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(In »Living religion versus deadly alienation«)
But it is important to understand Plato’s philosophical temperament. He constantly and neurotically seeks exactitude: the incontrovertible definition. Since life is chaotic and boundless, and since death really is the only thing that is precise, indisputable and definite, the inevitable consequence is that the Platonist is most profoundly a death worshipper. If predecessor and rival Heraclitus is the Iranian Greek who worships life, Plato is the Egyptian Greek who worships death. Heraclitus accepts and embraces the open-ended infinity of existence and of life. Plato, on the other hand, hates both openness and infinity, and it is in mathematics that he finds the magic weapon that will enable him to force the chaotic world, which is impossible to determine and define exhaustively, into one single preordained and limited totality.
Last modified 7. August 2016 at 00:05:58