“Plato and Aristotle were comfortable in a slave society. They offered justification for oppression. They served tyrants. They taught the alienation of the body from the mind (a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they divorced the Earth from the heavens - divisions that were to dominate Western thinking for more than twenty centuries. Plato, who believed that 'all things are full of gods,' actually used the metaphor of slavery to connect his politics with his cosmology. He is said to have urged the burning of all of the books of Democritus (he had a similar recommendation for the books of Homer), perhaps because Democritus did not acknowledge immortal souls or immortal gods or Pythagorean mysticism, or because he believed in an infinite number of worlds. Of the seventy-three books Democritus is said to have written, covering all of human knowledge, not a single work survives. All we know is from fragments, chiefly on ethics, and secondhand accounts. The same is true of almost all the other ancient Ionian scientists.”
Quote by Carl Sagan
Book:Cosmos
Work
Author
You May Also Like
Source: The Dark Light of Day
Source: The Light in the Heart
“I fell asleep that night in the arms of a killer. I'd never slept better.”
Source: The Dark Light of Day
“We are all a little damaged, Bee. Some of us more than others.”
Source: The Dark Light of Day
Source: Blessing
Source: The Dark Light of Day
“Sick, twisted Abby was in love with the sick, twisted, beautiful Jake.”
Source: The Dark Light of Day
“He thrust into me as if he were trying to climb into my soul.”
Source: The Dark Light of Day
Source: Svetioničar - Pritajeno zlo
Source: The Woman of the Well
