I disagree. I'm a philosophy major, I hate reading Plato. Boring, dry, antiquated - definitely. Regardless, he is a cornerstone of western thought. Know your classics.

As more than just a historical curiosity? Greek geometry contributed much, but we don't teach it in college, do we? I'd hate to think my field peaked 2000 years ago.

See the fruits of it in that page. Modern biology tells us the soul doesn't survive death any more than 'treeness' survives the fireplace. I suppose it's easier to read Plato than to study evolutionary psychology or game theory.

> I suppose it's easier to read Plato than to study evolutionary psychology or game theory.

Uh, no.

Plato wasn't writing a textbook. You're not supposed to read it and accept it and be done. You're supposed to fight back with Socrates on every page, and this is the mental training that is supposed to make you able to be your own Socrates. As such, Plato seems really boring to most modern people who read it, since they're reading it wrong. "Why would Socrates say that? That's clearly wrong. Oh well, I guess he was dumb."

> Modern biology tells us the soul doesn't survive death any more than 'treeness' survives the fireplace.

I would be very interested in hearing any evidence that you could give to support these two assertions. In particular, I'm curious as to why you think the concept of a tree can be destroyed by destroying an individual tree. That seems like spooky action at a distance to me...

re: plato

If you intend to teach critical thinking, I can think of 10 subjects off the top of my head that don't involve bronze-age concepts.

re: soul

I think you missed my meaning. I meant all thinking is a physical process that ends at death, same as the individual tree's cells stop working when you burn them. I dislike discussing it; this is so blindingly obvious (today) that it makes more sense to look at why they've made no progress in 2000 years.

> I meant all thinking is a physical process that ends at death, same as the individual tree's cells stop working when you burn them.

So the bit about "treeness" was just rhetoric and not meant to do more than suggest an analogy.

It seems to me that when discussing Plato it doesn't make sense to gratuitously trash an idea related to Platonic thought if you have no intention of backing up that attack.

The way you describe Plato as 'bronze-age' makes it seem like you've never read anything he wrote. I agree that many of his ideas are antiquated (most of his metaphysics, for example); yet, other ideas are still valid (like his theory of justice). While I agree that including Plato in this course is beating it to death, I don't agree that all philosophy classes should write off Plato as worthless.

You're right. Classics are such a waste of time. Let's throw out Ovid, Homer, Dante, Bach, and Mozart while we're at it.

You're comparing oranges to apples, and depreciating philosophy, which is more science than art. No one seriously discusses papers of guys who believed odd scientific theories from XVI.

My point is that, even if you dismiss those works as having little scientific value, they have great literary value as well.

So, their place would be in the literature courses, not philosophy ones.

You're still not getting it. What I'm saying is that Plato's works have both philosophical and literary value. Even if you dispute the first, there is still the second. I'm not sure why this is would mean moving them from philosophy to literature courses (or why those should be mutually exclusive in the first place).

Those who ignore history are condemned to relive it.

More importantly, in your case, those who think the classics are a waste of time are cretins.