The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies 1st Edition

by David Stove (Author)

12 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0631177098

ISBN-10: 0631177094

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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.

The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies

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From the Back Cover

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (August 26, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0631177094
ISBN-13: 978-0631177098
Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.8 x 9.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 12 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,677,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2252 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Greek & Roman
- #3485 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy > History & Surveys

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Bruce Caithness

Acidic superficiality

July 30, 2012

Format: Hardcover

David Stove writes in an engaging "Will Durant" style using pithy aphorisms and turns of phrase which paint pictures easy to digest. Unfortunately such over-simplification also is prejudicial to a serious digestion of his subjects. A reason philosophy lost favour and respect with practicing scientists was that they could see through the lack of substance of the type of linguistic games analytical philosophy drifted into.
Stove is a prime exemplar. No wonder they call it "analytical" philosophy. For example, it is a repetitive theme of Stove that Karl Popper, who in fact tried to avoid debating the meaning of words, engaged in a conspiracy to devalue words like `know', `discover', `refute'.

If anyone is engaging in deceptive use of language it seems to be David Stove. Will Durant as a philosopher and historian had a certain home-spun positivity about him, Stove is caustic along with his easy superficiality. Brilliant facility in spinning word pictures is not sufficient to neutralize, say, Karl Popper's huge body of work. It is indeed a pity that Popper is neglected in university curricula, perhaps Popper was too busy thinking and writing and re-writing his thoughts to succeed as a salesman like Lakatos for instance, or Stove.

Furthermore to disparage Popper for a lack of interest in probability theory and mathematics is moving in substance of argument from the sublime to the ridiculous.

All Life is Problem Solving

A Guide to The Logic of Scientific Discovery (The Popular Popper)

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Aristotle's Beast

Sparta Loves Athens

May 8, 2001

Format: Hardcover

It will be a long time before you find another philosophy book even remotely like this one. Savor it. David Stove not only talks about philosophy, even our precious analytic philosophy, with wit and derision, he actually does philosophy, and excellent analytic philosophy, in a lively and unforgettable style. This is an excellent book for students because it is humorous and very lively, but it also achieves and sustains levels of clarity rarely seen in discussions of solipsism, idealism, Kantian questions and a host of other 'problems.' Graduate students in every humane field can learn a great deal of philosophy from Stove, and students of philosophy have in this book a new model of excellence.

His style is humorous, aggressive and precise, while also being very gracious and conciliatory though never merciful enough to give up his belief that he is right after all. Stove is the most combative philosopher, both in style and substance, that I have come across in quite some time. He believes that it is a myth that philosophy is largely based on arguments. He holds, in fact, that most philosophers, including the most famous ones, argue far too little. Stove argues a lot. Perhaps to make up for all the lost time...

If there has been a consistent strain to the negative remarks about Stove, it is probably that his style is not sanctimonious, or respectful or unctious enough to please the hotly moralistic puppy ears of our hypersenstive age. For example, Stove concludes that the world of Objective Idealism is merely the regular world spoken of in church and pulpit tones. He lampoons Nozick as having a make believe philosophy. And there are other disrespectful things said. However, Stove is not engaged in any personal attacks. He has the goods on everyone he talks about, and he restricts his concerns to their arguments. He does not make fun of anyone, I would say. It is more like he has fun while talking about the zany arguments philosophers fall for.

The main point of the book seems to be to take idealism down a notch or two. A century and a half of idealism needs diagnosis, and not all diagnoses are flattering. Some are even offensive to morally feverish puppies.

And then there is the lingering guilt over positivism. Our age enjoys a guilt and punishment game played out over the graves of every positivist aspiration. If the most rational diagnosis of the scene at the death of positivism includes a recommendation that the patient be revived, walked about and exercised back into robust health (sans a few toes and some pride), then it is just too bad for those planning the funeral. Stove's Neo-Positivist Credo (the final chapter) is a very real threat to every obscurantist in the humanities.

There is in the end no way to tell you how satisfying this book was for me, nor how happy I am that it exists.

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A customer

Hilarious

March 27, 1999

Format: 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.

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Most recent customer reviews

Illuminating content -- bad edition

If you cannot enjoy reading these essays then your brain lacks something that could make your life a better place to live in.Read more

Published on March 29, 2003 by HECTOR MARIA MONACCI

Misdirected fire

I defer to no one in my admiration for Stove's work, but this collection of essays isn't quite what I expected.Read more

Published on July 14, 2002 by Suet

Very important

Amid the body count of the "worker's paradise",Hitler's Reich,Mao's revolution and the general idealistic-nihilistic paradigm that defined the 20th century,this book is a great...Read more

Published on March 26, 2002 by timothy hilliard

Very important

Amid the body count of the "worker's paradise",Hitler's Reich,Mao's revolution and the general idealistic-nihilistic paradigm that defined the 20th century,this book is a great...Read more

Published on March 26, 2002 by timothy hilliard

Very important

Amid the body count of the "worker's paradise",Hitler's Reich,Mao's revolution and the general idealistic-nihilistic paradigm that defined the 20th century,this book is a great...Read more

Published on March 26, 2002 by timothy hilliard

An amazing solace

Solace might seem a strange reaction to those already familiar with the acerbic writing of David Stove.Read more

Published on September 16, 2001 by Amazon Customer

Last reiewer's error.

A previous reviewer for this book was feeling smart and said:
"P.S. henry@coombs suggests that if two statements are contradictory one of them must be right. Oh?Read more

Published on June 30, 2000

The Mad magazine of Modern Philosophy

Combining brilliant hyperbole with caustic understatement, Stove recouts the horrors and madness of two and half thousands years of philosophical nonsense from Plato to Hegel,...Read more

Published on June 15, 1999

Witty and disturbing critique of philosophical fallacies

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...Read more

Published on October 1, 1997

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