Hello. I am interested in doing a poll into who is better out of Aristotle and Plato. Also, any preference between Descartes and Liebniz? Tell us your favourites sin the comments and also feel free to suggest your own questions.
I only have modest goals from this project. By creating the poll (which I hope to do soon, once I work out the technical specifics), I hope to gain a better idea of what the current academic community thinks about this. You might think this tracks the truth, or not, but this is where we're at.
I have another idea for how we could improve philosophy: listen a bit more carefully. Listen to other people's ideas and experiences, and don't just pretend you know all about their ideas and objections to your ideas. Not only will you become a better interlocutor, you may also learn a lot more along the way. I remember an assistant professor of mine was listening to the claims of another person and then this became the basis of a now famous publication. We have to listen to ourselves too. And this brings us back to the first guys to tell us that, the philosophers Plato and Socrates.
Frankly I think I would vote for Plato. His theory of the Forms is simply brilliant, and I know of no better theory in philosophy. We really are, as someone once said, all writing just footnotes to Plato.
ReplyDeleteI'd say Liebniz over Descartes because he had a deeper metaphysical feeling about him.