MDDM Ch. 72 philosophy is for everyone

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> Mr T:
> >>
> >To get philosophical about it, I would start with Plato
> 
> Better to go all the way back to the pre-Socratics, don't you think, not to
> mention the Eastern philosophers that Pynchon brings into play in M&D

Well, the pre-Socrtatics only survive in fragments and you would get
them in what has survived of Plato and Aristotle. Of course Plato
misrepresents them or has no interest in getting what they said or
thought correct or in being faithful to their "texts." All of the
interlocutors of Socrates (Plato's character not the philosopher) in
Plato's dialogues are, as you like to say,  scarecrows. In Aristotle, a
true historian of philosophy and a more scientifically minded guy
anyway, we have a more faithful accounting of the pre-Socratics. We know
this because scholars have compared the fragments with what Plato and
Aristotle have written, However, Aristotle, like Plato, has his biases.
Like Plato, he doesn't much care for the Sophists. Recently, recognizing
the Sophists as their great grandfathers, the postmodern philosophers
have tried to clean up the reputations of the sophists. 

I once took a course in Shakespeare with a professor from India. He told
us that in India there are no tragedies. I kept thinking that someone
should write a book about a great Indian philosopher's lost book on
tragedy. 

Yup, I often laugh when people talk about all this Puritan bible or
Cabalistic stuff as if it is something we invented in the west.
Logocentric? Same with the violence and wars over religion. Gee, what
happened to all the schools of thought on the Tao etc. 
They got their asses kicked, both in the books and in the world. Jews,
Christians, Muslims, don't even come close if we're talking about
killing the other guy over religion.