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Cult /
THE MYTH OF "PLATO v. ARISTOTLE" "...both the Platonics and Aristotelians adhered, for opposite reasons, to the doctrine of controlling the masses of people through mythologies." (1)
 LaRouche has developed during the 1977-78 interval a new Manichean world-outlook. The pre-1978 period was characterized by a classical opposition between "socialism" and "fascism". After 1978, there was no "left" vs. "right" opposition anymore but a "higher" one; that of two "irreconcilable" philosophies: Plato vs. Aristotle. LaRouche keeps saying: "the entirety of the history of European culture from the third century A.D. has centered on an irreconcilable conflict between the republican heritage of Plato and the oligarchical heritage of Aristotle" (7)
"All modern study of the universe, including mathematical physics, has been divided into two irreconcilable fundamental views. The Aristotelean outlook and its degenerate offshoot, nominalism or empiricism, has defined the universe as axiomatically composed of (...) particles (...). Opposed to this has been the contrary axiomatic view emanating from neo-Platonism ..." (8)
"Through three millennia of recorded history to date, centered around the Mediterranean, the civilized world has been run by two, bitterly opposed elites, the one associated with the faction of Socrates and Plato, the other with the faction of Aristotle. During these thousands of years, until the developments of approximately 1784-1818 in Europe, both factions' inner elites maintained in some fashion an unbroken continuity of organization and knowledge through all of the political catastrophes which afflicted each of them in various times and locales." (1)
"Unbroken continuity"? Although LaRouche never explained where this "revelation" came from, consequently his adepts thought this revealed "secret knowledge" was the mark of his "genius". 1. In respect of the object of all our 'knowledge through reason', some have been mere sensualists, others mere intellectualists. Epicurus may be regarded as the outstanding philosopher among the former, and Plato among the latter. The distinction between the two schools, subtle as it is, dates from the earliest times; and the two positions have ever since been maintained in unbroken continuity. Those of the former school maintained that reality is to be found solely in the objects of the senses, and that all else is fiction; those of the latter school, on the other hand, declared that in the senses there is nothing but illusion, and that the understanding knows what is true. The former did not indeed deny reality to the concepts of the understanding; but, this reality was for them merely logical, whereas for the others it was mystical. The former conceded intellectual concepts, but admitted sensible objects only. The latter required that true objects should be purely intelligible, and maintained that by means of the pure understanding we have an intuition that is unaccompanied by the senses - the senses, in their view, serving only to confuse the understanding.
2. In respect of the origin of the modes of 'knowledge through pure reason', the question is as to whether they are derived from experience, or whether in independence of experience they have their origin in reason. Aristotle may be regarded as the chief of the empiricists, and Plato as the times followed chief of the noologist. Locke, who in modern Aristotle, and Leibniz, who followed Plato (although in considerable disagreement with his mystical system), have not been able to bring this conflict to any definitive conclusion. However we may regard Epicurus, he was at least much more consistent in this sensual system than Aristotle and Locke, beyond the inasmuch as he never sought to pass by inference limits of experience. This is especially true as regards Locke, who, after having derived all concepts and principles from experience, goes so far in the use of them as to assert that we can prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul with the same conclusiveness as any mathematical proposition - though both lie entirely outside the limits of possible experience.
Typically LaRouche later on demonized Kant as "The Most Evil Man Of the Last 200 Years" (even though Schiller was an avowed Kantian!). LaRouche didn't want the source of his "secret knowledge" to be revealed and be exposed as a plagiarist! Historical background of the "Plato-Aristotle Controversy": The whole "controversy" between the partisans of Plato against those of Aristotle's occurred during the 15th C. in Italy. It took place in a very limited time and place. The School Of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio, where we can see both philosophers "arguying", was painted between 1509 and 1510 . This fresco seems to settle the so-called controversy, very much along the lines of "Neo-Platonists" like Pico della Mirandola, Bessarion or Nicholas of Cusa. QUESTIONS:
 In conclusion and according to the Neo-Platonists themselves, there was NO opposition between the "Top-Down" method of Plato and the "Bottom-Up" method of Aristotle! These methods were COMPLEMENTARY.
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