“Plato and Aristotle.....survived to become the twin pillars of philosophic and scientific thinking in the Western world, supporting the massive edifice of Christianity. Plato's Theory of Forms, with it's inherent contempt for the physical world, and Aristotle's biological dualism, in which females were seen as failed males, provided the intellectual apparatus for the centuries of misogyny that were to follow.”
“It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.”
“Socrates became a trendsetter. Other philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle and Gus, quickly followed suit, dropping their last names too. And, for centuries after that there would be countless imitators including oltaire, Michelangelo, and, much later, Cher.”
“Was it Aristotle who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire?”“No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Tormé and Bing Crosby. In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days,” Komatsu said. “Wouldn’t it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?”
“When historians and literary scholars talk about the classical heritage, or the legacy to Western civilization from antiquity, they are primarily thinking of four worldviews that were written in Hebrew or Greek among the body of religious, philosophical, and literary texts created before 250 B.C. These are the Hebrew Bible, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and Hellenistic, or Alexandrine, literature.”
“My metaphysical thinking is more in alignment with Plato rather than Aristotle's." ~R. Alan Woods [2013]”