The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies [Hardcover]

David Stove (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0631177094 | ISBN-13: 978-0631177098 | Publication Date: September 3, 1991 | Edition: 1

This is a book of philosophy, written by a philosopher and intended for anyone who knows enough philosophy to have been seriously injured, antagonised, mystified or intoxicated by it. Stove is passionately polemical, a philosophical counterpart to Tom Wolfe. Setting out to deflate a few philosophical reputations, he lambastes both the dead (Plato, Hegel, Kant, Foucault) and the living (Popper, Nozick, Feyerabend, Goodman). Yet he says things that need to be said, and that others often lack the courage to say.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This is a book of philosophy, written by a philosopher and intended for anyone who knows enough philosophy to have been seriously injured, antagonised, mystified or intoxicated by it. Stove is passionately polemical, a philosophical counterpart to Tom Wolfe. Setting out to deflate a few philosophical reputations, he lambastes both the dead (Plato, Hegel, Kant, Foucault) and the living (Popper, Nozick, Feyerabend, Goodman). Yet he says things that need to be said, and that others often lack the courage to say.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (September 3, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631177094
• ISBN-13: 978-0631177098
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,256,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Misdirected fire, July 14, 2002

By 

Suetonius (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies (Hardcover)

I defer to no one in my admiration for Stove's work, but this collection of essays isn't quite what I expected. Plato is hardly addressed at all; Hegel gets no more than a few passing mentions and a final cussing-out. If you want to see those icons comprehensively clasted, you'll have to go to Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies". Stove, after a brisk opening fracas with the science history-philosophy brigade (headed by the ubiquitous Popper), directs his fire at targets who, from the point of view of an amateur of philosophy such as me, are of very minor interest: the later Nelson Goodman, Robert Nozick, then a whole necropolis of nineteenth-century British idealists. It came as a surprise to me that late nineteenth-century Anglophone philosophy was almost entirely dominated by neo-Hegelians. Well, back then my ancestors were mostly illiterate farm laborers. Quandoque dormitat Homerus. There's a lot more on these people (some of whom Stove humorously insists were first-rate, but wrong) than I ever wanted to know.

On the continental front, Foucault is noticed and promptly squashed. Derrida, Baudrillard, Deleuze - forget it. It's no secret that these have had more influence on the (loosely speaking) intelligentsia, for good or ill, than a hundred F.H. Bradleys or Nelson Goodmans. I suppose Stove takes it for granted that their productions are beneath contempt, even as examples of 'folly'; but try telling that to the fans. I don't believe this is the answer; it's part of the problem.

If you know Stove's work you'll find the old acuity and acerbic wit going strong. It's worth getting this book just for the final chapter, 'What is Wrong with Our Thoughts?' (forty philosophical ways to go mad). But the book as a whole would have been more effective with sharper target selection. I recommend his concentrated attack on the farrago of modern philosophy of science (titled in its latest incarnation "Scientific Irrationalism").

P.S. Many people wonder if Stove actually approved of anybody. He quite liked Hume. But even one of that master's apercus is dismissed here as 'tripe'!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious, March 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies (Hardcover)

I would recommend this book to intelligent newcomers who want to learn about philosophy. Yes, I know. The book is patchy: the section on Robert Nozick is misleading and unfair, and Stove's attempt to explain Nozick's perfectly cogent views as Vietnam War fall-out, is just plain ridiculous. And Nozick isn't Stove's only innocent casualty. But newcomers to philosophy are bound to come away with misleading impressions of some kind. At least with Stove I know what those impressions will be.

The thing that makes this book valuable, apart from Stove's deliciously caustic writing style, which will make you laugh uncontrollably, is the large middle section, called, "Idealism: A Victorian Horror Story". Gosh, that was fun. Stove here applies his talent for ridicule to a target well worth ridiculing; and he uses some positive arguments that don't crumble when exposed to bright light. Be warned. Not all of his arguments have this merit.

Oh, I should warn you about the final chapter, which aims to convince you that everyone is mad. For a while it convinced me that everyone was mad, author included. There's a list of nonsense statements about the number three which starts in hilarity and ends in gloom. But surely they can't *all* be nonsense. They certainly can't all be false: some of them are just the negations of others of them, so one would expect some of them to be true.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Witty and disturbing critique of philosophical fallacies, October 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies (Hardcover)

This book was a delight to read: a fine example of the British (and apparently Australian) tradition of scholarly writing about serious topics that is at the same time permeated with wit and sarcasm. Stove dissects some of the major, largely forgotten philosophical movements of the past, with the aim of showing where they went wrong--and of casting light into the darker fallacies of contemporary philosophy. His list of forty statements about the number three that embody distinct kinds of error in thinking, for most of which we don't even have labels, was hilarious and disturbing at the same time--a fitting end for this eccentric book. Anyone who finds philosophical questions compelling ought to be able to get something out of it.