John Dunn

First posted on Tuesday, 19 August 2014 at 09:43

























Ezra Pound’s treatment of Plato and Aristotle in Guide to Kulchur should be of interest to anyone who questions the empiricist basis of indoctrination in the schools and universities, which underpins the ruling power of the oligarchical financial world order.

Pound was very definitely for Plato...

“What we can assert is that Plato periodically caused enthusiasm among his disciples. And the Platonists after him have caused man after man to be suddenly conscious of the reality of the nous, of mind, apart from any man's individual mind, of the sea crystalline and enduring, of the bright as it wore molten glass that envelops us, full of light.

“I believe even the most rabid anti-platonist must concede that Plato has repeatedly stirred men to a sort of enthusiasm productive of action,and that one cannot completely discount this value as life force.

“There is also no doubt that Platonists, all Platonists every Platonist disturb or disturbs people of cautious and orderly mind.”

He was very much against Aristotle...

“Whatever these worthy highbrows may have meant, their gross weight in human history has left occidental man with a belief that Aristotle was THE typical high- brow dissecting, hyper intellectual, inhuman. And Plato the great-grandfather of purple patches, of prose written as cynosure for Longinus.

“I have no hesitation in suspecting that Aristotle belongs to dilettantism. The lecturer's professional "bosse", the need to talk for an hour . . . .

“Up and down, long and short, I do not believe Aristotle a profound man, but one who handled at times the profundities of others, as in ‘exchange keeps them together’.

“Master of those that cut apart, dissect and divide. Competent precursor of the card-index. But without the organic sense. I say this in the face of Aristotle's repeated emphases on experience, and of testing by life.”

Posted by John Dunn.