I don’t see how Chomsky should get any more praise than, say, Steven Spielberg.
:rolleyes: The question here is not whether Chomsky deserves “praise,” it is whether is a political-intellectual heavyweight, which nobody would even think of claiming for Spielberg. Nobody would deny that Karl Marx was a political-intellectual heavyweight, but you’ll find scant “praise” for him around here, even by those of us who consider his thoughts and legacy worthy of serious discussion.
I think Paul Krugman should qualify. He writes a lot about “tweaks to the machine” as you call it simply because he’s resigned to the fact that that’s the best outcome he can hope for at the moment; things would be very different if he had his druthers.
For the sake of balance, I’m trying to think of a good conservative that fits the bill, but I think conservativism in America is in such a huge state of flux right now that it really can’t have someone of that caliber until it calms down. Or, perhaps, it will take someone of that caliber to calm it down.
Bad argument. I claimed an aristocratic environment whichs entails leisure and what Nietzsche called “the pathos of distance” was a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. And that’s leaving aside any judgment on Plato’s philosophical merits. Obviously, many intelligent people have reached a different conclusion on that matter.
Appeal to authority/popularity.
None of them Americans.
And I was not referring solely to political philosophy, but philosophy in general. Arguably, America has yet to produce a single philosopher of the first rank. People such as Rawls, Kripke, and Donald Davidson are intelligent fellows, but their philosophy just does not have the profound effect on Western civilization that thinkers like Machiavelli, Kant, Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche did. This is as much due to the limitations of Anglo-American analytic philosophy as to any personal shortcomings on their part. But this brand of analytical philosophy is very much a product of the utilitarian, materialist, egalitarian state of mind I mentioned. Hence William James’s definition of truth as “what helps us get by” and the current suggestions that philosophy needs to become science-lite in order to justify its existence.
I should note that your comment also betrays a very American attitude: the conviction that there really are no* fundamental *flaws in the American system or way of life.
I guess you just don’t have an appreciation for the arts. No amount of rolley-eyes is going to change my point: there are intellectual heavyweights - it just doesn’t look the same. Besides, even in the days of Plato, who was reading Plato? Who?
Realistically speaking, more people were probably influenced by Spielberg’s politics than Chomsky’s. It’s just a matter of lenses, BrianGlutton.
Poor reading comprehension skills. I said I was “leaving that aside.” I was not positing that as an argument, because I was well aware of the flaws. My refutation of the previous poster consisted solely in exposing his own choppy logic.
Secondly, appeal to authority is not a logical fallacy in and of itself. Since we are dealing with philosophy, taking into consideration the opinion of dozens of the most renowned philosophers (and renowned based on their importance to and respect earned from other philosophers) is not a fallacy. It would not be enough to conclude without a doubt that Plato’s philosophy is deserving of its reputation (and I never made that claim!), but neither could it be brushed aside as irrelevant.
In short: Your attempt at clever fails. Hit the books.
Enough that he was able to found a school and attract students – and the school lasted almost nine hundred years. He must have had readers. Also, in the late Roman Empire there was a Neo-Platonist school of philosophy, which means the original Platonist school must have been influential enough to draw on.
Not because he ever wrote a political book, or could. Shakespeare might have been influential in the way you’re describing, but that does not make him a political intellectual heavyweight. Not even Jonathan Swift could claim that, and he did write political books of a kind, not all of them purporting to be fiction.
Chomsky might not rank with Plato as a pure philosopher, but as a political thinker he is not only better, but far more serious. (The Republic is not in the nature of a serious proposal for any political change.)
:smack: In the general population - including women, slaves, and peasants. Not limited to the rich folk.
How is Chomsky a) a better philosopher and b) more serious? I’m seriously quizzical here, and not just because I don’t agree with Chomsky’s politics. I don’t agree with all of Plato’s, either, obviously, what with it being very outdated and all.
And the OP said ‘political or social’. In the age of democracy, you can’t separate the two. What goes on in the social life of Americans is largely related to their politics.
Ad hominem.
The only arguments you had in support of Plato’s philosophical merits were fallacious. Your criterion for a philosopher’s rank is their effect on Western civilisation. In what way has Nietzsche influenced Western civilisation?
Is this a serious question?
One problem is that we are currently in the middle of a radical technological series of paradigm shifts in the body politic. It started with Nixon/Kennedy, and hit an apex with Obama’s internet based campaign, coupled with the 24 hour news cycle.
I have found that philosophy is most creative and fruitful when there exists a status quo to examine, which is most assuredly not the current state, and has not been for the last twelve years, at a minimum.
American social philosophers do exist, they simply have been writing science fiction as much as anything. I give you, for example, the works of William Gibson and Robert Heinlein. Currently, the one I’m most interested in is a Brit, Charles Stross, who examines the concept of a post-singularity humanity in interesting ways.
For a good period of time, from 1990 on, academia simply did not understand the transformative capacity of what was happening in the world.
A good one. The Nazis and other fascists might have admired Nietzsche, but they clearly did not understand him (insofar as anybody can).
OTOH, Nietzsche certainly was influential on fascists. As John J. Reilly writes in his review of Fascism: A History, by Roger Eatwell:
Of course, when you think about it . . . the exercise of the will is all the meaning life can ever have; an existentialist would probably agree (while phrasing it differently); but understanding that does not make one a fascist.
Well, be careful, there. Aristotle wrote at a time when there was a long-established status quo to examine – a (Hellenic) world of independent cities – and his politics are all about that. But (despite having tutored Alexander) Aristotle was persistently oblivious to the fact that that status quo he wrote about was about to die, indeed was already dying, rendering his political philosophy utterly irrelevant for the next thousand years and more. Russell’s History of Western Philosophy is well worth reading on this point.
No political intellectual was influential on the general population anywhere at any time until Martin Luther, if he even counts. They were almost all illiterate before the printing press.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Chomsky is not a philosopher at all. But he is a political intellectual who writes books intended to have immediate political influence, which Plato did not.
Not that Plato was indifferent to real-world politics of his time – but his idea was not to influence the masses, it was to get influence on some man with power, like Dionysius of Syracuse, and try to make a philosopher-king of him. (That didn’t work out too well.) (If the story interests you, read the historical novel The Mask of Apollo, by Mary Renault.)
Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher-king, probably well-versed in Plato (though his school was Stoic). That made him a more ethical and dutiful Roman Emperor (compared to practically all the others), but not a different kind of emperor in any political sense. He did not change anything fundamental about the Empire’s government or society. And Plato’s vision in The Republic is inapplicable to anything larger than a small town anyway.