The Plato Cult

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. Cole Porter and Karl Popper, or the Jazz Age in the philosphy of science; philosophy and lunacy, or Nelson Goodman and the omnipotence of words; "always apologize, always explain - Robert Nozick's war wounds; "I only am escaped alone to tell thee" - epistemology and the Ishmael effect; idealism - a Victorian horror story; what is wrong with our thoughts? - a neo-positivist credo.

David Charles Stove, was an Australian philosopher. His work in philosophy of science included criticisms of David Hume's Inductive scepticism, as well as what he regarded as the irrationalism of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend. 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.