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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
quote:
Originally posted by Locutus
There are lots of great writers though: Hemingway, Cummings, Whitman, Poe, Miller, Asimov, etc, etc. |
American literature is the suckiest literature of all time. Asimov gets a "B", and he's the least sucky on that list. |
You're insane. American lit has always been my favorite, and most people I know too... even alot of Canadians I know. You must be reading the wrong stuff. Like Richard Wright, Twain, Miller?
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Zulu Elephant
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Brits
William Gladstone
Bejamin Disreali
Winston Churchill
Charles Darwin
Charlies Dickens
Isaac Newton
Queen Elizabeth I
Thomas Paine
John Locke
John Maynard Keynes
Thomas Hobbes
John Stuart Mill
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Dr Strangelove
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Wasn't Einstein actually Swiss?
Didn't Gretsky spend most of his career playing for American teams? Is he an American citizen?
Why not Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of the top ten Americans?
Why not von Otto as one of the greastest Germans? He essentially invented the automobile and internal combustion engine, the weapon ...errr, tool, that made the 20th century what it was.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Locutus
That's just one opinion. IMO people like Einstein, Da Vinci, Galilei, Newton, Erasmus, Voltaire, Descartes, Martin Luther, Marx, Adam Smith, Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, Orwell, etc are right up there too. I don't know in what order I'd place them but it's by no means a given that the great Greeks would come out on top. |
Sure they would. Without Plato, Aristotle or Homer you wouldn't have any of these people. They all worked in a tradition that was largely invented by Plato and Aristotle. Homer is the father of western literature.
Plato and Aristotle beat out all these others by simple reason of their breadth. Aristotle in particular wrote on almost everything. WHile they were wrong about a lot of things, their systematic and rationalist approach has endured.
Lets see.
Most of your list were educated at a university. Plato started the first university - the Academy - the world's first institute of higher learning for its own sake.
The scientists you list worked in a tradition of separating natural philosophy from anthropomorphic explanation. This was started by Greek philosophers and systematized by Plato and his student Aristotle. Aristotle personally established many of the divisions between different sciences.
People like Adam Smith and Marx work in a scholarly tradition which attempts to provide systematic explanations of the principles by which societies are ordered. Plato and Aristotle invented this study.
Of course we can't claim that Aristotle or Plato invented drama as we understand it, but hell their contemporaries did and Aristotle is the founder of literary theory.
Luther was a total loser. Greek philosophy has had more influence over Xtian doctrine than he ever had.
Plato is still recognized as one of the greatest literary figures of all time and as a testament to his greatness, many of his fictional accounts have been accepted as the truth.
The difference is that all the people you mention worked as innovators within a tradition. Plato and Aristotle pretty much founded that tradition from scratch.
Which do you think matters more?
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Zulu Elephant
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In fact he left America in 1787 (anfter spening 13 years there) and then spent the rest of his days in Britain, France and a Luxembourg jail.
He wrote 'The Rights Of Man' in Britain and 'The Age of Reason' (Which every Christian should read) partly in Luxembourg and partly in Britain.
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18-11-2004 03:37
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