regard, can be viewed as a species of Platonism, in that Christians believe that "God is love." Being itself is grounded in goodness. The Logos, made historically visible in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is the fabric holding the cosmos together.
I would argue that this conviction, that goodness is a property of being, is the most enchanting conviction of all. Christians confess an ontology of love. Righteous moral action is not subjective, arbitrary, or relative. Rather, goodness traces the moral grain of the universe. Goodness is a property of being. And because of this, love is a method of scientific discovery as powerful as any telescope or microscope.
