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1. Рождество Bosch (anonymousbosch@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 23-Jan-2023 13:47:25 JST Рождество Bosch

   Just got a really fascinating book. Two key takeaways:

   1. The Chinese total reversal from Mao that now reveres the past (and especially Ruism and Kong Fuzi) is finding great dividends in the Greek classics. Platonism finds remarkable bedfellows with classical Chinese thought. This also goes hand-in-hand with China realizing that the West has hollowed out it’s philosophical tradition (hates it really) and is discarding gnostic gems in exchange for a nihilistic/materialistic outlook with increasingly diminishing returns.

   2. The utter disdain of the author (a spoilt rich child of a UN economist raised in the lap of luxury and currently locked in the ivory tower of UoC): patronizing of the Chinese, dismissive of their interest in the curios of antiquity, disdainful of the value of the past (herself a classics professor, ironically), and to top it all off: she completely misunderstands Leo Strauss in ch. 5 by strawmanning him as a “RETVRN” guy before just dismissing him outright for his “Platonic view of the soul” (ie. He has metaphysics, so his views are stupid).

   A fantastic read, and very eye-opening how the poison of Fukuyama is still just demolishing any chance of American academia/socio-politics/philososphy from correcting course.