Thought of the minute: I never realized how much antipathy I have for Plato.
I was just thinking … I don’t know what to expect from my class tomorrow. It’s “environmental ethics” … which means it could either be a serious discussion about the ethical implications of environmental preservation or destruction and related topics, or it could be a semester of babble about how we must love the treeees, maaaannn.
I was thinking about it though. I had a list of about 8 classes to choose from for my final dose of philosophy (about 4 of them without waiting lists). One of the things that incited me to go for the class I chose, in retrospect, may have been that it doesn’t involve reading Plato or Augustine or any of that stuff.
In a thought tangent, I caught myself wandering off on how much Plato is overrated. Seriously. The guy’s ideas were largely a load of crap — at best, misguided, at worst utterly misleading. The only things he’s really got going for him are that he was the only game in town at the time, and he wrote copiously about whatever he decided he knew better than everyone else about.
See? Pent-up Plato-related antipathy. His dialogues were a bunch of shyte too.
Anyway, that’s it. That’s the thought of the minute. I don’t really care for Plato.
January 7th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
The allegory of the cave is neat. His demonstration of the Socratic method is good (and even humorous). Most of the rest of the ideas he pushes are, if nothing else, thought-provoking.
Nobody really looks at his other theories as legitimate, but they see them as a large stepping stone upon which other philosophy came to be. And his personal pet ideas aside, he had a huge impact on things. This guy founded the Academy. He did good things.
So don\’t be too hard on poor ol\’ Plato. If nothing else, he knew dialectics were better than debates, which so many of us still haven\’t managed to get through our heads.
January 8th, 2007 at 7:04 am
see, that’s the thing. You say something that amounts to “I’m sick of Plato” and people spring to his defense.
Yeah, he was a good philosopher, and yeah, he was influential. But he’s also overrated, and is NOT the end-all be-all of philosophy.
But really, my antipathy isn’t a rational feeling, and there’s no reasoning with it. It’s just that I’m really getting sick of reading him like he’s the end-all be-all greatest philosopher evar.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Plato always makes me think of Playdough….now if only you had a course in Playdough, I don\’t think you\’d ever get sick of it! Oh, the endless possibilities.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I don\’t really care for Gob.