to think that Plato was full of shit?

[ooojimaflip]

The idea of Paltonic Forms as he formulated it - that they are the base of reality - is patent nonsense. In the informal sense that is is often used it just means 'idealised abstract'. I don't like his semi-fascist political ideology either. Some of his epistomology is not bad though.

I have that on DVD. I honestly think David Lynch directed it under a pseudonym.

A nice bit if graffitti I saw in the toilets of the Uni Library back in the old days.
"I drink, therefore I cram"

If this is a tumbleweed moment, please ignore...

OR please put me on track

I find it difficult to begin reading philosophers works because at some point it becomes glaringly obvious that they came before Freud: it seems to me that they didn't have a deep understanding of the ego. Bearing this in mind, I can't take them quite as seriously as I'd like to because if they were all-knowing, then surely they'd have known .
Or are they great because they wrote what they did when they did, as opposed to someone writing it today?

It's the standing on the shoulders of giants thing. Each one lead to the next by their ideas being attacked/supported/criticised. Most great thinkers of the past were wrong - as they don't have the knowledge that we do now. This does not necesserily undermine their acheivments. So Plato MAY have been a genius but was still full of shit. Same with that old fraud Freud ;)

I'm reminded of a Clement Freud story though

"In 1978 I was on a parliamentary delegation to Japan and returned via China during the Cultural Revolution, a choice also made by young Winston Churchill, then the Conservative MP for Stretford. I was debriefed by the Minister for Information who asked if there was anything at all I would like to ask. I said: "Yes. Everything you do, you do with extreme care and precision. When I ask questions that your government does not like, my driver calls for me five minutes later than arranged. When I ask if there are any blind or handicapped children in China, I get cabbage soup for dinner.

"Now I am in your country with a colleague, than whom I am older, have been in parliament longer, have held higher positions in our respective political parties: we are both staying at the Peking Palace Hotel and his suite is bigger than mine. Why?"

The Minister, very embarrassed, finally said:
"It is because Mr Churchill had a famous grandfather."

It is the only time that I have been out-grandfathered."

Who today would be considered an original thinker?

Stephen Fry?

To do is to be - Kant
To be is to do- Jung
Do be do be do-Frank Sinatra

'Plato would have banned all that though, big into censorship he was. he thought that entertainment that provoked emotion was highly dangerous as the general populace couldn't contain themselves and would go quite mad.'

He obviously forsaw 'Britain's Got Talent'

Shame that Freud got so much right about the ego yet single handedly responsible for perpetuating the misogyny running through the medical system.

Yes he was just 'smoking a cigar' the rest of us were travelling backwards to infancy and it was all Mummy's fault!

48 days since I denied the reality of the material world*

Tethersend - I'm reading that in a geordie big brother voiceover voice. Hope that's ok.

I'm sure that's exactly how Plato intended it to be. If he'd had a ticker. And came from South Shields.

Very big in the North East is Plato.

Thanks for that explanation oojimaflip

"Shame that Freud got so much right about the ego yet single handedly responsible for perpetuating the misogyny running through the medical system."

I kind of forgive him because did you know that he originally wrote a text about victorian women who had been sexually abused by their fathers or other male relatives (including Virginia Woolf). He concluded that this childhood abuse led to various neuroses. There was an outcry among the "establishment" (i.e victorian men) and he had to re-write it and say that the abuse never took place at all and it was all in women's heads and that they secretly desired their fathers.
So yes, he should have taken a stand for women, but he knew he'd lose his credibility.

oh, I'm shallow.... I'm sooo shallow....

I can't help giggling thinking about Plato's epistomology... He obviously had a lot to say about mouths...

I think I'll give myself a [buscuit]