continued…

I think in many cases Aristotle is viewed as very boring because his is so very systematic, thorough and Monumentally Common Sense Orientated: A is A. A thing is itself. A thing possesses certain characteristic qualities and cannot act outside of or in contradiction to its nature. People that don’t want to use their minds to deal honestly and effectively with reality have a friend in Plato. And to these kind of people Aristotle is a huge, strict and stern reminder that reality is not interested in whether or not you want to pretend that 2+2=5 or that the car coming down the street you are crossing is “really just a subjective pre-cognitive figment of your imaginative filtered consciousness.” So it won’t hit you and possibly kill you because it’s not real? And I grant that it is hard work to always be THINKING and consciously making an effort to honestly apprehend and understand reality. But in the end it is the most rewarding. And anyway, what other choice do you really have? It’s not like you have an option on which sense you want to use to see an object. It’s not like you have an option on which “reality” you want to perceive.

I think it is also important to note that Plato placed the people in his analogy in a dark cave and physically chained up. This is psychologically representative of the way that Plato wants you to react to his setup. You are supposed to feel that you are being held back or down or “enslaved” by your senses and “this world”. Remember that when you find out that Aristotle was thrilled with being able to percieve and think about reality.  He spent the vast majority of his life to using his senses and mind to discover, understand and categorize the beautiful world around us (i.e. reality).

By the way, remember Plato was the guy that claimed, “Love is a disease.” Whereas Aristotle a bit more benevolently, if metaphorically, observed that, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”  Rand had this to say on love, “Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.”

Plato was the first in a long line of philosophers that setup a bizarre construct of ideas and analogies that make little or no sense in direct comparison to objective reality (i.e. the universe humans actually live in and perceive). Plato’s Cave is the original blueprint for cynical supernaturalism. This is pure mysticism superficially disguised to resemble rationalism. In this sense I mean mysticism as a set of ideas that cannot ever be proved or understood. So why try to explain it with complicated scenarios? Why try to “explain” it at all? It is also probably worth noting that it is the starting point for every thinker thereafter that wanted to devalue human existence; and it is a very effective tour de force in accomplishing this objective.