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Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort.

Alain Badiou#10

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About this quote

What does it mean?
Badiou thinks current philosophical cures for Plato have been weak and are making people passive instead of solving the problem.
In plain terms
We took weak doses of ideas to fix old ones, and now we are just sleeping comfortably.
What can you take from it?
Weak fixes can make problems worse.

Where it applies

  • studying history
  • making decisions
  • evaluating systems

Putting it to work

  • avoid weak fixes
  • challenge comfort

Questions to consider

  • Is comfort killing progress?
  • What are we ignoring?

Another view

Sometimes caution prevents making things even worse.

More from Alain Badiou

  1. I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to …

    Permalink to quote #9
  2. Art attests to what is inhuman in man.

    Permalink to quote #8
  3. In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.

    Permalink to quote #7

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